Psychological Theories of Learning
PSY 516
Modified: 2025-08-10 1:43 PM CDST
Text: Olson, M. H., & Ramirez, J. J. (2020). An introduction to theories of learning. New York: Routledge.
This is the wepage for the Learning Theory course at TAMUT. It will unfold chapter by chapter over the course of the Fall 2025 semester. We will have a quiz on each section. I will drop your lowest quiz score to determine your final grade. You will read your text and read this webpage. Quizzes will be open book and open notes. Quizzes will include T-F and Multiple Choice items and Short Essays.You may use any means at your disposal to find and read additional material including AI Large Language Models such as ChatGPT or related apps.
- You will also write a paper on a learning theorist.
- Review the text and select a theorist or a theoretical approach by September 15, 2025
- Email me 2 to 4 theorists names you are interested in
- After, propose a limited topic based on that theorist's work and submit an outline by September 29, 2025
- Email me a proposed outline for your paper.
- Next, begin writing your rough draft
- Inevitable question: How long should paper be?
- Answer: It depends on your topic.
- Your paper should fully cover the topic.
- So, in your selection of theorists I will help you narrow your topic.
- The topic "Clark Hull" will require several hundred pages. It will be a book and good luck finding a publisher.
- But, the topic "Clark Hull's early research on verbal learning" could be covered in 8 to 12 pages.
- Once you and I have settled on a topic your proposed outline will guide your research and writing.
- HINTS ON WRITING
The chapters below are active. Use them and the textbook to answer the quizzes.
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INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 What is learning
- Definitions:
- Learning is a change in behavior as a result of training or practice.
- or
- Learning is the acquisition of information.
- Example: I walk into the classroom and get shocked when I turn on the lights. There is an electrical short.
- The next class I go to turn on the lights but stop before my fingers touch the switch.
- Note that here both definitions work:
- My behavior changed
- I knew the short had not yet been fixed (because I had not turned the problem in to the Physical Plant).
- What about non-human animals?
- The behavioral definition works and is easily demonstrated.
- The cognitive definition might work in some animals, but is not easily demonstrated.
- What kinds of behavioral changes are NOT learning?
- Changes to due to illness, fatigue, or drugs (see p. 8)
- Must Learning Result in Behavioral Change?
- Nearly all theorists except Skinner allow for intervening variables or hidden, theoretical variables nestled in between independent variables and behavioral change. (See p. 5).
- The permanance of learning?
- Learning can last for very short periods or for a lifetime.
- Learning versus Performance
- Performance is when learning is actually expressed as behavior.
- Old joke: Ma and pa were agonizing over their son, little Johnny, at age 6 he had yet to stay a word. That night at the dinner table ma and pa said Johnny had to go to a home. Immediately, Johnny said, "Why would you do that!" Flabbergasted, they said in unison, "You can talk, why have you never said anything before? Johnny said, "Never had to until now."
- See the difference?
- Why Practice or Experience
- Are There Different Kinds of Learning?
- Gagne's Eight Types of Learning
(see p. 10)
- Classical Conditioning
- Stimulus Response
- Chain Learning
- Verbal Association
- Discrimination Learning
- Concept Learning
- Rule Learning
- Problem Solving
- Learning and Survival
- Because the world changes, learning is necessary
- If organisms lived in an unchanging world there would be no need for learning.
- Instead, biologically-based species-typical behaviors (e.g., instincts) would be sufficient.
- Why Study Learning
- To improve psychotherapy
- To understand child-rearing practices
- To study language
- To improve education
Chapter 2 Approaches to the study of learning
- The Systematic Study of Learning
- What is Science?
- Aspects of Theory
- Formal
- The verbal description itself
- Empirical
- The physical events under observation
- The relationship between the two aspects is complex
- Psychological theories do not rise to the level of scientific laws
- From Research to Theory
- Sythesizing Function
- Theories allow scientists to make sense of large amounts of data
- Heuristric Function
- Theories point the direction for potential future research
- Theories as Tools
- Theories are provisional
- New hypotheses can strengthen or weaken a theory
- Research results determine the future of any theory
- The Principle of Parsimony
- William of Ockham's rule for settling which theory to use
- Simply stated, he said to use the theory that explained the data with the fewest extra amount of overhead
- In other words: K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid)
- One of the best examples is Copernican theory:
- Copernicus switched the positions of the earth and sun, placing the sun at the center of the universe.
- His apparent reason for doing so was to eliminate Ptolemy’s need for equants, hypothetical points he needed to explain the observed changes in speed of the heavenly bodies.
- Copernicus hoped to create a system that would eliminate the need for such arbitrary concepts and substitute a system that only required spheres and spherical motion.
- He spent years confirming his measurements and calculations.
- His heliocentric system did not improve upon the astronomical predictions made by the older, geocentric system.
- Copernicus’s system, however, accounted for nearly all known astronomical observations plus it was a unified system, unlike Ptolemy’s older collection of disparate mathematical rules.
- Good Theories (see p. 19)
- Synthesize large numbers of observations
- Generate new research
- Generates new, testable hypotheses
- Is not correct or incorrect; instead it is useful or not useful
- Are chosen by the Law of Parsimony
- Contain abstractions (the formal aspect)
- Are correlated with observable events
- Must end with empirical observations
- The Learning Experiment
- Operational Definitions for learning
- Dependent Variables
- I find that dependent variables are often the seed that yields the idea for an experiment
- Examples:
- I have noticed that some students will post more than one parking sticker on their vehicles. Other students will only post the current parking sticker.
- That difference makes me wonder if it would be fruitful to study each group.
- Dogs will tuck their tails down when the eat.
- Is that true of all dogs? Do they put their tails down for all kinds of food? What about when drinking?
- Independent Variables
- Experimenter chooses
- Must have two levels, minimum
- Control group/Experimental group, for example
- Often called Treatments
- Arbitrary Decisions in Setting Up a Learning Experiment (see pp. 20-22)
- What aspects to investigate
- Ideographic (small N) or Nomothetic (samples)
- Species
- Correlation or Experiment
- Independent Variable
- Gender
- Age
- Stimuli used
- Rate of presentation
- Meaningfulness
- Instructions given
- Intelligence of participants
- Drugs
- Intertrial interval
- Interaction with other tasks
- The Use of Models
- Computer models are now more popular
- Used to simplify not to explain
- Learning in the Laboratory Versus Naturalistic Observation
- Less experimental control in naturalistic observation
- More external validity in naturalistic observation
- Kuhn's Views on How Sciences Change
- Popper's View of Science
- Popper visited University of Arkansas Medical Sciences in the 1980s. I was there in Little Rock.
- He was old, short, and his glasses were as thick as Coca-Cola bottle bottoms.
- He was having trouble reading his notes so a bright light was set up behind his podium.
- After he finished, I asked him about computers. He was not a fan and pointed out that the only tool Einstein needed was a pencil.
- Popper denigrated the power of unfocused observation.
- He believed that good theories had to be designed in a manner that they could be refuted.
- Einstein's general relativity theory was so designed. It upredicted that gravity could bend light.
- Einstein called for experimental physicists to test his theory.
- World War I halted early plans to test the theory, but Eddington in 1919 was successful (and made Einstein famous).
- On the other hand, Popper saw Freudian theory as impossible to refute because Freud's ideas did not lend themselves to refutation.
- See p. 27 for an example: "reaction formation"
- Kuhn Versus Popper
- See Kuhn-Popper Debate for more information (testable)
- Notice (p. 28) that Robinson notes that Kuhn was referring to the past while Popper was looking at an ideal view of science.
Chapter 3 Early notions about learning
- Epistemology
- How we come to know
- Rationalism: the universe, including physical events, can only be explained by the action of human thought.
- Nativism: all knowledge is innate.
- Empircism: The view that all knowledge comes from experience, especially from sensory experience.
- All three play a role in the study of learning
- Plato
- Aristotle
- Beginnings of Modern Psychology
- Rene Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- John Locke
- George Berkeley & David Hume
- Immanuel Kant
- John Stuart Mill
- Follower of Bentham
- Most influential British philosopher of 19th century
- Divided Bentham's pleasures into categories: higher and lower
- Argued for internal constraints on morality (guilt)
- guilt, the unconscious, and anxiety would lead to psychoanalysis (see chapter 12)
- Freud's London library included two volumes by Mill
- Mill wasd an early contributor to clinical and counseling psychology
- Utilitarianism and Evolution
- Led to widespread search for utility:
- function of animal body parts
- universal laws of learning
- Influential in Great Britain
- John Stuart Mill quotes
- Other Influences on Learning Theory
- Thomas Reid
- Phrenology
- Fundamental Assumptions
- Brain was the organ of the mind
- Mind organized into faculties
- The skull could be used to determine those faculties
- Phrenology proved intensely popular but ultimately did not work
- Franz Joseph Gall
- Studied physiognomy
- The relationship of face or body and behavior
- Johann Spurzheim
- Gall's student
- Coined term "phrenology"
- Highly popular but, ultimately, wrong
- But, it popularized physiology, the role of the brain, and brain localization
- Charles Darwin
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
- Another German Franco-Prussian War veteran
- Discovered a copy of Fechner's Psychophysics
- Inspired him to add the study of memory to psychology
- Began to research memory using himself as a subject
- Use the savings method
- learned a list, forgot it, and learned it again. The "savings" was the fact that it took him less time to learn the list the second time
- Nonsense syllables
- in order to be able to forget the lists, he invented the nonsense syllabe or CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant). CVCs could not be words. Examples: GAT, BEP, or PIK
- The "high road" to memory
- In other words, he attempted to study memory abstractly
- The "low road" to memory studies the phenomenon in natural contexts
- FYI: "Where did I leave the car keys."
- BTW: I keep a picture of my keys on my phone. I left them at a store once for a week. I discovered that simply asking, "Did you find a set of keys?" was not a good question to ask. Apparently, many lose their keys all the time.
- my keys, now I can ask, "Have you seen these keys?"
- His book: Concerning Memory catapulted him to fame
- As I noted in chapter 1, his discovery of the process of forgetting has stood the test of time
- Cofounded a journal, Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs, with Stumpf
- Wrote textbooks
- He is the author of the phrase:
- "Psychology has a long past, but only a short history."
- Even more interesting that he did so at the beginning of psychology's history
- Now you can see why this text delves so deeply into psychology's "long past"
- Developed psychological tests for children
- Did not train many PhD students
- Psychology's Early (and later) Schools
- Voluntarism: The system of psychology developed by Wundt that emphasized the role of unconscious and conscious choice of certain parts of consciousness based upon personal feelings, history, and motivations.
- Structuralism: An early approach to psychology that used controlled introspective methods to infer the elements of the mind.
- Functionalism: An early school of thought in American psychology that sought to discover ways to improve the match between organisms, their minds, and the environment.
- Behaviorism: The approach to psychology spearheaded by Watson that sought to eliminate consciousness and introspection and substituted objective methods that focused on animal and human behaviors only.
- Neo-Behaviorism: The modification of Watson's Behaviorism that allowed for experimental analysis of operationally defined unobservable variables related to cognitive states and emphasized the study of learning along with the use of animal models of human behavior.
Quiz 1 covers chapters 1 to 3 (Opens 9/8/25)
The following sections will open over the course of the semester. Watch this page.
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