COGNITIVE APPROACH

(Also known as the cognitive Perspective or Model)

After having gone through the classical and operant conditioning approaches ask yourself:
•  Did we learn, all that we know, as a result of mere association of stimulus and response; or was it learnt just because we were reinforced for it?????Can learning take place as a result of some other processes?
•  Why does a soldier keep resisting the strong enemy without caring for his life even when he can escape?
•  Why would an artist donate his paintings to a charity school and not sell them in the market when he could have earned hundreds of thousands?

All human intellectual activities and potentials, i.e. thinking, communicating, problem solving, and learning require mental processes and knowledge. It is more than just stimulus-response association or reward and punishment.
•  In the 1970's much of psychology returned to the study of the mind. Cognitive psychology had a similar interest. It studied memory, information processing, decision-making, etc.Cognitive

Approach to Learning

The approach that focuses upon the thought processes underlying learning.
•  The approach that gives importance to cognition for understanding and explaining learning.
•  Cognition is defined as "the mental processes” or the “ faculty of knowing”.Cognitive learning approach has roots in the cognitive perspective.
•  Cognition means “knowledge” or“the process of knowing”.
•  Cognitive approach emphasizes:
o  Thoughts
o  Feelings
o  Thinking
o  Values
o  Expectations etc
•  This theory gives same importance to both the internal states of the person as well as the environmental events.
•  Internal events are referred a s “Mediators” or “mediational processes”__ (that come in between stimulus and response).
•  Mediators are ‘conceptual’ but they are defined physiologically rather than conceptually.

Emphasis of Cognitive Approach
•  Cognitive approach uses the following as its focal point:
 

o  Emotions
o  Social behavior
o  Behavior modification
 

•  Cognitive approach includes the elements of psychology, linguistics, computer science and physiology__ thus called a ‘hybrid science’.

•  The roots of cognitive learning can be traced in the work of Wolfgang Kohler, and E.C.Tolman.
 

Wolfgang Kohler Experiments on apes by German scientist Kohler, led to the discovery of the use of insight by animals in problem solving; “learning by insight”.
 

•  Most famous of his experiments were conducted involving “Sultan”, an ape.
 

•  Series of experiments was conducted in which it had to reach a banana outside its cage using a stick. Once it could solve this problem several times, it was provided with a stick that was not long enough to reach the banana. However, outside the cage was placed a longer stick.

The ape unsuccessfully tried several times to reach the banana with the smaller stick, till it was finally frustrated and retreated. Then all of a sudden the ape got up, got hold of the shorter stick and used it to reach the longer stick; that stick was then used to reach the banana.
•  This phenomenon, Kohler thought, could be explained neither in terms of mechanical classical or operant conditioning, nor trial and error.
•  The animal had exhibited a sudden change in behavior or the way it organized the problem situation based upon “insight”.
•  Both Kohler and Tolman played a vital role inlaying the foundation of cognitive approach.

Tolman’s Concept of Latent Learning
•  Tolman talked about the ‘cognitive maps’; it is not necessary to have an association between stimulus and response, a person can learn without showing any apparent response; in other words learning and performance are not the same.
•The type of learning in which the organism does learn or acquire a particular behavior but does not readily demonstrate it until reinforcement is provided; performance may not be the same as what one has actually learnt.

Tolman’s Series of Early Experiments:
•  Tolman (1886-1959) and colleagues conducted experiments that demonstrated that only mechanical association between the stimulus and response can not explain just every type of learning. In order to demonstrate this experiment on maze learning was conducted using rats that were divided into three groups.

•  Group- 1
For 17 days the rats were allowed wandering around the maze once a day without being rewarded; making many errors they took longer in reaching the end.
•  Group- 2
Always given food at reaching the end; learned to run faster to the end and food box; made fewer errors.
•  Group- 3
For the first 10 days treated like group-1, and then given food; running time reduced. Errors declined; performance immediately matched that of group-1.

Conclusion: Cognitive Map
•The rats who were not rewarded had learnt the layout of the maze in their initial explorations, but demonstrated their ability/skill only after reinforcement was provided; immediately after they stared getting food they were almost as good as group-1.
•They had developed a cognitive map of the maze that was readily available in their mind, that was used only when reinforcement was received.
 

Cognitive Map
•It is a mental representation of space, locations, and directions; a mental representation of learned relationships among stimuli.