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Compare behaviourist and cognitive explanations of learning, using evidence and examples from both fields.

In order to compare behaviourist and cognitive explanations of learning it seems crucial that both should be described first and a little history given. This essay will focus initially on how both schools of thought came about and how both have developed over the years before moving on to compare and contrast the two explanations of learning.

Behaviourism developed at the beginning of the 20th century whereas cognition came later between the 1950’s and 1970’s. Behaviourism developed because psychologists were frustrated with the state of psychology at the time. They felt particularly constricted by the continuous use of the introspective method, which in their view did not allow them the freedom to adopt objective and effective research. They wanted psychology to become a respected true science and developed the idea that only observable behaviour should be measured rather than the mental workings behind them (Hayes, 1978). Psychologists such as Pavlov and Skinner have played a major part in the development of behaviourism. The research and findings of both of these psychologists will be discussed later in the essay.

Just as behaviourists had felt constricted by the position of psychology during the early 20th century so too did psychologists during the 1960’s feel unhappy with the narrow viewpoint of the behaviourists. Psychologists began to think that it was impossible to explain human behaviour based purely on observable events. They believed it was vital to include the human mind to be able to understand how humans perceived the world around them (Rathus, 2001). This desire to studying the mind brought about the ‘cognitive revolution’ in the 1960’s when scientists in other fields began investigating mental processes (Hunt, 2001).

A black box model can be used to illustrate the key difference between behavioural and cognitive psychology. The black box is viewed as the human being or the mind, which receives inputs (stimuli) and emits outputs (responses). Behaviourists believe that the black box cannot be opened and should be ignored, and that objectively observing the inputs and outputs outside of the box is far more important. Cognitive psychology, on the other hand, is concerned with both looking inside the black box as and observing the inputs and outputs.

In 1927 Pavlov discovered that reflexes could be learned or conditioned. In his famous study of classical conditioning using, he found that dog would salviate at unexpected times even before food had been placed in their mouth. A dog presented with food (unconditioned stimuli- US) will per reflex start to salivate (Unconditioned Response -UR). However, he showed that when pairing the food (unconditioned stimulus) with a neutral stimulus such as a bell (US), the bell would eventually become a Conditioned Stimuli (CS) which on its own cause salivation (Conditioned Response, CR).

Classical conditioning has become a universally accepted theory of learning but behaviourist and cognitive psychologists would explain this concept in different ways. Cognitive psychologists would suggest that classical conditioning is a simple method of learning relationships that link events. They say that organisms interpret all the data then process it in order to make predictions and decisions. Therefore, the dog heard the bell and mentally connected it with the arrival of the food. In essence the bell provided information to the dog about what was going to happen next. Behaviourists would argue that the dog did not ‘know’ that the food was on its way. The dog only salivated because the bell had been paired with the food – because it the bell and the food were contiguous. The view that all living beings learn to associate stimuli because they are contiguous is a key behaviourist explanation of learning.

However, research by Garcia and Koelling (1966) on taste aversion challenges this behaviourist view. Garcia et al conditioned two groups of rats with three stimuli – sweetened water, a light and a clicker. One group was then presented with an unconditioned stimulus of nausea caused by poison or radiation while the other group was presented with an unconditioned stimulus of an electric shock. Following this conditioning, the rats that had been nauseated showed aversion to the sweetened water but showed no aversion to the light or the clicker. The other group of rats who had been shocked showed an aversion to the light and the clicker but not to the sweetened water (Rosenzweig, Breedlove & Leiman, 2002). Although both groups of rats had been exposed to all three stimuli and each one could have been thought of as the cause of the painful shock or the nausea, the rats associated the pain or the nausea with the most appropriate source. This finding shows some kind of logical thought process behind the aversion – not simply a behaviour following a stimulus. The rats paired the nausea or the pain with the most obvious cause not just because it was contiguous.

The difference between behaviourism and cognitive schools of thought can also be shown in operant conditioning. Skinner provides the well-known example of operant conditioning. He set up an animal cage where a rat was placed inside and deprived of food until eventually it learned by accident that pressing a lever released a food pellet into the cage. The food was termed a positive reinforcer and encouraged the rat to press the lever again. If pressing the lever had led to something bad such as a shock the rat would avoid pressing it again because the effect would have been negative hence the term negative reinforcer.

Behaviourists would view operant conditioning as a simple form of learning whereby behaviour can be controlled by the positive or negative effect it has. Although the terms reward and punishment are often used synonymously with the terms negative and positive reinforcers Skinner disliked the idea of these terms because he believed that they (reward and punishment) suggested trying to look inside the black box of an organism which is strictly against the behaviourist viewpoint. Cognitive psychologists would say that a human forms an idea or belief about things that are wrong or right through experience and conscious decisions to repeat or not to repeat a certain type of behaviour depending on what type of effect it had last time. Cognitivists would argue that behaviour is learned by knowledge of what is appropriate and is not as suggested by behaviourists simply a learned automatic response.

During the time when behaviourism was the key concept in psychology Tolman was conducting experiments showing how complex cognitive processes were taking place even in the minds of rats. His study involving rats looking for food in a maze made him conclude that the animals were developing a set of spatial relationships – cognitive ‘maps’ rather than just learning a chain of responses (Hock, 2002). Tolman believed that far more could be understood about the nature of learning through examining internal mental process as well as the observable stimuli and responses.

Classical and operant conditioning are considered to be relatively basic explanations of learning. Much of conditioning’s attraction is that it meets the behaviourist viewpoint in that it can be measured and explained objectively using in most cases laboratory conditions. However, many psychologists find that conditioning is far too mechanical and lacks quality when trying to explain all learning processes (Hayes, 1978). Cognitive psychology is guided by developments in a number of different fields from Psycholinguistics to Anthropology. Behaviourism has contributed a great deal to psychology especially to the study of learning, for example Skinner developed an educational method called programmed learning in which difficult tasks are broken down into simple steps, each of which is reinforced. Yet it could be said that behaviourism neglected to research things that involved complex thought processes such as language acquisition and problem solving (Hayes, 1978). Cognitive psychologists have contributed such concepts as mental structures and templates. Cognitive Psychologists such as Asch have played a huge part in our understanding of the human mind with concepts such as schemas upon which now rests the foundations of cognitive psychology.

In conclusion, both behaviourist and cognitive schools of thought have played a major part in our understanding of how organisms learn. However, both have their limitations. Behaviourism, through concentrating solely on observable behaviour, lost much of its relevance to human problems and is sometimes condemned for its triviality. Cognitive psychology has been criticised for neglecting the role of emotions in human learning and behaviour but at least cognitive psychology recognises the need to look inside the black box in order to be able to understand how organisms function and learn.

Reference List.

Anderson, J. R (2000) Learning and Memory – An Intergrated Approach.

New York, USA: John Wiley & Sons

Baddeley, A (1997) Human Memory – Theory and Practice.

Sussex: Psychology Press

Hayes, J. R (1978) Cognitive Psychology – Thinking and Creating.

Illinois, USA: The Dorsey Press

Hock, R. (2002) Forty Studies that Changed Psychology.

New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall

Hunt, M. (1994) The story of psychology.

New York: Anchor Books.

Rathus, S (2001) Essentials of Psychology

Orlando, USA: Harcourt College Publishers.

Rosenzweig, M. Breedlove, M. & Leiman, A (2002) Biological Psychology

Sunderland, USA: Sinauer Associates