Learning Without Responding PDF

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Summary

Summer Session One Online with Dr. Bryan Poole...

Description

Intro to Cognitive Psychology 

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McNamara et al. (1956) o Maze-learning task o Wanted to see if rats could learn their way through a complex maze. Does it need to navigate the maze itself? Would it learn it better that way than if it is pushed through by someone else? o Group 1: rats run through the maze o Group 2: rats pushed through maze on cart o Which group learned to turn right to find food? Both. o Group 2 = learning without responding, observational kind of learning.  Taught that you don't have to behave in order to learn Learning without reinforcement o You don't need to earn a reward in order to learn something o Tolman and Honzik  Complex maze learning with 3 groups of rats  Group 1: reinforced with food ever time they reached goal box  Group 2: never reinforced for reaching goal box  Group 3: reinforced after 10th time they reached goal box  Which group(s) demonstrated learning and at what point was this revealed?  Group 3 performed just as well as Group 1 after getting food  They learned their way through the maze before getting food o Latent Learning  Form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response  Occurs without any obvious reinforcement of the behavior or associations that are learned Cognitive Maps o Found that rats and humans have something in their minds called cognitive maps, a mental representation of the surrounding area o Ability to spatially navigate the area around you, a mental map of where everything this. o Tolman  Placed rats in a simplistic maze with three options to get to the end  Path 1 is shortest, followed by path 2, path 3 (longest)  Tested them to see if they knew what would be the best way to get to the end.  Behaviorists and cognitivists both predict rats will take shortest route when possible.  What will happen when a block is implemented to path 1?  Behaviorists say rats will try path 2.  Cognitivists say rats will "know better" based on map and will take path 3 - this is what happened....