Psy 390 - Learning and Cognition

Learning and Cognition

Ashley Lachmansingh

PSY 390

Professor Kate Murphy

March 5, 2012

There are many aspects to learning. As a former preschool teacher, I did not know what was the best way to teach my students their foundation of learning. I used techniques that helped me when I was a child, as well as, ideas the school provided curriculum recommended. I knew a little about on different learning styles, I tried to incorporate each learning style into my lesson plans. I even put posters of the alphabet and numbers in the bathroom, that way the children had something to look at while they were on the toilet. In this paper, the concept of learning and how it is related to cognition will be examined. The definition of learning will be addressed; along with the role behavior plays in learning. The two types of learning discussed as well as the relationship between learning and cognition.

According to "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" (2012), the definition of learning is as follows; " The act or experience of one that learns; knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study; and modification of a behavioral tendency by experience (as exposure to conditioning)". As we learn we alter the way we perceive our environment. We alter the way we interpret the incoming stimuli. This affects the way we interact or behave. The first psychologist to study the how learning affects our behavior was John B. Watson. He formed the school of thought known as Behaviorism. Watson believed that the only observable behaviors are worth research. He felt that a person's mood or thoughts were too subjective. B.F. Skinner is one of the most well known behaviorists of our time. He believed in much of what Watson did; expect he thought that internal states could influence behavior as well. Behavioral psychology is a field of psychology that is interested in how our behavior is affected by our environment and within ourselves.

There are two basic types of learning, classical conditioning and operant conditioning. When researching classical conditioning, it was found that Ivan Pavlov was the scientist who founded this type of learning. While conducting a study on the digestive patterns of dogs, he stumbled upon the fact that we make associations that cause us to generalize our response to one stimulus onto a neutral stimulus it is paired with. Within this theory there is what is called an unconditioned stimulus and an unconditioned response. The unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus response chain that is naturally occurring, opposed to a learned behavior. The unconditioned response is a stimulus response chain that is naturally occurring opposed to learned behavior. There is also a conditioned stimulus and conditioned response. These are the opposite of the unconditioned stimulus and response. The conditioned stimulus and response is not naturally occurring. They have been learned though paring with a naturally occurring chain.

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