Kohler and Tolman are two people
who contributed much to the study of cognitive learning.
Wolfgang
Kohler believed that animals are capable of intellectual accomplishments.
He believed that animals are able to see the relationship between
things and act accordingly to reach their goal.
He believed that animals could have a clear and immediate understanding
of a situation and come up with a solution that does not necessarily involve
trial and error
Humans, especially, have the power to see the
relationship between things and come up with a solution.
An example would be the times when we try our best to come up with a
solution but are trials would prove to be fruitless.
But suddenly, out of nowhere, a solution would come to us.
This is what Kohler called as insight learning.
For Kohler, insight involves a sudden
restructuring of our perceptual world into a new pattern or gestalt.
Kohler did not deny the importance of reward and punishment.
To understand further the theory of Kohler, we
would look into a study done with Sultan, a chimpanzee.
Sultan is inside a cage and outside the cage is a banana.
The banana is way beyond his reach.
Inside his cage is a short stick.
The stick is still too short for him to reach the banana.
The stick however is long enough to reach a longer stick that is
outside the cage. The longer
stick would later help him draw the banana closer to him.
Kohler said that this was not a result of trial
and error but by the restructuring of various elements involved in the
situation.
Five
characteristics of Insight Learning:
1)
the greater the intelligence, the greater are the possibilities of
achieving insight
2)
the stronger the experiences of the organism, the greater possibility
it will have of achieving insight
3)
insight learning can be tested in the laboratory
4)
insight learning can be applied to new situations
5)
even if insightful learning is not the result of trial and error, trial
and error is present in insight learning
Edward
Tolman came up with a theory involving the study of
rats. This is the sign
learning theory. His study
involved rats that were trained to run in a complicated maze.
The rats later found the shortest path to reach the food at the ned of
the maze. When the route was
blocked, the rats would use the second shortest path.
Moreover, if the food was transferred, the rats showed that they had a
cognitive map of the maze. It was
as if the rats came to expect a series of spatial relationships on the basis
of their experience with the maze.
Sign
learning is defined as `an acquired expectation that one stimulus will be
followed by another in a particular context’ (Hilgard, et. al.)
Tolman
pointed out that behaviorism had little appreciation for the cognitive aspect
of behavior. He said
that people do not simply respond to stimuli but rather act according
to their belief and attitudes. Behavior
is defined as goal-oriented and defined by a purpose.
It is either going towards something or getting away from something.
People
grow and learn. Because of this,
they are bound to develop new insights that would help them to acquire answers
to problems after a period of study. Man
may also at the same time use reasoning to get to the truth.
Sources:
http://java.cms.livjm.ac.uk/local/uid/uid2/COGNI.HTM
www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/
psych26/kohler.htm
Bustos
et.al. Introduction to Psychology
J.P.
Chaplin Ph.D. Dictionary of Psychology
Sevilla
et.al. General Psychology with Values Development Lessons