The theory of learning

The main postulate of the theory of learning is that almost all behavior is learned as a result of learning. For example, any psychopathology is understood as the assimilation of maladaptive behavior or as a failure in the assimilation of adaptive behavior. Instead of talking about psychotherapy, proponents of learning theories talk about behavior modification and behavioral therapy. You need to modify or change specific actions, instead of resolving the internal conflicts that underlie these actions, or reorganizing the individual. Since most of the problem behaviors were once learned, they can be abandoned or somehow changed using special procedures based on the laws of learning.

An even more significant feature of these approaches is the focus on objectivity and scientific rigor, on the verifiability of hypotheses and experimental control of variables.

Proponents of the theory of learning manipulate the parameters of the external environment and observe the consequences of these manipulations in behavior. Learning theories are sometimes called S-R (stimulus - response) psychology.

Learning - (training, teaching) — the process of acquiring new ways of implementing behavior and activity, fixing and/or modifying them. The change in psychological structures that occurs as a result of this process provides an opportunity for further improvement of the activity.

Theories of learning in psychology proceed from two main points:

• All behavior is learned in the process of learning.
• In order to maintain scientific rigor, the principle of data objectivity must be observed when testing hypotheses. External causes (food reward) are chosen as variables that can be manipulated, as opposed to "internal" variables in the psychodynamic direction (instincts, defense mechanisms, Self-concept), which cannot be manipulated.

The regularities of learning include:

• The law of readiness: the stronger the need, the more successful the learning.
• Law of effect: behavior that leads to a useful action causes a decrease in need and will therefore be repeated.
• The law of exercise: all other things being equal, repeating a certain action makes it easier to perform the behavior and leads to faster execution and lower probability of errors.
• The law of recency: it is better to learn the material that is presented at the end of the series. This law contradicts the primacy effect - the tendency to better memorize the material that is presented at the beginning of the learning process. The contradiction is eliminated when the law "edge effect" is formulated. The U-shaped dependence of the degree of memorization of the material on its place in the learning process reflects this effect and is called the "positional curve".
• Law of correspondence: there is a proportional relationship between the probability of a response and the probability of reinforcement.

There are three main theories of learning:

• I. P. Pavlov's theory of classical conditioning;
• B. F. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning;
• theory of social learning by A. Bandura.

Classical conditioning theory describes reactive learning (or S-type learning, from "stimulus"), which in most cases requires almost simultaneous exposure to conditional and unconditional stimuli (ideally, the impact of a conditional stimulus should be slightly ahead of the unconditional one).

The theory of operant learning proves that behavior is influenced not only by the stimuli that affect the body before performing an action, but also by the results of behavior. Operant learning (or R-type learning, from "reaction", reaction) is based on a fundamental principle formulated by Skinner: behavior is formed and preserved by its consequences.

The author of the theory of social learning, albert bandura, proved that learning can occur not only when the body is exposed to certain stimuli, as in reactive or operant learning, but also when the individual is aware of and cognitively assesses external events (here it should be noted that folk wisdom recorded the possibility of such learning long before Bandura: "Smart people learn from other people's mistakes...").

The term learning refers to a relatively constant change in behavioral potential as a result of practice or experience. This definition contains three key elements:

1) the change that has occurred is usually stable and lasting;

2) the change is not the behavior itself, but the potential for its implementation (the subject can learn something that does not change his behavior for a long time or does not affect it at all);

3) learning requires the acquisition of some experience (so, it does not come simply as a result of growing up and growing up).

Starting from the works of Pavlov and Thorndike, the early representatives of the "theory of learning", which dominated psychological science in the United States of America for almost the entire first half of the XX century, directed their research to instrumental behavior. They studied the types of it that had consequences. For example, the behavior of a rat moving through a maze to find its way out and get food was studied. In this case, values such as the amount of time required for the rat to reach the goal during each of the repeated attempts were measured. Similar to Thorndyke's study, the procedure involved placing a rat at the beginning of a maze and then evaluating its progress toward the exit. The main indicator analyzed was the number of attempts required for the rat to finally be able to complete the entire maze without making mistakes (such as getting into dead-end corridors).

Representatives of the theory of learning somewhat moved away from strict behaviorism. They used concepts such as learning, motivation, driving forces, motivations, and mental inhibition, which denoted invisible behavior. According to the eminent scientific theorist Clark hull (1884-1952), these concepts are scientific as far as they can be defined in terms of observable operations (see Hull, 1943). For example, an operational determination of hunger or "satiation needs" can be made based on the number of hours of food deprivation experienced by the rat before the experiment, or on the decrease in the rat's body weight relative to normal. In turn, the operational definition of learning can be given in terms of a progressive decrease from attempt to attempt in the amount of time it takes for a rat to reach the exit from the maze (or for a cat to get out of the problem box). Now theorists could ask questions that required research, such as: "does Learning happen faster if the motivation to meet food needs increases?" It turns out that it does, but only up to a certain point. After this point, the rat simply does not have the strength to go through the maze.

Researchers of learning invented formulas for learning and behavior by averaging the behavior of a large number of individual subjects and gradually deduced General "laws" of learning. One of them is the classical learning curve that extends to many types of human behavior, which is shown. Thus, learning a certain skill, such as playing a musical instrument, is characterized by rapid improvement in skill at the initial stages, but then the rate of improvement slows down more and more. Let's assume that a child is learning to play the guitar. At first, he quickly develops the flexibility and obedience of his fingers, the skills of plucking strings and setting chords; but if he is to become a virtuoso, it will take many years of practice. The learning curve is quite well suited to illustrate the emergence of many complex human skills, despite the fact that it was created based on observations of improvement in the passage of the maze by rats over time.

Some other patterns identified by representatives of the classical theory of learning also apply to human behavior. However, there are a large number of them that are not subject to such transfer. For the most part, the search for universal learning principles for all animal species was abandoned in favor of species-specific principles. In later chapters, we will see examples of "exceptions" that are characteristic of human behavior.