Basic Issues in Learning

Revised: 2004-08-02, 22:53

Outline

Definitions
- Behavioral
  - Change in behavior as a result of experience or practice
  - universal
- Cognitive
  - Acquistion of knowledge
  - humans only
  - animals may think, but we cannot analyze their thinking
  - machine learning does not exist, yet
Philosophical Antecedents
- British Empiricism(knowledge comes from experience)
  - Locke and the tabula rasa
  - Associationism
    - Complex ideas come from simple ideas
      - J.S. Mill = bricks and buildings
- Continental Rationalism
  - Descartes and Kant
  - Space, time, and causality
  - Temperament is a good example
- Relationship of philosophies to modern learning
  - Historical accident: USA colonized by Britain
Psychology and Learning
- Early European Cognitivism
  - Wundt
  - Structuralism(study parts of the mind) and Voluntarism
  - Introspection
- Animal Learning
  - Thorndike and Law of Effect
- Early American Cognitivism
  - William James
  - G. Stanley Hall
  - Functionalists(uses of the mind)
    - Chicago
    - Columbia
- Behaviorism and Neo-Behaviorism
  - Watson and the founding of behaviorism
    - Prediction and conrol of behavior
  - Types of Behaviorism
    - Methodological-nearly all
    - Mediational-Hull
    - Cognitive-Tolman
    - Radical-Skinner
- Gestalt Psychology
- Modern Cognitive Psychology
  - Computers
  - Cognitive Science
  - Computer Models and Learning
Types of Learning
- Non-associative
  - Habituation
  - Sensitization
- Associative
  - Classical Conditioning
    - Pavlov
    - CS and UCS
    - Formula CS-->UCS
  - Operant Conditioning
    - Humphrey's Effect
    - Skinner
      - Operant Conditioning chamber
    - Reinforcers
      - Positive and Negative
    - Discriminative Stimuli
      - S^D and S^D
- Imitation
  - Social Learning
    - Bandura and Walters
  - Japanese Macaques
    - Imo
- Insight Learning
  - Kohler and Sultan

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