Chapter 1

Human Learning:   Science and Theory

Chapter Outline

Modified: 2015-09-01

• I. What the Professor Said: This Book gives a historically-based summary of learning theories and their applications.
• II. Psychology and Learning: Learning is part of psychology, the science of human behavior and thinking.
  • A. Knowledge and Consciousness
    • 1. Epistemology: how do we know things, scientists know via their methodology
      • Replication and psychology is a recent problem
    • 2. Mind
    • 3. Mind-body problem
    • 4. Dualism
  • B. Learning
    • 1. Relatively permanent behavior (or behavioral potential) changes that come from experience. Similar changes caused by fatigue, maturation, drugs, injury, or disease must be ruled out.
  • C. Performance Versus Learning
    • 1. Latent learning (Buxton, Tolman)
    • 2. Performance
    • 3. Dispositions
• III. Theory: Theories simplify and explain data
  • A. Theories, Principles, Laws, and Beliefs
    • 1. Hypotheses
    • 2. Principles
    • 3. Laws
    • 4. Beliefs
    • 5. Naive psychology
  • B. Purposes of Theories
    • 1. Two-way street of data and theories
  • C. Characteristics of Good Theories
    • 1. Summarize and organize
    • 2. Clear and understandable
    • 3. Parsimonious (Occam's Razor)
    • 4. Falsifiable (Popper)
    • 5. Applied
    • 6. Internally consistent
    • 7. Minimum of assumptions
    • 8. High heuristic value
• IV. Science and the Development of Psychological Theories
  • A. What Is Science?
    • 1. An attitude toward the universe
    • 2. A collection of methods
  • B. Rules of the Scientific Method (there really are no rules, but...)
    • 1. Ask the Question--this is the creative part
    • 2. Develop a Hypothesis--in order to test it
    • 3. Collect Relevant Observations--these are the data for the test
    • 4. Test the Hypothesis--evaluate your hypothesis in the light of the data
    • 5. Reach and Share a Conclusion--communicate results to others
  • C. Experiments
    • 1. Independent variable
    • 2. Dependent variable
    • 3. Operational definitions
    • 4. Samples and populations
    • 5. Treatments (experimental and control groups)
  • D. Evaluating Psychological Research: Complexity and control limit psychological research
    • 1. Have I Committed the Nominal Fallacy?--naming is not explaining
    • 2. Is the Sample Representative?--bad samples cause bad conclusions
    • 3. Can Subjects Be Believed?--memory and honesty require control
    • 4. Is There a Possibility of Subject Bias?--reactivity is an issue (e.g., Hawthorne Effect)
    • 5. Is There a Possibility of Experimenter Bias?--researchers are human, so...
  • E. Participants in Psychological Investigations
    • 1. Animals--proper care of animals
    • 2. Humans--ethical issues: informed consent, privacy, others
    • 3. Not plants!
  • F. Humans as Subjects--Ethics are more important than data
• V. Learning Theory: A Brief Overview
  • A. Recent Origins of Learning Theory
    • 1. Classification--cognitivism and behaviorism
    • 2. "Psychology finds mind, psychology loses mind, psychology finds mind again."
• VI. Preview of the Text
  • A. Chapter 2. Early Behaviorism:   Pavlov, Watson, and Guthrie
  • B. Chapter 3. The Effects of Behavior:   Thorndike and Hull
  • C. Chapter 4. Operant Conditioning:   Skinner's Radical Behaviorism
  • D. Chapter 5. Evolutionary Psychology:   Learning, Biology, and the Brain
  • E. Chapter 6. A Transition to Modern Cognitivism:   Hebb, Tolman, and the Gestaltists
  • Lecture Material: Language
  • F. Chapter 7. Three Cognitive Theories:   Bruner, Piaget, and Vygotsky
  • G. Chapter 8.    Neural Networks:   The New Connectionism
  • H. Chapter 9.    Learning and Remembering
  • Lecture Material: Thinking
  • I. Chapter 10. Motivation
  • J. Chapter 11. Social Learning:   Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory
  • K. Chapter 12. Analysis, Synthesis, and Integration
• VII. Instructional and Other Applications of Learning Theories
• A. Learning theories do not exist in a vacuum, they have applicability to everyday life.

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