Early Notions about Learning

1. Ninth Edition 3 Early Notions about Learning

2. Epistomology:The Nature of Knowledge • Plato (ca. 427—347 B.C.) • Predominantly a nativist. • Knowledge is innate–inherited. • Aristotle (384—322 B.C.) • Predominantly an empiricist. • Knowledge comes from sensory experience.

3. Plato • Reminiscence Theory of Knowledge • Knowledge is “recollection of the experience our soul had in the “heaven which is beyond the heavens.” • Sensory information can deceive. Use reason to remember what you already know.

4. Aristotle • Knowledge gained from senses and reason • Laws of Association • Similarity • Contrast • Contiguity • Frequency (later)

5. Law of Contiguity

6. Beginnings of Modern Psychology • Rene DesCartes • Suggested that the Mind and Body (including brain) were separate entities. • Introduced the reflex action. • Relied on innate ideas. • (space, time, motion, god, self)

7. Thomas Hobbes • Opposed the notion of innate ideas. • Doctrine of Hedonism • Avoiding Pain; Seeking Pleasure. • Saw humans as selfish and aggressive. • Society as a safe compromise.

8. John Locke • Tabula Rasa • “There is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses.” • “There is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses, except the mind itself.”

9. David Hume (1711—1776) • We can be sure of nothing. • Mind, for Hume, was no more than a stream of ideas, memories, imaginings, associations, and feelings. • Subjective experience was the only thing we ever encountered directly.

10. Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) • Careful analysis reveals categories of thought. • Twelve innate faculties including unity, totality, reality, existence, necessity, reciprocity, and causality. • Great influence on Gestalt and Cognitive Psychology.

11. John Stuart Mill • Simple ideas combine into a new totality that may bear little resemblance to its parts. • The whole is different from the sum of its parts. • The foundation of Gestalt Psychology.

12. Thomas Reid • Faculty Psychology • Hypothesized twenty-seven faculties of the mind, most of which were thought to be innate.

13. Franz Joseph Gall (1758—1828)

14. Charles Darwin (1809—1882) • Wished to have his research published only after his death. • We are biologically related to the “lower” animals. • Experimental approach could be applied to the study of humans.

15. Hermann Ebbinghaus(1850—1909)

16. Ebbinghaus • Emancipated psychology from philosophy. • Forgetting is very fast for the first few hours following a learning experience and very slow thereafter. • Psychology’s first “learning curve.”

17. Psychology’s Early Schools • Voluntarism: Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (1832—1920)

18. Wundt and Voluntarism • Psychology’s first experimental laboratory. • The important aspects of mind could be studied only indirectly by studying religion, morals, myths, art, social customs, language, and law. • Saw Experimental Psychology as limited.

19. Edward Titchener (1867—1927) and Structuralism • Analyzed elements of thought using introspection. • A search for the basic elements of thought. • Most important thing about structuralism was that it appeared, it was tried, and it failed.

20. Functionalism—Adjusting to the Environment • William James

21. Functionalism • Influenced by Darwin’s doctrine of evolution. • Studied the relationship of consciousness to the environment. • Information that could be used to improve the human condition.

22. John B. Watson (1878—1958)

23. John B. Watson (1878—1958) • Founder of Behaviorism • No more introspection, no more talk of instinctive behavior, and no study of the human conscious or unconscious mind. • Behavior is what we can see, and therefore behavior is what we study.

24. Watson’s Contributions • Changed psychology’s goal from attempting to understand consciousness to the prediction and control of behavior. • He made behavior psychology’s subject matter. • Ever since Watson, essentially all psychologists study behavior.