Test 1: Chapter 1, 2, 3(slides 1-24), 4 Flashcards
Experience
Contact with, participation in, or exposure to external (e.g. in the environment) or internal events to which the organism is sensitive. These events are stimuli.
Learning
All relatively permanent changes in the potential for behaviour that results from experience but are not due to fatigue, aging, maturation, drugs, injury, or disease.
Change in Behaviour
Actual or potentially observable changes following experience.
Misconceptions
Can interfere with learning
Some misconceptions includes:
Only 10% of the brain is used
Lef and Right Brain Hemispheres have distinct and clearly separate functions
The brain cannot change and no new neurons form after birth
Bubba(Grandmother) Psychology
an intuitive sort of folk psychology, implicit or naïve psychology. Not backed with science and more backed with belief.
Pen and Paper vs Typing?
Typing → Transcribing word to word more than taking in the key message due to being faster
Pen and Paper → Summarizing key messages do to being slower, easier to process the key ideas
Greek Philosophers on Learning
Plato –> Rationalism
Aristotle –> Empiricism
Socrates –> Dialectic Method
Plato Rationalism:
Is truth and knowledge found within us?
The belief that knowledge and truth can be discovered by self-reflection and tapping into internal knowledge and being introspective.
Aristotle Empiricism:
Or is it found outside of ourselves by using our senses?
The use of senses in combination to experience the world to look for truth and gather knowledge of the world outside.
Socrates Dialectic Method:
Discovering truth and knowledge through experience via conversations with others
Roman Philosophies on Learning
More focused on finding solutions to real problems
Roman Catholic Church:
Expectations from god and the values of the church
Knowledge via scripture; memorization and recitation that is already set in stone
Sharing questions among those restricted to learning via apprenticeship or trade
The Renaissance
Understanding the world incorporating art becoming a more interdisciplinary manner
Science:
Physics shadow in a painting
Colours
Copernicus
Questioning the world
Is the world the center of the universe?
Martin Luther
Questioning the religion
Rene Descartes
Revived Plato’s concept of innate knowledge
Ex: Body’s reflexive response to an extreme source of heat
Breaking down a reflex
Something happens in the environment → change happens internally → output
Connecting what is happening in the body internally/physiologically allows for change or learning to occur.
John Locke
Revived Aristotle’s concept of empiricism with the concept of a child’s mind being a blank tablet (Tabula rasa)
Our experiences define who we are as people, drawing on our blank canvas
Jean-Jacque Rousseau
Similar to Locke, let a child experience the world on their own for proper learning and development.
Wrote a novel where the hero learns about life through experiences in life, solidifies and enhances knowledge
Immanuel Kant
Refined Plato’s rationalist theory with his suggestion that priori knowledge was a knowledge that was present before experience
Edward L. Thorndike
Brought the scientific approach to the study of learning, the first modern psychologist
B.F Skinner
Looking at non-human animals to study learning and make educated guesses about what is happening in humans.
Reward/Punishment
Bringing the Scientific Method to Learning
Modern and experimental apparatus to assess learning in pigeons and rodents
Has to be relative to a species
Progressive Approximation: Not naturally done, trained to a particular response to a change in the environment ( ei reinforcement such as food, relief of electric shock )
Pushing a lever in rats
Pecking at a light in pigeons
Learning the rate of learning
Response Rate = nº or responses/time
Application to education system on children in lower grades or delinquents
Reduce delinquent behaviour
Jean Piaget
First to state that learning is a developmental cognitive process
The educational system must keep the developmental cognitive process in mind
3 y.o vs 5 y.o vs 10 y.o vs 15 y.o
Consider the ability to handle the information at each age
Consider the subject at hand to learn a concept given the age
(ie if memorization or practice is required)
Vygotsky
Include cultural context
Social-cultural cognition: The idea that all learning occurs in a cultural context and involves social interactions, which can influence learning
(ie western education normalizes questioning our teachers)
Zone of Proximal Development: Acknowledgment of which stage a learner is at (ie a novice vs an expert)
Social-cultural cognition:
The idea that all learning occurs in a cultural context and involves social interactions, which can influence learning
(ie western education normalizes questioning our teachers)
Zone of Proximal Development:
Acknowledgment of which stage a learner is at (ie a novice vs an expert)
Progressive Learning Theory:
Embraces Piaget’s ideas on child development, Vygotsky’a idea on social cognition and the construction of knowledge
Emphasis on both experience and thinking as well as reflection
Recognition of the role experience and reflection play in the development of ideas and skills
Appreciate reinforcement, cognitive intent, effort reasoning and practice play a role in the development
Acknowledge of developmental stages, and the encouragement via social interactions and the structures of the zone fo proximal development
John Dewey
Education should not be separate from life itself, child-centered, guided by a trained teacher in pedagogical (ie effective ways of learning a particular topic) and subject knowledge.
Maria Montessori
Task of a teacher is preparing an environment free of obstruction for free learning and explore and discover
The Learning Process:
Association
Drawing connections from the known to new information
Socio-cultural context
Dependent and influenced by what is valued and experienced at home/community/classroom environments
Individual Preferences
Ex: Laptop multitasking in classroom learning
Multitasking is a significant distraction to both the learner and peers nearby
Introspectionism:
Early Scientific Psych leaned into it
Reflect and describe learning the best of oneself
Too personal, no objective data
Introspectionism:
Early Scientific Psych leaned into it
Reflect and describe learning the best of oneself
Too personal, no objective data
Wilhelm Wundt
Structuralism:
Psychological Processes are the product of physiological actions in the brain
A different point of view from other points of history
Moving away from introspection
Breaking down into the separate components
Cue → Routine → Reward
James Mark Baldwin
Functionalism:
Purpose of specific behavior, the function of a thing and how might it assist learning
Ex: Habit formation
Understanding mental process via the goal/purpose of those processes
Cue→Routine→Reward
Early Psychophysics
People learn from each other
How do we detect it?
Sensation:
The process through which senses detect visual/auditory and other sensory stimuli and transmit them to the brain
Ex: Visual (Intensity of light), Auditory (Volume of sound) etc
Perception:
The process by which sensory information is actively organized and interpreted by the brain into a meaningful message
Absolute Threshold:
The difference between the limit of not being able to perceive a stimulus and the limit of being able to just barely to perceive it, is a point at which the stimulus will be detected 50% of the time. More approximate than absolute.
Difference Threshold:
The smallest increase/decrease in physical stimulus that is required to produce the ‘just noticeable difference” (JND) in a sensation that is detectable 50% of the time
Benchmark
Constant proportion of a stimulus → Mark Weber or Weber’s Law
Connected the the initial intensity of the stimulus
Ei: adding 0.5kg to a 1kg weight is noticeable
But adding a 0.5kg to a 50kg is not
