Lesson 3-4 Flashcards
Who was Erik Erikson?
He was a student of Freuds who learned and came to abide by Freud’s psychosexual theory of development. It also is true, however, that Erikson believed Freud’s stages were too limited and too few.
Erikson believed there was mor to development than the psychosexual component Freud focused on, and he further believed that development did not end with the onset of adolescence/adulthood.
What are the 3 things we will need to be aware of concerning Erikson in the class?
- Expanded upon Freud’s theory by adding adulthood stages.
- Addressed psychosocial rather than psychosexual aspects of development
- Identified specific developmental tasks for each of his eight stages of development.
What is laws of Learning?
Behaviorist proposed that all development is the result of learning (an extreme nurture view), and they set for themselves the challenge of searching for and identifying the laws of learning that would allow us to understand and explain development.
What are the two types of learning that have been identified?
- Classical (Respondent) conditioning
- Operant (Instrumental) conditioning
What is Classical conditioning?
This form of learning also may be thought of as learning by association. It is the kind of learning that leads you to cover your ears and close your eyes a you see someone approach a blackboard as if they’re going to scratch their nails along its surface.
Who discovered Classical conditioning and how?
Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist. His discovery was unexpected. He was doing physiological research with dogs. One day Pavlov was in the area of the kennel when the person responsible for feeding the dogs entered the area. The dogs became very excited. Pavlov wondered about the dog’s apparent reaction to the appearance of their feeder, and was wise enough to to realize that if the dog behavior was in response to their anticipation of an upcoming feeding, thei would mean the dogs had learned something during their stay in the kennel.
How did Pavlov study his findings more extensively?
First he exposed dogs to meat powder. As expected, the dogs salivated in response to this exposure (much in the same way you would blink in response to a puff of air shot into your eye, or startle in response to a sudden and unexpected sound). In this first step, the meat powder is an unconditioned stimulus and salivation is an unconditioned response. (‘Unconditioned’ means unlearned).
Next, Pavlov rang a bell immediately prior to exposing the dogs to the meat powder. Again, the dogs salivated in direct response to the meat powder. At this point in the experiment, the bell is considered a neutral stimulus. What this means is that at this point, the bell has no meaning for the dog.
Final step of the experiment, after several pairings of the bell with exposure to meat powder, Pavlov rang the bell and demonstrated that the dogs salivated in response to this sound alone (no meat powder). At this point, the bell has become a conditioned (or learned) stimulus and salivation has become a conditioned (or learned) response. The dogs had come to associate the initially meaningless stimulus (bell) with the meaningful one (meat powder).
What is Operant (Instrumental) conditioning?
This form of learning is thought to play a much greater role in our learning than classical conditioning.
The basic premise is that the response following a particular behavior will affect the frequency with which that behavior will be repeated in the future. If the response is perceived as favorable, the behavior will occur more frequently. If there is no response, the frequency of the behavior will either decrease or remain the same.
What are some examples of Operant conditioning?
If I want my dog to learn to behave in a particular way, I will try to evoke that behavior from the dog, and when I see it happen, I will respond positively by praising him or giving him a treat. This will increase the likelihood of said behavior.
If every time you visit your grandparents they give you $20 as you’re leaving, they’ve just increased the likelihood that you’ll return.
A less materialistic example: If you tend to visit your grandparents when you’re feeling down and invariably you feel better when you leave, this response to your behavior will increase its future likelihood.
What are the effects of using reinforcements?
Reinforcements increase the likelihood of behaviors.
What is the effect of a reinforcer?
That which increases the likelihood. (In examples the reinforcers would be praise/treat, $20, and improving your mood.
What is social learning theories?
The focus of social learning theory is on ways of learning that are less direct than those considered by the Behaviorists. As you will see, social learning theory suggests that learning does not require direct experience of the contingencies between behavior and the environment’s responses to that behavior.
Who is Albert Bandura and what did he do?
Albert Bandura is credited for the development of social learning theory. Most important about Bandura’s ideas is the notion of OBSERVSTIONAL LEARNING, by which people learn new behaviors simple by observing the behaviors of others. According to Bandura, from watching others we learn not only how to carry out specific behaviors, but also whether it would be worth our while to do so.
What is the process that is central to observational learning?
Modeling
What is modeling?
The patterning of our behavior after that of another. Many or our behaviors are learned in this way, from the very subtle (such as how we move our hands when we speak) to the more specific (such as how we respond to our children in a particular situation which will be based to a large extent on how we observed our parents respond to us in similar situations when we were younger).
What is Cognitive Theory?
Cognitive theorists see the individual’s development as guided by thoughts interpretations and choices, with thinking seen as the all-important process by which people organize their perceptions of the world.
Cognitive theorists believe that it is this organization which influences behavior and development.
The most notable of cognitive theorists is Jean Piaget. What did she study?
Piaget studied children in a number of interesting ways, and on the basis of his careful examinations of the ways that children think, he developed a theory of what intelligence is and how it develops.
According to Piaget, intelligence consists of two interrelated processes which are?
Organization and Adaptation.
What is Organization in regards to Piaget’s view on intelligence?
Organization - an important part of making sense of the stimuli we are exposed to involves sorting through it all and putting it together in a way that we can manage. This is where organization comes into play, and Piaget contends that at all times during development, intelligence is organized. The nature of organization may change as we move from one stage to the next, but the fact of organization does not.
What is Adaptation in regards to Piaget’s view on intelligence?
Adaptation - intelligence is a process of adapting to new information. In fact, Piaget maintained that intelligence is adaptation. He proposed that there are two forms of adaptation: Assimilation and accommodation. He also proposed equilibrium as a phenomenon which drives development.
What is Assimilation?
Assimilation occurs when we take in new information and make it fit with our current organization.
Example: A young child whose family owns a dog and so the child knows what a dog is. One day the family is driving through the countryside and the child sees a cow in a field. he points and says “doggie.” His parents correct him: “No honey, that’s a cow,” and the child proudly exclaims “doggie!” This child has forced new information to fit with his existing way of thinking.
