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Tolman's goal was to identify the complex cognitive mechanisms and purposes that guided behavior. [3] His theories on learning went against the traditionally accepted stimulus-response connections (see classical conditioning) at his time that had been proposed by other psychologists such as Edward Thorndike.
Edward Chace Tolman (April 14, 1886 – November 19, 1959) was an American psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. [1] [2] Through Tolman's theories and works, he founded what is now a branch of psychology known as purposive behaviorism.
In later years, O'Keefe and Nadel attributed Tolman's research to the hippocampus, stating that it was the key to the rat's mental representation of its surroundings. This observation furthered research in this area and consequently much of hippocampus activity is explained through cognitive map making. [12]
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. [1] [2] It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and ...
In cognitive theories not only the environmental factors and instructional components play an important role in learning. There are additional key elements like learning to code, transform, rehearse, and store and retrieve the information. The learning process includes learner's thoughts, beliefs, and attitude values. [11] [12]
Tolman showed that behavior is goal directed and not controlled by random drives and reinforcement. Tolman used maze experiments with rats to show that rats can learn without reinforcement and are better understood as directed by goals and driven by cognitive expectancies. This finding provided a serious challenge to much of Hull's learning theory.
A year later, Kitty returned to college to study biology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1939, she married Richard Harrison, a British doctor, and began pursuing graduate work in botany at UCLA.
The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. [1] [2] [3] Other approaches, such as neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence ...