THEORY 2 FACILITATING LEARNING

1. RESEARCH: FOURTEEN (14) LEARNER- CENTERED PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

 Nature of Learning Process - the learning of complex subject matter is most effective when it
is an international process of constructing meaning from information and experience.

 Goals of the Learning Process - the successful learner, over time and with support and
instructional guidance, can create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge.
 Construction of Knowledge - the successful learner can link new information with existing
knowledge in meaningful ways.
 Knowledge widens and deepens as students continue to build links between new information
and experiences and their existing knowledge base.

 Strategic Thinking - the successful learner can create and use a repertoire of thinking and
reasoning strategies to achieve complex learning goals.
 Successful learners use in their approach to learning reasoning, problem solving, and concept
learning.

 Thinking about thinking - Successful learners can reflect on how they think and learn, set
reasonable learning or performances goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies or
methods, and monitor their progress towards these goals.

 Context of Learning - Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including culture,

technology and instructional practices.

MOTIVATIONAL AND AFFECTIVE FACTOR

 Motivational and emotional influences on learning - the rich internal world of thoughts,
beliefs, goals, and expectation for success or failure can enhance or interfere with the learner’s
quality of thinking and information processing.

 Intrinsic motivation to learn - Intrinsic motivation is stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty

and difficulty, relevant to personal interests, and providing for personal choice and control.

 Effects of motivation on effort - Effort is another major indicator of motivation to learn. The
acquisition of complex knowledge and skills demands the investment of considerable learner
energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over time.

DRVELOPMENTAL AND SOCIAL FACTOR

 Developmental influences on learning - learning is most effective when differential

developmental within and across physical, intellectual, emotional, and social domains is taken
into account. Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level
and is presented in an enjoyable and interesting way.

 Social influences on learning - Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an
opportunity to interact and to collaborate with others on instructional tasks.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES FACTOR

 Individual differences in learning - Individuals are born with and develop their own
capabilities and talents.
Educators need to help students examine their learning preferences and expand or modify
them, if necessary.

 Learning and diversity - the same basic principles of learning, motivation, and effective
instruction apply to all learners.

 Standards and assessment - Assessment provides important information to both the learner
and teacher at all stages of the learning process.
2. IDENTIFY TEN (10) EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AND RELATE THEIR
SUCCESS STORIES

1. Sudha Chandran (1964) - Disability: Amputee

Sudha Chandran was born to family in Chennai, South India. She completed her Masters in
Economics from Mumbai. On one of her return trips from Mumbai to Chennai she met with an
accident resulting in the amputation of her right leg. She was given an artificial leg and despite this
terrible disability, she became one of the most accomplished and acclaimed dancers of the Indian
Subcontinent. She has received and still receives invitations to perform all over the world. She has
been honored with numerous awards and has performed all over the world. She appears often on
Hindi television and in films.

2. Marla Runyan (January 4, 1969) - Disability: Blind

At the age of nine, Runyan developed Stargardt’s Disease, which is a form of macular
degeneration that left her legally blind. Marla Runyan is a three time national champion in the
women’s 5000 meters. She won four gold medals in the 1992 summer Paralympics. In the
1996 Paralympics she won silver in the shot put and gold in the Pentathlon. In 2000 she
became the first legally blind paralympian to compete in the Olympic games in Sydney,
Australia. She holds various American records such as 20,000 Road (2003), All-female
Marathon (2002), 500m (2001) , Heptathlon (1996). In 2001, she co-wrote and published her
autobiography ‘No Finish Line: My Life As I See It’

3. Vincent Van Gogh (30 March 1853–29 July 1890) - Disability: Mental Illness

Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch Painter and is regarded as one of the greatest painters the
world has ever seen. His paintings have immensely contributed to the foundations of modern
art. In his 10 year painting career he produced 900 painting and 1100 drawings. Some of his
paintings today are the most expensive: Irises was sold for $53.9 Million and Portrait of Doctor
Gachet was sold for $82.5 Million. Vincent Van Gogh suffered depression, and in 1889 was
admitted to a psychiatric hospital. His depression worsened over time and on July 27, 1890 at
the age of 37 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later. His last words were
“the sadness will last forever”.

4. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - Disability: Deaf

Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in history. He gave his first
public performance as a pianist when he was only 8 years old. He studied in Vienna under the
guidance of Mozart. By his mid-twenties he had earned a name for himself as a great pianist
known for unpredictable and brilliant improvisations. In the year 1796 Beethoven began losing
his hearing. In spite of his illness he immersed himself in his work and created some of the
greatest works of music. Beethoven’s finest works are also the finest works of their kind in
music history: the 9th Symphony, the 5th Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Late
Quartets, and his Missa Solemnis. And he achieved all this despite being completely deaf for
the last 25 years or so of his life.

5. Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) - Disability: Polio

Frida Kahlo was a renowned Mexican painter who created striking paintings, most of them
being self-portraits reflecting her pain and sorrow. She painted using vibrant colors that were
influenced by the cultures of Mexico. She was the first Mexican artist of 20th century whose
work was purchased by an international museum. Kahlo contracted polio at age six, which left
her right leg thinner than the left, which Kahlo disguised by wearing long, colorful skirts. It has
been conjectured that she also suffered from spina bifida, a congenital disease that could have
affected both spinal and leg development. Although she recovered from her injuries and
eventually regained her ability to walk, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the
remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or
bedridden for months at a time.
6. Christy Brown (June 5, 1932 – September 7, 1981) - Disability: Cerebral Palsy

Christy Brown was an Irish author, painter and poet who had severe cerebral palsy. Born in
Crumlin, Dublin to parents Bridget and Paddy, he was one of 13 surviving children (out of 22 born)
in a Catholic family. He was disabled by cerebral palsy and was incapable for years of deliberate
movement or speech. Doctors considered him to be intellectually disabled as well. However, his
mother continued to speak to him, work with him, and try to teach him. One day, he famously
snatched a piece of chalk from his sister with his left foot to make a mark on a slate.
At about five years old, only his left foot responded to his will. Using his foot he was able to
communicate for the first time. He is most famous for his autobiography My Left Foot, which was
later made into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name. The Irish Times reviewer
Bernard Share said the book was “…the most important Irish novel since Ulysses”. Like Joyce,
Brown employed the stream-of-consciousness technique and captured the Dublin culture in his
use of humor, language and unique character description.

7. John Nash (June 13, 1928) - Disability: Schizophrenia

John Forbes Nash is an Noble laureate American mathematician whose work in game theory,
differential geometry and partial differential equations are considered ground breaking. At a
young age he was interested in scientific experiments which he carried out in his room. He
studied Chemical engineering, chemistry and mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University.
Later he was awarded a Fellowship at Princeton. In 1959 John Nash started showing severe
signs of paranoia and started behaving erratically. He believed that there was an organization
chasing him. In the same year he was admitted involuntarily to the hospital where he was
diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After treatment he was again admitted to the hospital
this time voluntarily for 9 years were he given shock therapy. After returning from the hospital
in 1970 he gradually started recovering. His work was becoming more successful and resulted
in various awards and recognition. Prominent among them are John von Neumann Theory
Prize in the year 1978 and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in the year 1994. An
Academy Award winning film named ‘A beautiful Mind’ starring Russell Crowe was made
which was loosely based on his biography.

8. Jean-Dominique Bauby (April 23 1952 – March 9, 1997) - Disability: Locked-in Syndrome

Jean-Do was a well-known French journalist and author and editor of the French fashion
magazine ELLE. In 1995 he suffered a massive heart attack causing him to go into a coma for
20 days. After coming out of the coma he found himself with a very rare neurological disorder
called Locked-in syndrome, in which the mental state is perfectly normal and stable but the
body is paralyzed from Head to Toe. In the case of Jean-Do he was able to move only his left
eyelid. Despite his condition, he wrote the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking
when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over
again. Bauby had to compose and edit the book entirely in his head, and convey it one letter at
a time. To make dictation more efficient, Bauby’s interlocutor, Claude Mendibil, read from a
special alphabet which consisted of the letters ordered in accordance with their frequency in
the French language. The book was published in France on 7 March 1997. Bauby died just two
days after the publication of his book.

9. Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942) - Disability: Motor Neuron disease or a variant of ALS

(Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

Stephen William Hawking is a British theoretical physicist, whose world-renowned scientific

career spans over 40 years. His books and public appearances have made him an academic
celebrity and he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the highest civilian award in the United States. Stephen Hawking is severely disabled by motor
neuron disease, likely a variant of the disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS).
Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge; he lost his
balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius,
he took the Mensa test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact. The diagnosis of motor
 neuron disease came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said
he would not survive more than two or three years. Hawking gradually lost the use of his arms,
legs, and voice, and as of 2009 was almost completely paralyzed.

10. Hellen Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) - Disability: Blind and Deaf

Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist and lecturer. She was the first
deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller’s teacher, Annie
Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing
the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the
dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker. Sullivan taught Helen to
communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with d-o-l-l for the doll that she had
brought her as a present. A prolific author, Keller was well traveled and was outspoken in her
opposition to war. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, and socialism, as
well as many other progressive causes. In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU). Keller and Sullivan traveled to over 39 countries, making several trips
to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every US President from
Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including
Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin, and Mark Twain.

3. WRITE TEN (10) LEARNING OUTCOMES IN YOUR CHOICE TOPIC

EXAMPLE: TO SOLVE QUADRATIC EQUATIONS BY FACTORING.

ENGL 0250: Compensatory Writing Skills

1. Use prewriting techniques to develop ideas and produce multiple drafts of different types of
paragraphs.
2. Recognize and create the parts of a paragraph.
3. Recognize and incorporate basic grammar, mechanics, and sentence variety in writing.
4. Consider subject, audience, and purpose.
5. Develop awareness of supporting evidence and begin to provide concrete details within
paragraphs.
6. Use transitions to connect ideas in paragraphs.
7. Demonstrate paragraph organization and unity.
8. Proofread and revise paragraphs.
9. Offer constructive peer feedback.
10. Develop skills for using the computer for writing assignments.

4. IDENTIFY AND DISCUSS THE LAW DEVELOPED BY THE FOLLOWING:

1. SIGMUND FREUD

 Freud proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place during

five psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
 These are called psychosexual stages because each stage represents the
fixation of libido (roughly translated as sexual drives or instincts) on a different
area of the body. As a person grows physically certain areas of their body
become important as sources of potential frustration (erogenous zones),
pleasure or both.
 Freud (1905) believed that life was built round tension and pleasure. Freud also
believed that all tension was due to the build-up of libido (sexual energy) and that
all pleasure came from its discharge.
 In describing human personality development as psychosexual Freud meant to
convey that what develops is the way in which sexual energy of
the id accumulates and is discharged as we mature biologically. (NB Freud used
the term 'sexual' in a very general way to mean all pleasurable actions and
thoughts).
 Freud stressed that the first five years of life are crucial to the formation of adult
personality. The id must be controlled in order to satisfy social demands; this sets
up a conflict between frustrated wishes and social norms.
 The ego and superego develop in order to exercise this control and direct the
need for gratification into socially acceptable channels. Gratification centers in
different areas of the body at different stages of growth, making the conflict at
each stage psychosexual.

 The Role of Conflict

 Each of the psychosexual stages is associated with a particular conflict that must
be resolved before the individual can successfully advance to the next stage.
 The resolution of each of these conflicts requires the expenditure of sexual
energy and the more energy that is expended at a particular stage, the more the
important characteristics of that stage remain with the individual as he/she
matures psychologically.
 To explain this Freud suggested the analogy of military troops on the march.  As
the troops advance, they are met by opposition or conflict.  If they are highly
successful in winning the battle (resolving the conflict), then most of the troops
(libido) will be able to move on to the next battle (stage).
 But the greater the difficulty encountered at any particular point, the greater the
need for troops to remain behind to fight and thus the fewer that will be able to go
on to the next confrontation.

 Frustration, Overindulgence, and Fixation

 Some people do not seem to be able to leave one stage and proceed on to the
next.  One reason for this may be that the needs of the developing individual at
any particular stage may not have been adequately met in which case there is
frustration. 
 Or possibly the person's needs may have been so well satisfied that he/she is
reluctant to leave the psychological benefits of a particular stage in which there is
overindulgence.
 Both frustration and overindulgence (or any combination of the two) may lead to
what psychoanalysts call fixation at a particular psychosexual stage.
 Fixation refers to the theoretical notion that a portion of the individual's libido has
been permanently 'invested' in a particular stage of his development.

 Psychosexual Stages of Development

You can remember the order of these stages by using the mnemonic: “old (oral)
age (anal) pensioners (phallic) love (latent) grapes (genital).

 Oral Stage (Birth to 1 year)

 In the first stage of personality development, the libido is centered in a baby's
mouth. It gets much satisfaction from putting all sorts of things in its mouth to
satisfy the libido, and thus its id demands.  Which at this stage in life are oral, or
mouth orientated, such as sucking, biting, and breastfeeding. 
 Freud said oral stimulation could lead to an oral fixation in later life.  We see oral
personalities all around us such as smokers, nail-biters, finger-chewers, and
thumb suckers.  Oral personalities engage in such oral behaviors, particularly
when under stress.

 Anal Stage (1 to 3 years)

 The libido now becomes focused on the anus, and the child derives great
pleasure from defecating.  The child is now fully aware that they are a person in
 their own right and that their wishes can bring them into conflict with the
demands of the outside world (i.e., their ego has developed). 
 Freud believed that this type of conflict tends to come to a head in potty training,
in which adults impose restrictions on when and where the child can defecate. 
The nature of this first conflict with authority can determine the child's future
relationship with all forms of authority.
 Early or harsh potty training can lead to the child becoming an anal-retentive
personality who hates mess, is obsessively tidy, punctual and respectful of
authority.  They can be stubborn and tight-fisted with their cash and possessions.
 This is all related to pleasure got from holding on to their faeces when toddlers,
and their mum's then insisting that they get rid of it by placing them on the potty
until they perform!
 Not as daft as it sounds.  The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a
liberal toilet-training regime during the anal stage.
 In adulthood, the anal expulsive is the person who wants to share things with
you.  They like giving things away.  In essence, they are 'sharing their s**t'!'  An
anal-expulsive personality is also messy, disorganized and rebellious.

 Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years)

 Sensitivity now becomes concentrated in the genitals and masturbation (in both
sexes) becomes a new source of pleasure.
 The child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences, which sets in motion the
conflict between erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy and fear which
Freud called the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra complex (in girls). 
 This is resolved through the process of identification, which involves the child
adopting the characteristics of the same sex parent.

 Latency Stage (6 years to puberty)

 No further psychosexual development takes place during this stage (latent
means hidden).  The libido is dormant.
 Freud thought that most sexual impulses are repressed during the latent stage,
and sexual energy can be sublimated (re: defense mechanisms) towards school
work, hobbies, and friendships. 
 Much of the child's energy is channeled into developing new skills and acquiring
new knowledge, and play becomes largely confined to other children of the same
gender.

 Genital Stage (puberty to adult)

 This is the last stage of Freud's psychosexual theory of personality development
and begins in puberty.  It is a time of adolescent sexual experimentation, the
successful resolution of which is settling down in a loving one-to-one relationship
with another person in our 20's.
 Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self-pleasure like
during the phallic stage. 
 For Freud, the proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was through
heterosexual intercourse.  Fixation and conflict may prevent this with the
consequence that sexual perversions may develop. 
 For example, fixation at the oral stage may result in a person gaining sexual
pleasure primarily from kissing and oral sex, rather than sexual intercourse.

 Critical Evaluation
 Is Freudian psychology supported by evidence? Freud's theory is good at
explaining but not at predicting behavior (which is one of the goals of science).
  For this reason, Freud's theory is unfalsifiable - it can neither be proved true or
refuted. For example, the libido is difficult to test and measure objectively.
Overall, Freud's theory is highly unscientific.
 Freud may also have shown research bias in his interpretations - he may have
only paid attention to information which supported his theories, and ignored
information and other explanations that did not fit them.
 However, Fisher & Greenberg (1996) argue that Freud’s theory should be
evaluated in terms of specific hypotheses rather than as a whole. They
concluded that there is evidence to support Freud’s concepts of oral and anal
personalities.

2. URIE BRONFENBRENNE

Ecological Systems Theory to understand the complex relationship between the infant, the family,
and society and how they impact child development.

The Ecological Systems Theory - influenced the way psychologists and other social scientists
approached the study of human beings in their environment. Before Bronfenbrenner, child
psychologists studied the child, sociologists examined the family, anthropologists studied the society,
economists studied the economic framework of the times, and political scientists studied the political
structure. Brofenbrenner’s theory looks at how each of the areas interplay in the development of
humans, and thus thought it important to study how all areas impact development instead of studying
each area separately.
Bronfenbrenner identified four systems that each contains rules, norms, and roles that powerfully
shape development. He called these the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and
the macrosystem.

The Microsystem contains the immediate environments that the child is a part of (family, school,
peer group, neighborhood, and childcare environments). It is the layer closest to the child and
contains the structures with which the child has direct contact. At this level, relationships have impact
in two directions – both away from the child and toward the child. For example, a child’s parents may
affect his beliefs and behaviour; however, the child also affects the behaviour and beliefs of the
parent. Bronfenbrenner calls these bi-directional influences, and he shows how they occur among all
levels of environment.

The Mesosystem is comprised of connections between the child’s immediate environments (i.e., a

child’s home and school). If a child is experiencing difficulties in school, it is likely that the family will
be forced to have more interactions with the school’s teachers and administrators, and those family-
school interactions should have an effect on the child’s functioning.

The Exosystem contains the external environmental settings and other social systems that do not
contain the developing child but indirectly affect development (e.g. a parent’s workplace,
neighbourhood institutions, the media, the government, the economy etc.).
Finally, the Macrosystem contains all of the various subsystems and the general beliefs and values
of the culture, and is made up of written and unwritten principles that regulate everybody’s behaviour.
These principles- whether legal, economic, political, religious, or educational- endow individual life
with meaning and value and control the nature and scope of the interactions between the various
levels of the total social system.

Bronfenbrenner later added the Chronosystem, which is made up of all the other levels. It refers to
the way the each level has an influence on the one before and after it in a back and forth motion. It
also pertains to the historical context of the time the child is reared in. For example, a great
technological discovery, a war, or times of great economic trouble, can all have impact on the child’s
development.

3. JEAN PIAGET
Jean Piaget was a Swiss developmental psychologist who studied children in the early 20th century.
His theory of intellectual or cognitive development, published in 1936, is still used today in some
branches of education and psychology. It focuses on children, from birth through adolescence, and
characterizes different stages of development, including:

 language

 morals

 memory

 reasoning

Piaget made several assumptions about children while developing his theory:

 Children build their own knowledge based on their experiences.

 Children learn things on their own without influence from adults or older children.

 Children are motivated to learn by nature. They don’t need rewards as motivation.

There are four stages in all:

 sensorimotor stage

 preoperational stage

 concrete operational stage

 formal operational stage

The stages cover a range of ages from birth to 2 years old to young adulthood.

Piaget’s four stages

Piaget’s stages are age-specific and marked by important characteristics of thought processes. They
also include goals children should achieve as they move through a given stage.

Stage Age Characteristics Goal

Motor activity without use of symbols. All

Birth to 18–24 Object
Sensorimotor things learned are based on experiences, or
months old permanence
trial and error.

Development of language, memory, and

Symbolic
Preoperational 2 to 7 years old imagination. Intelligence is both egocentric
thought
and intuitive.

Concrete 7 to 11 years More logical and methodical manipulation of Operational

 symbols. Less egocentric, and more aware
operational old thought
of the outside world and events.

Use of symbols to relate to abstract

Formal Adolescence to Abstract
concepts. Able to make hypotheses and
operational adulthood concepts
grasp abstract concepts and relationships.

Sensorimotor

The sensorimotor stage covers children ages birth to 18–24 months old. Characteristics include motor
activity without use of symbols. All things learned are based on experiences, or trial and error.

The main goal at this stage is establishing an understanding of object permanence — in other words,
knowing that an object still exists even if you can’t see it or it’s hidden.

Preoperational

The preoperational stage can be seen in children ages 2 through 7. Memory and imagination are
developing. Children at this age are egocentric, which means they have difficulty thinking outside of
their own viewpoints.

The main achievement of this stage is being able to attach meaning to objects with language. It’s
thinking about things symbolically. Symbolic thought is a type of thinking where a word or object is
used to represent something other than itself.

Concrete operational

Children are much less egocentric in the concrete operational stage. It falls between the ages of 7 to
11 years old and is marked by more logical and methodical manipulation of symbols.

The main goal at this stage is for a child to start working things out inside their head. This is called
operational thought, and it allows kids to solve problems without physically encountering things in the
real world.

Formal operational

Children 11 years old and older fall into Piaget’s formal operational stage. A milestone of this period is
using symbols to understand abstract concepts. Not only that, but older kids and adults can also think
about multiple variables and come up with hypotheses based on previous knowledge.
Piaget believed that people of all ages developed intellectually. But he also believed that once a
person reaches the formal operational stage, it’s more about building upon knowledge, not changing
how it’s acquired or understood.

Schema, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration

There are a variety of terms Piaget used in his theory to explain cognitive development and how it’s
achieved at different stages.

Schema is a term he used to represent the building blocks of knowledge. You may think of schemas
as different index cards inside the brain. Each one informs the individual on how to react to new
information or situations.

For example, picture a person visiting the grocery store to buy milk. In this event, the schema is a
mentally stored pattern of behavior that can be applied to this situation. The person remembers how
to go through the aisles, find the milk, select the preferred kind, and then pay at the register.
Whenever the person is tasked with getting milk, this particular “script” or schema is recalled from
memory.

Other important terms:

 Assimilation is using an existing schema and applying it to a new situation or object.

 Accommodation is changing approaches when an existing schema doesn’t work in a

particular situation.

 Equilibration is the driving force that moves all development forward. Piaget didn’t believe
that development progressed steadily. Instead, it moved in leaps and bounds according to
experiences.

How can caregivers use schemas?

Parents and teachers can help build a child’s various schemas to promote learning and development
throughout the stages. This can be achieved by giving children plenty of exposure to the outside
world. Being exposed to a variety of learning-by-doing experiences from a young age may help build
up those internal index cards. Then, as children get older, it’s about broadening the experiences and
applying them to new, even hypothetical, situations.


Providing chances for trial and error. Focus on the process of learning versus the end result.

 Providing children with visual aids and other props, like models, to illustrate different ideas and
concepts.

 Using real-life examples to paint complex ideas, like word problems in math.
  Providing chances to classify or group information. Outlines and hierarchies are good
examples and allow kids to build new ideas from previous knowledge.

 Offering problems that necessitate analytical or logical thinking. Brain teasers can be used as
a tool in this instance.

You can also help your child throughout the stages by catering to their specific learning style at the
time:

Sensorimotor

 Use real objects in play activities.

 Connect play to the five senses.

 Implement routines for the youngest children. They are predictable and may be highly useful
with developing communication.

Preoperational

 Children learn best by doing. Allow them to actively interact with a variety of things in their
environments, including books, people, games, and objects.

 Ask questions while children are engaged in daily routines and allow them to come up with
their own ideas.

 Point out new things and encourage children to question you about those things.

Concrete operational

 Create timelines, three dimensional models, science experiments, and other ways to
manipulate abstract concepts.

 Use brain teasers and riddles to foster analytical thinking.

 Focus on open-ended questioning.

Formal operational

 Offer step-by-step explanations of concepts and utilize charts and other visual aids.

 Explore hypothetical situations. You may relate them to current events or social issues.

 Broaden concepts whenever possible. For example, if talking about the Civil War, discuss
other issues that have divided the country since that time.
Cons of Piaget’s theory

There are some criticisms of Piaget’s stages. In particular, researchers in the 1960s and 1970s
argued that Piaget may have underestimated children’s abilities by using confusing terms and
particularly difficult tasks in his observations. In other studies, children have been successful with
demonstrating knowledge of certain concepts or skills when they were presented in a simpler way.

Piaget’s theory also expects children of a certain stage to primarily be at that stage across the board
with all tasks presented to them. Other researchers uncovered that there is a range of abilities with
cognitive tasks. In other words, some children may excel or struggle in one area over another.

Piaget’s theory also explains that trying to teach children particularly advanced concepts would be
unsuccessful. Yet in some cases, children may be able to learn advanced ideas even with brief
instruction. Children may be more adaptable and competent than Piaget’s stages give them credit for.

Last, Piaget primarily examined white, middle-class children from developed countries in his work. As
a result, his findings may be skewed to this subset of people, and may not apply as directly to other
groups or locations.

4. LEV VYGOTSKY

Vygotsky's theory is known in the West as sociocultural, although Vygotsky himself and his close
colleagues preferred to describe it as cultura lhistorical, emphasizing the dual focus of this theory: the
history of human development and the cultural tools that shape this development. At the core of this
theory is Vygotsky's belief that human development–child development as well as the development of
all humankind–is the result of interactions between people and their social environment. These
interactions are not limited to actual people but also involve cultural artifacts, mainly language-based
(written languages, number systems, various signs, and symbols). Many of these cultural artifacts
serve a dual purpose: not only do they make possible the integration of a growing child into the
culture but they also transform the very way the child's mind is being formed. Vygotsky refers to these
as special cultural tools, acquisition of which extends one's mental capacities, making individuals the
master of their own behavior. In the course of child development, a child typically learns how to use
these cultural tools through interactions with parents, teachers, or more experienced peers. As a
result of using these tools–first in cooperation with others and later independently–the child develops
higher mental functions: complex mental processes that are intentional, self-regulated, and mediated
by language and other sign systems. Examples of these higher mental functions include focused
attention, deliberate memory, and verbal thinking. According to Vygotsky, although all human beings
are capable of developing these functions, the particular structure and content of higher mental
functions depend on specific social interactions, as determined by culture in general and by each
person's unique social situation of development.

Of all the processes involved in acquisition of mental tools, Vygotsky focused primarily on the use of
language (it was through the work of his colleagues and students that acquisition of non-verbal
mental tools was studied). For him, language is both the most important mental tool and a medium
facilitating the acquisition of other mental tools. One of the best-known concepts that illustrates
Vygotsky's view of language is the concept of private speech. Private speech, or self-talk, originates
in social speech, the initial form of speech that is directed to other people. Although it retains the
audible characteristic of social speech, private speech changes its function. It now becomes speech
directed to oneself rather than speech that is regulated or directed by a more capable person.
Noticing that children tend to increase the amount of self-talk when facing more challenging tasks,
Vygotsky hypothesized that at some point, they start using private speech to organize (plan, direct, or
evaluate) their behaviors. The use of private speech peaks during preschool years and then
decreases. Vygotsky associates this decrease with private speech turning first into inner speech and
then into verbal thinking. This evolution of speech–from social to self-directed to internalized–
exemplifies the path of all higher mental functions, which was described by Vygotsky in his "law of the
development of higher mental functions." According to this law, each higher mental function appears
twice in the course of child development: first as shared or carried out by an individual jointly with
other people–intersubjective–and then as appropriated or internalized by this individual and used
independently–intrasubjective.

Vygotsky's view of child development and education is an extension of his general approach to the
development of higher mental functions. Consistent with his definition of development as socially
determined, Vygotsky introduced a new relationship between education, learning, and development.
Vygotsky argued against the theorists who believed that child development occurs spontaneously and
is driven by the processes of maturation and cannot be affected by education. Neither did he agree
with those who claimed that instruction could alter development at any time regardless of a child's
age or capacities. Instead, he proposed a more complex and dynamic relationship between learning
and development that is determined by what he termed a child's zone of proximal
development (ZPD).

Vygotsky's theory is based on the idea that learning can lead development, and development can
lead learning, and this process takes place through a dynamic interrelationship. The ZPD is the area
between a learner's level of independent performance (often called developmental level) and the level
of assisted performance–what the child can do with support. Independent performance is the best the
learner can do without help, and assisted performance is the maximum the learner can achieve with
help. By observing assisted performance one can investigate a learner's potential for current highest
level of functioning. ZPD reveals the learner's potential and is realized in interactions with
knowledgeable others or in other supportive contexts (such as make-believe play for preschool
children). By providing assistance to learners within their ZPD we are supporting their growth.

Through identification of a learner's ZPD, teachers find out what knowledge, skills, and
understandings have not yet surfaced for the learner but are on the edge of emergence. Teachers
also study ways to engage the learner in shared or co-operative learning experience through
participation in the learner's ZPD. This involves doing more than completing a task in a combined
fashion; it involves developing the learner's higher mental functions, such as the ability to plan,
evaluate, memorize, and reason. In How Children Think and Learn (1998), David Wood points out:
"By reminding children we are helping them to bring to mind and exploit those aspects of their past
experience that we (as experts) but not they (as novices) know to be relevant to what they are
currently trying to do" (p. 97).

Applications in Contemporary Russia

Examples of work being done in contemporary Russia within Vygotsky's cultural-historical paradigm
are too numerous to be listed in a short article. One could say that most of Vygotsky's ideas,
suppositions, and insights were further elaborated upon, verified in empirical studies, and often
implemented into practical applications. Some of these ideas became starting points to new theories
such as the theory of periods in child development developed by Daniel Elkonin, based on Vygotsky's
ideas of psychological age and leading activity. Other theories developed by Vygotsky's colleagues
and students can be better described as Vygotsky-inspired in a broader sense rather then purely
Vygotskian. Among these are Alexei Leont'ev's activity theory and Piotr Gal'perin's theory of step-by-
step formation of mental actions. Common features of most of these theories can be traced back to
Vygotsky; these include beliefs in social and cultural determination of child development and in the
power of education to shape this development. Because of these assumptions, post-Vygotskians
were generally successful in implementing their theoretical principles in classroom practice to create
innovative educational programs. Examples of those include a number of preschool and kindergarten
curricula based on theories of Alexander Zaporozhets and his student Leonid Venger and the system
of "developmental education" based on the work of Daniel Elkonin and his student Vasili Davidov,
which has been implemented in curricula for school-aged children from primary grades through high
school.
Applications in the United States
As mentioned above, this entry focuses on just a couple of examples of Vygotsky-inspired
educational work in the United States. For more perspectives, see the work of Michael Cole and
colleagues in The Construction Zone: Working for Cognitive Change in School, and Roland G. Tharp
and Ronald Gallimore's 1988 book, Rousing Minds to Life: Teaching, Learning and Schooling in
Social Context. The following are descriptions of two examples: Tools of the Mind, which is an early
childhood education program, and Reciprocal Reading, used with older children.

Tools of the mind. This first example might be considered a transitional model. Though the work is
being developed in the United States, one of the lead authors is Russian and has worked at the
Institute of Preschool Education with Lev Vygotsky's student Alexander Zaporozhets. Elena Bodrova
and Deborah Leong have developed an early childhood education model titled, Tools of the
Mind (1996, 2001). The model has a Vygotskian theoretical basis: development cannot be separated
from its social context; learning can lead development; language plays a central role in mental
development; teaching should provide organized experiences that are in advance of a child's
independent functioning but still remain within the child's ZPD; and teachers should encourage (and
even create) opportunities for problemsolving. Implemented in Head Start, preschools, and
kindergartens, the program focuses on play, the leading activity of this age. In addition, there are a
number of activities designed to promote symbolic representation and self-regulation, such as play
planning using Scaffolded Writing, and specially designed artifacts or tools, including the Sound Map,
the purpose of which is to support young children in their beginning efforts to spell.

Reciprocal listening/reading. A second program motivated by the work of Lev Vygotsky and
developed in the United States is reciprocal listening/reading, which was introduced in the mid-1980s
by Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Ann Brown. It is a strategy for teaching reading comprehension
that addresses children's need to examine the background of a text and particular words while
learning to monitor their own reading process. Children are taught to interact with text and as a result
to regulate their own thinking about the text as they read and listen (when being read to).

The ties of this program to Vygotsky lie in the belief that development of complex comprehension
strategies has to start in a cooperative activity (intersubjective) and then move inward for use by a
student (intrasubjective). Reciprocal teaching provides guided practice in the use of four strategies–
predicting, question generating, summarizing, and clarifying–that are designed to enhance children's
ability to construct the meaning of text. These strategies for interacting with the text are most often
used automatically and soundlessly by readers and listeners. In reciprocal reading and listening, the
strategies are vocalized and made available to other learners. To engage in reciprocal teaching
dialogues, the children and their teacher read a piece of common text. This reading may be done as a
read-along, a silent reading, or an oral reading, depending on the decoding abilities of the children
and the level of the text. The children and the teacher take turns leading the discussion of segments
of the text, using strategies to support their discussion. The teacher uses the strategies and the
children are encouraged to play the "teacher role" and to interact with the text. Children then learn
new ways of interacting with the text by implementing these previously unobserved strategies and
being an integral part of what is being taught in their role as "teacher." Following Vygotskian theory,
the children begin to internalize the processes until they become an automatic part of their internal
reading and listening comprehension activities. An ultimate purpose of the discussion is the
application of the strategies for the purpose of coming to a shared sense of the meaning of the text at
hand.

5. LAWRENCE KOHLBERG

 Lawrence Kohlberg expanded on the earlier work of cognitive theorist Jean Piaget to explain

the moral development of children, which he believed follows a series of stages.
 Kohlberg defined three levels of moral development: preconventional, conventional, and
postconventional. Each level has two distinct stages.
 During the preconventional level, a child’s sense of morality is externally controlled. Children
accept and believe the rules of authority figures, such as parents and teachers, and they judge
an action based on its consequences.
  During the conventional level, an individual’s sense of morality is tied to personal and societal
relationships. Children continue to accept the rules of authority figures, but this is now because
they believe that this is necessary to ensure positive relationships and societal order.
 During the postconventional level, a person’s sense of morality is defined in terms
of more abstract principles and values. People now believe that some laws are unjust and
should be changed or eliminated.
 Kohlberg’s theory has been criticized for its cultural and gendered bias toward white, upper-
class men and boys. It also fails to account for inconsistencies within moral judgments.

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development

Kohlberg identified three levels of moral reasoning: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-
conventional. Each level is associated with increasingly complex stages of moral development.

Level 1: Preconventional

Throughout the preconventional level, a child’s sense of morality is externally controlled. Children
accept and believe the rules of authority figures, such as parents and teachers.  A child with pre-
conventional morality has not yet adopted or internalized society’s conventions regarding what is right
or wrong, but instead focuses largely on external consequences that certain actions may bring.

Stage 1: Obedience-and-Punishment Orientation

Stage 1 focuses on the child’s desire to obey rules and avoid being punished. For example, an action
is perceived as morally wrong because the perpetrator is punished; the worse the punishment for the
act is, the more “bad” the act is perceived to be.

Stage 2: Instrumental Orientation

Stage 2 expresses the “what’s in it for me?” position, in which right behavior is defined by whatever
the individual believes to be in their best interest. Stage two reasoning shows a limited interest in the
needs of others, only to the point where it might further the individual’s own interests. As a result,
concern for others is not based on loyalty or intrinsic respect, but rather a “you scratch my back, and
I’ll scratch yours” mentality. An example would be when a child is asked by his parents to do a chore.
The child asks “what’s in it for me?” and the parents offer the child an incentive by giving him an
allowance.

Level 2: Conventional

Throughout the conventional level, a child’s sense of morality is tied to personal and societal
relationships. Children continue to accept the rules of authority figures, but this is now due to their
belief that this is necessary to ensure positive relationships and societal order. Adherence to rules
and conventions is somewhat rigid during these stages, and a rule’s appropriateness or fairness is
seldom questioned.

Stage 3: Good Boy, Nice Girl Orientation

In stage 3, children want the approval of others and act in ways to avoid disapproval. Emphasis is
placed on good behavior and people being “nice” to others.

Stage 4: Law-and-Order Orientation

In stage 4, the child blindly accepts rules and convention because of their importance in maintaining a
functioning society. Rules are seen as being the same for everyone, and obeying rules by doing what
one is “supposed” to do is seen as valuable and important. Moral reasoning in stage four is beyond
the need for individual approval exhibited in stage three. If one person violates a law, perhaps
everyone would—thus there is an obligation and a duty to uphold laws and rules. Most active
members of society remain at stage four, where morality is still predominantly dictated by an outside
force.

Level 3: Postconventional

Throughout the postconventional level, a person’s sense of morality is defined in terms of more
abstract principles and values. People now believe that some laws are unjust and should be changed
or eliminated. This level is marked by a growing realization that individuals are separate entities from
society and that individuals may disobey rules inconsistent with their own principles. Post-
conventional moralists live by their own ethical principles—principles that typically include such basic
human rights as life, liberty, and justice—and view rules as useful but changeable mechanisms,
rather than absolute dictates that must be obeyed without question. Because post-conventional
individuals elevate their own moral evaluation of a situation over social conventions, their behavior,
especially at stage six, can sometimes be confused with that of those at the pre-conventional level.
Some theorists have speculated that many people may never reach this level of abstract moral
reasoning.

Stage 5: Social-Contract Orientation

In stage 5, the world is viewed as holding different opinions, rights, and values. Such perspectives
should be mutually respected as unique to each person or community. Laws are regarded as social
contracts rather than rigid edicts. Those that do not promote the general welfare should be changed
when necessary to meet the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This is achieved
through majority decision and inevitable compromise. Democratic government is theoretically based
on stage five reasoning.

Stage 6: Universal-Ethical-Principal Orientation

In stage 6, moral reasoning is based on abstract reasoning using universal ethical principles.
Generally, the chosen principles are abstract rather than concrete and focus on ideas such as
equality, dignity, or respect. Laws are valid only insofar as they are grounded in justice, and a
commitment to justice carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust laws. People choose the ethical
principles they want to follow, and if they violate those principles, they feel guilty. In this way, the
individual acts because it is morally right to do so (and not because he or she wants to avoid
punishment), it is in their best interest, it is expected, it is legal, or it is previously agreed upon.
Although Kohlberg insisted that stage six exists, he found it difficult to identify individuals who
consistently operated at that level.

Critiques Of Kohlberg’s Theory

Kohlberg has been criticized for his assertion that women seem to be deficient in their moral
reasoning abilities when compared to men. Carol Gilligan (1982), a research assistant of Kohlberg,
criticized her former mentor’s theory because it was based so narrowly on research using white,
upper-class men and boys. She argued that women are not deficient in their moral reasoning and
instead proposed that males and females reason differently: girls and women focus more on staying
connected and maintaining interpersonal relationships.

Kohlberg’s theory has been criticized for emphasizing justice to the exclusion of other values, with the
result that it may not adequately address the arguments of those who value other moral aspects of
actions. Similarly, critics argue that Kohlberg’s stages are culturally biased—that the highest stages in
particular reflect a westernized ideal of justice based on individualistic thought. This is biased against
those that live in non-Western societies that place less emphasis on individualism.

Another criticism of Kohlberg’s theory is that people frequently demonstrate significant inconsistency
in their moral judgements. This often occurs in moral dilemmas involving drinking and driving or
business situations where participants have been shown to reason at a lower developmental stage,
typically using more self-interest driven reasoning (i.e., stage two) than authority and social order
obedience driven reasoning (i.e., stage four). Critics argue that Kohlberg’s theory cannot account for
such inconsistencies.

6. ERICK ERIKSON

Erikson’s eight stages of development are:

 Trust VS. Mistrust – Infants learn about basic trustworthiness of the environment. If they
receive attention and affection -> they form a global impression of a trustworthy and secure world.
If they receive pain and stress -> they believe life is unpredictable and untrustworthy.
 Autonomy VS. Shame and Doubt – Toddlers discover their own bodies and how to control
them. If they succeed in doing things for themselves -> gain a sense of self-confidence and self-
control. If they fail continuously -> feel shame and self-doubt.

 Initiative VS. Guilt – Children at age 4 or 5 explore beyond themselves. If exploration,

projects and activities are effective -> learn to deal with people and things in constructive way and
have strong sense of initiative. If they criticized or punished -> learn to feel guilty for many of their
own actions.

 Industry VS. Inferiority – Children at ages 6 to 11 develop numerous skills. One’s sense of

self is enriched by realistic development. A negative evolution is damaging at this time.

 Ego Identity VS. Ego Diffusion – Before adolescence, children learn a number of different
roles. It is important to sort out and integrate these various roles into one constant identity. If a
child fails to do this, the result is what Erikson calls ego diffusion.

 Intimacy VS. Isolation – In late adolescence and young adulthood, the central conflict is that
of intimacy and isolation. This is the ability to share one’s self with another person of either sex
without fear of losing one’s own identity.

 Generativity VS. Self-absorption – In adulthood, men and women are free to direct their
attention more fully to the assistance of others. Individuals can direct energy without conflict to the
solution of social issues.  Failure to resolve earlier conflicts -> results in preoccupation with one’s
self.

 Integrity VS. Despair – In the last stages of life, individuals look back over their lives and
judge them. If one looks back at life and is satisfied -> has sense of integrity. If one’s life seems to
have misdirected energies and lost chances -> has sense of despair.

7. ROBERT HAVIGHURST

Havighurst
Think about when you were a baby: you crawled around, you goo-goo-ed and ga-ga-ed, and you
cried whenever you wanted food. I'm betting that things are different now. You probably walk more
than you crawl, and you communicate with words instead of 'goo-goo' and 'ga-ga,' and when you're
hungry you probably go to the refrigerator and get food instead of sitting and crying until someone
feeds you.
Development is the process of growth and change that people go through in life. Robert J.
Havighurst was a psychologist in the 20th century who developed a theory on how people develop
through life. Let's look closer at Havighurst's theory of development: the stages of life and the
sources of developmental tasks.
Stages of Life
As we have already seen, people change a lot from when they are babies to when they are adults.
But even adults change from when they are 20 to when they are 80. Havighurst identified six stages
of life that people go through. They are:
1.) Infancy and early childhood, which lasts from birth to age 5. These are babies who are just
learning to walk and talk and figuring out the world around them.
2.) Middle childhood lasts from age 6 to age 12. During this time, children become more self-
sufficient as they go to school and make friends.
3.) Adolescence, which lasts from age 13 to age 18, comes with hormonal changes and learning
about who you are as an individual.
4.) Early adulthood lasts from age 19 to age 30 and involves finding an occupation and often finding
a life partner as well.
5.) Middle Age lasts from age 30 to age 60 and is the time when most people start a family and settle
into their adult lives.
6.) Later Maturity is the time of life after age 60. During this time, people adjust to life after work and
begin to prepare themselves for death.

8. HOWARD GARDNER

Dr. Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University, developed his

groundbreaking theory of multiple intelligences in 1983. His theory suggests that traditional
notions of intelligence as one general ability are far too narrow. Instead, Gardner proposed a
list of eight different types of intelligences to account for a much broader range of human
potential which occurs in children and adults.

Dr. Howard Gardner is an American developmental psychologist who first outlined his theory of
multiple intelligences in his book ‘Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences’ published in
1983. Gardner believed human intelligence was not just one general ability but a suite of eight
different abilities which occur in children and adults.
These abilities are:
 Linguistic-Verbal intelligence (good with words and language)
 Logical-Mathematical intelligence (good with numbers and reasoning)
 Visual-Spatial intelligence (good at visualising things)
 Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence (good at body actions and physical control)
 Musical-Rhythmic intelligence (good musical skills)
 Interpersonal intelligence (good at understanding and relating to people)
 Intrapersonal intelligence (aware of personal emotions, feelings and motivation)
 Naturalistic intelligence (well in tune with nature and the natural environment)

Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligence Theory

Gardner believed his multiple intelligence theory is a more accurate way of describing ability than
narrow IQ theories which suggested intelligence is: relatively fixed, easily tested and limited to areas
such as verbal and reasoning skills. For Gardner, humans don’t have just one intellectual capacity but
a range of talents and abilities such as interpersonal, musical, spatial-visual, and linguistic
intelligences. A person might have a dominant intelligence – such as musical intelligence – but was
also likely to have a blend of additional abilities too.
For teachers, one strong implication of Gardner’s theory is that children are likely to have different
preferred ways of learning. For example, whilst one child may prefer a verbal explanation, another
may prefer ‘hands-on’ (kinesthetic) learning, while yet another may prefer to follow pictures or
diagrams.

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences also helps to explain why people are more suited to certain
careers, and quite unsuited to others. 
Critics of Garner’s work suggest his theory does not help to unravel the relationship between
concepts such as intelligences, abilities and talents. Furthermore, Gardner’s mode of circular
argument has also been criticised: high musical ability = being good at music; being good at music =
having high musical ability.

9. IVAN PAVLOV

Like many great scientific advances, Pavlovian conditioning (aka classical conditioning) was
discovered accidentally.

During the 1890s, Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov was researching salivation in dogs in response
to being fed. He inserted a small test tube into the cheek of each dog to measure saliva when the
dogs were fed (with a powder made from meat).
Pavlov predicted the dogs would salivate in response to the food placed in front of them, but he
noticed that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever they heard the footsteps of his assistant who
was bringing them the food.

When Pavlov discovered that any object or event which the dogs learned to associate with food (such
as the lab assistant) would trigger the same response, he realized that he had made an important
scientific discovery. Accordingly, he devoted the rest of his career to studying this type of learning.

Pavlovian Conditioning

Pavlov (1902) started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. For
example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food. This reflex is ‘hard-wired’ into the dog.
In behaviorist terms, food is an unconditioned stimulus and salivation is an unconditioned response.
(i.e., a stimulus-response connection that required no learning).
Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivate)
In his experiment, Pavlov used a metronome as his neutral stimulus. By itself the metronome did not
elecit a response from the dogs.
Neutral Stimulus (Metronome) > No Conditioned Response
Next, Pavlov began the conditioning procedure, whereby the clicking metronome was introduced just
before he gave food to his dogs. After a number of repeats (trials) of this procedure he presented the
metronome on its own.
As you might expect, the sound of the clicking metronome on its own now caused an increase in
salivation.
Conditioned Stimulus (Metronome) > Conditioned Response(Salivate)
So the dog had learned an association between the metronome and the food and a new behavior had
been learned. Because this response was learned (or conditioned), it is called a conditioned response
(and also known as a Pavlovian response). The neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus.

Pavlov found that for associations to be made, the two stimuli had to be presented close together in
time (such as a bell). He called this the law of temporal contiguity. If the time between the conditioned
stimulus (bell) and unconditioned stimulus (food) is too great, then learning will not occur.
Pavlov and his studies of classical conditioning have become famous since his early work between
1890-1930. Classical conditioning is "classical" in that it is the first systematic study of basic laws of
learning / conditioning.
Summary
To summarize, classical conditioning (later developed by Watson, 1913) involves learning to
associate an unconditioned stimulus that already brings about a particular response (i.e., a reflex)
with a new (conditioned) stimulus, so that the new stimulus brings about the same response.

Pavlov developed some rather unfriendly technical terms to describe this process. The unconditioned
stimulus (or UCS) is the object or event that originally produces the reflexive / natural response.
The response to this is called the unconditioned response (or UCR). The neutral stimulus (NS) is a
new stimulus that does not produce a response.
Once the neutral stimulus has become associated with the unconditioned stimulus, it becomes a
conditioned stimulus (CS). The conditioned response (CR) is the response to the conditioned
stimulus.

10. EDWARD L. THORNDIKE

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) was a professor of American Psychology, a disciple of William

James who developed a series of laws about trial and error learning. Thorndike's theories are
considered as the precursors of American behaviorism that would find its maximum exponent in the
figure of Skinner, father of operant conditioning.
 

1. Law of the preparation, that affirms that the preparation or disposition of the subject
contributes to the learning. In other words, that the own expectations of the subject constitute the
intrinsic reinforcement of all action.
2. Law of the exercise that sustains that the exercise or the practice of the appropriate response
contributes to strengthen the connection between the stimulus and the corresponding response.
 Law of effect. This is considered the most important. According to this law, the succession of
stimuli and responses is not enough for learning to occur. For the learning to happen,
reinforcement is needed. This is that when an act is followed by a reward it tends to repeat itself,
whereas when it is followed by a punishment the probability of its repetition decreases.

The law of effect principle developed by Edward Thorndike suggested that:

 "responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur
again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to
occur again in that situation (Gray, 2011, p. 108–109)."
 Edward Thorndike (1898) is famous in psychology for his work on learning theory that lead to
the development of operant conditioning within behaviorism.

 Whereas classical conditioning depends on developing associations between events, operant

conditioning involves learning from the consequences of our behavior.

 Skinner wasn’t the first psychologist to study learning by consequences.  Indeed, Skinner's
theory of operant conditioning is built on the ideas of Edward Thorndike.

 Thorndike studied learning in animals (usually cats).  He devised a classic experiment in which
he used a puzzle box (see fig. 1) to empirically test the laws of learning.

 Edward Thorndike put forward a “Law of effect” which stated that any behavior that is followed
by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and any behavior followed by unpleasant
consequences is likely to be stopped.
11. JOHN WATSON

John Watson and Behaviourism

John Watson (1878-1958) began the behaviourist movement in 1913 when he published the article:
‘Psychology as the behaviorist views it’. Behaviourism refers to a psychological school which
emphasises scientific and objective methods of investigation. Watson’s ‘manifesto’ stated a number
of underlying assumptions regarding methodology and behavioural analysis, made it clear
behaviourism focuses only on observable stimulus-response behaviours, and considers that all
behaviours are learned through events and situations within the environment.

Basic Assumptions
 All behaviour is learned from, and shaped by, the environment:
Behaviourism stresses how environmental factors influence behaviour, virtually ignoring innate or
inherited factors – which is essentially a learning perspective. Humans are born with a blank-slate
mind (tabula rasa) and learn new behaviours via classical or operant conditioning.
 Psychology should be regarded as a science:
Any theory must be supported by empirical data obtained via systematic observation and
measurement of behaviour. Theoretical components should be as simple as possible.
 Behaviourism is principally concerned with behaviour that can be observed, rather than with
internal events such thinking and emotion:
Though behaviourists largely accept the existence of cognitions and emotions, they prefer to study
them only observable in the context of what can be objectively and scientifically measured.
 Human learning is very similar to the learning which takes place in other animals:
This implies research can be conducted on animals as well as humans – what is known as
comparative psychology. For behaviourists, animal research became the primary source of data
simply because such environments could be easily controlled.
 Behaviour is the result of stimulus-response:
Even complex behaviours can be reduced to a simple stimulus-response association.
Watson’s approach is termed ‘methodological behaviourism’.
Practitioners should note that many ‘classic’ classroom management techniques (such as ‘time out’)
are based on behaviourist principles.
Little Albert
Without the benefit of modern-day ethical standards, a study conducted by Watson and Rayner
(1920) used an 11-month-old child, called Albert, as a subject.
Albert would cry at the sound of a steel bar being struck. For experimental purposes, Watson induced
fear of a white rat by presenting the animal to the child in association with the feared sound. Soon the
child also became fearful of the white rat, even in the absence of the sound.

12. BURRHUS FREDERICK SKINNER

Skinner - Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments
for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an individual makes an association between a
particular behavior and a consequence (Skinner, 1938).

By the 1920s, John B. Watson had left academic psychology, and other behaviorists were becoming
influential, proposing new forms of learning other than classical conditioning. Perhaps the most
important of these was Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Although, for obvious reasons, he is more
commonly known as B.F. Skinner.
Skinner's views were slightly less extreme than those of Watson (1913). Skinner believed that we do
have such a thing as a mind, but that it is simply more productive to study observable behavior rather
than internal mental events.

nces is likely to be repeated, and behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is less likely to be
repeated.
Skinner introduced a new term into the Law of Effect - Reinforcement. Behavior which is reinforced
tends to be repeated (i.e., strengthened); behavior which is not reinforced tends to die out-or be
extinguished (i.e., weakened).
Skinner (1948) studied operant conditioning by conducting experiments using animals which he
placed in a 'Skinner Box' which was similar to Thorndike’s puzzle box

Skinner identified three types of responses, or operant, that can follow behavior.
• Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither increase nor decrease the
probability of a behavior being repeated.
• Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a behavior being
repeated. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative.
• Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behavior being
repeated. Punishment weakens behavior.

We can all think of examples of how our own behavior has been affected by reinforcers and
punishers. As a child you probably tried out a number of behaviors and learned from their
consequences. 
For example, if when you were younger you tried smoking at school, and the chief consequence was
that you got in with the crowd you always wanted to hang out with, you would have been positively
reinforced (i.e., rewarded) and would be likely to repeat the behavior.
If, however, the main consequence was that you were caught, caned, suspended from school and
your parents became involved you would most certainly have been punished, and you would
consequently be much less likely to smoke now.

Positive Reinforcement
Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. The
box contained a lever on the side, and as the rat moved about the box, it would accidentally knock the
lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever.
The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The
consequence of receiving food if they pressed the lever ensured that they would repeat the action
again and again.
Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds
rewarding. For example, if your teacher gives you £5 each time you complete your homework (i.e., a
reward) you will be more likely to repeat this behavior in the future, thus strengthening the behavior of
completing your homework.

Negative Reinforcement
The removal of an unpleasant reinforcer can also strengthen behavior. This is known as negative
reinforcement because it is the removal of an adverse stimulus which is ‘rewarding’ to the animal or
person. Negative reinforcement strengthens behavior because it stops or removes an unpleasant
experience.
For example, if you do not complete your homework, you give your teacher £5. You will complete
your homework to avoid paying £5, thus strengthening the behavior of completing your homework.
Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by placing a rat in his Skinner box and then
subjecting it to an unpleasant electric current which caused it some discomfort. As the rat moved
about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so the electric current would be
switched off. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the
box. The consequence of escaping the electric current ensured that they would repeat the action
again and again.
In fact Skinner even taught the rats to avoid the electric current by turning on a light just before the
electric current came on. The rats soon learned to press the lever when the light came on because
they knew that this would stop the electric current being switched on.
These two learned responses are known as Escape Learning and Avoidance Learning.

Punishment (weakens behavior)
Punishment is defined as the opposite of reinforcement since it is designed to weaken or eliminate a
response rather than increase it. It is an aversive event that decreases the behavior that it follows.
Like reinforcement, punishment can work either by directly applying an unpleasant stimulus like a
shock after a response or by removing a potentially rewarding stimulus, for instance, deducting
someone’s pocket money to punish undesirable behavior.
Note: It is not always easy to distinguish between punishment and negative reinforcement.
There are many problems with using punishment, such as:
 Punished behavior is not forgotten, it's suppressed - behavior returns when punishment is no
longer present.
 Causes increased aggression - shows that aggression is a way to cope with problems.
 Creates fear that can generalize to undesirable behaviors, e.g., fear of school.
 Does not necessarily guide toward desired behavior - reinforcement tells you what to do,
punishment only tells you what not to do.

Schedules of Reinforcement
Imagine a rat in a “Skinner box.” In operant conditioning, if no food pellet is delivered immediately
after the lever is pressed then after several attempts the rat stops pressing the lever (how long would
someone continue to go to work if their employer stopped paying them?). The behavior has been
extinguished.
Behaviorists discovered that different patterns (or schedules) of reinforcement had different effects on
the speed of learning and extinction. Ferster and Skinner (1957) devised different ways of delivering
reinforcement and found that this had effects on

13. EDWARD TOLMAN

Tolman - Latent Learning

Latent learning is a type of learning which is not apparent in the learner's behavior at the time of
learning, but which manifests later when a suitable motivation and circumstances appear. The idea of
latent learning was not original to Tolman, but he developed it further.

Tolman argued that humans engage in this type of learning everyday as we drive or walk the same
route daily and learn the locations of various buildings and objects. Only when we need to find a
building or object does learning become obvious
Tolman conducted experiments with rats and mazes to examine the role that reinforcement plays in
the way that rats learn their way through complex mazes. These experiments eventually led to the
theory of latent learning
In their famous experiments Tolman and Honzik (1930) built a maze to investigate latent learning in
rats. The study also shows that rats actively process information rather than operating on a stimulus
response relationship.

Aim
To demonstrate that rats could make navigational decisions based on knowledge of the envi-ronment,
rather than their directional choices simply being dictated by the effects of rewards.

Procedure
In their study 3 groups of rats had to find their way around a complex maze. At the end of the maze
there was a food box. Some groups of rats got to eat the food, some did not, and for some rats the
food was only available after 10 days.
Group 1: Rewarded

 Day 1 – 17: Every time they got to end, given food (i.e. reinforced).
Group 2: Delayed Reward

 Day 1 - 10: Every time they got to end, taken out.

 Day 11 -17: Every time they got to end, given food (i.e. reinforced).

Group 3: No reward

 Day 1 – 17: Every time they got to end, taken out.

Results
The delayed reward group learned the route on days 1 to 10 and formed a cognitive map of the
maze. They took longer to reach the end of the maze because there was no motivation for them to
perform.
From day 11 onwards they had a motivation to perform (i.e. food) and reached the end before the
reward group.

his shows that between stimulus (the maze) and response (reaching the end of the maze) a
mediational process was occurring the rats were actively processing information in their brains by
mentally using their cognitive map (which they had latently learned).

Critical Evaluation
The behaviorists stated that psychology should study actual observable behavior, and that nothing
happens between stimulus and response (i.e. no cognitive processes take place).

14. ALBERT BANDURA

In social learning theory, Albert Bandura (1977) agrees with the behaviorist learning theories
of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. However, he adds two important ideas:

1. Mediating processes occur between stimuli & responses.

2. Behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning

Children observe the people around them behaving in various ways. This is illustrated during the
famous Bobo doll experiment(Bandura, 1961).

Individuals that are observed are called models. In society, children are surrounded by many
influential models, such as parents within the family, characters on children’s TV, friends within their
peer group and teachers at school. These models provide examples of behavior to observe and
imitate, e.g., masculine and feminine, pro and anti-social, etc.
Children pay attention to some of these people (models) and encodetheir behavior.  At a later time
they may imitate (i.e., copy) the behavior they have observed.
They may do this regardless of whether the behavior is ‘gender appropriate’ or not, but there are a
number of processes that make it more likely that a child will reproduce the behavior that its society
deems appropriate for its gender.
First, the child is more likely to attend to and imitate those people it perceives as similar to itself.
Consequently, it is more likely to imitate behavior modeled by people of the same gender.
Second, the people around the child will respond to the behavior it imitates with either reinforcement
or punishment.  If a child imitates a model’s behavior and the consequences are rewarding, the child
is likely to continue performing the behavior.  If a parent sees a little girl consoling her teddy bear and
says “what a kind girl you are,” this is rewarding for the child and makes it more likely that she will
repeat the behavior.  Her behavior has been reinforced (i.e., strengthened).
Reinforcement can be external or internal and can be positive or negative.  If a child wants approval
from parents or peers, this approval is an external reinforcement, but feeling happy about being
approved of is an internal reinforcement.  A child will behave in a way which it believes will earn
approval because it desires approval. 
Positive (or negative) reinforcement will have little impact if the reinforcement offered externally does
not match with an individual's needs.  Reinforcement can be positive or negative, but the important
factor is that it will usually lead to a change in a person's behavior.
Third, the child will also take into account of what happens to other people when deciding whether or
not to copy someone’s actions.  A person learns by observing the consequences of another person’s
(i.e., models) behavior, e.g., a younger sister observing an older sister being rewarded for a particular
behavior is more likely to repeat that behavior herself.  This is known as vicarious reinforcement.
This relates to an attachment to specific models that possess qualities seen as rewarding. Children
will have a number of models with whom they identify. These may be people in their immediate world,
such as parents or older siblings, or could be fantasy characters or people in the media. The
motivation to identify with a particular model is that they have a quality which the individual would like
to possess.
Identification occurs with another person (the model) and involves taking on (or adopting) observed
behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes of the person with whom you are identifying.
The term identification as used by Social Learning Theory is similar to the Freudian term related to
the Oedipus complex.  For example, they both involve internalizing or adopting another person’s
behavior.  However, during the Oedipus complex, the child can only identify with the same sex
parent, whereas with Social Learning Theory the person (child or adult) can potentially identify with
any other person.
Identification is different to imitation as it may involve a number of behaviors being adopted, whereas
imitation usually involves copying a single behavior.
There are four mediational processes proposed by Bandura:
1. Attention: The extent to which we are exposed/notice the behavior. For a behavior to be
imitated, it has to grab our attention. We observe many behaviors on a daily basis, and many
of these are not noteworthy. Attention is therefore extremely important in whether a behavior
influences others imitating it.
2. Retention: How well the behavior is remembered. The behavior may be noticed but is it not
always remembered which obviously prevents imitation. It is important therefore that a memory
of the behavior is formed to be performed later by the observer.
Much of social learning is not immediate, so this process is especially vital in those cases.
Even if the behavior is reproduced shortly after seeing it, there needs to be a memory to refer
to.
3. Reproduction: This is the ability to perform the behavior that the model has just
demonstrated. We see much behavior on a daily basis that we would like to be able to imitate
but that this not always possible. We are limited by our physical ability and for that reason,
even if we wish to reproduce the behavior, we cannot.
This influences our decisions whether to try and imitate it or not. Imagine the scenario of a 90-
year-old-lady who struggles to walk watching Dancing on Ice. She may appreciate that the skill
is a desirable one, but she will not attempt to imitate it because she physically cannot do it.
4. Motivation: The will to perform the behavior. The rewards and punishment that follow a
behavior will be considered by the observer. If the perceived rewards outweigh the perceived
costs (if there are any), then the behavior will be more likely to be imitated by the observer. If
the vicarious reinforcement is not seen to be important enough to the observer, then they will
not imitate the behavior.
Critical Evaluation
The social learning approach takes thought processes into account and acknowledges the role that
they play in deciding if a behavior is to be imitated or not. As such, SLT provides a more
comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognizing the role of mediational processes.
However, although it can explain some quite complex behavior, it cannot adequately account for how
we develop a whole range of behavior including thoughts and feelings. We have a lot of cognitive
control over our behavior and just because we have had experiences of violence does not mean we
have to reproduce such behavior.
It is for this reason that Bandura modified his theory and in 1986 renamed his Social Learning Theory,
Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), as a better description of how we learn from our social experiences.
Some criticisms of social learning theory arise from their commitment to the environment as the chief
influence on behavior. It is limiting to describe behavior solely in terms of either nature or nurture and
attempts to do this underestimate the complexity of human behavior. It is more likely that behavior is
due to an interaction between nature (biology) and nurture (environment).
Social learning theory is not a full explanation for all behavior. This is particularly the case when there
is no apparent role model in the person’s life to imitate for a given behavior.
The discovery of mirror neurons has lent biological support to the theory of social learning. Although
research is in its infancy the recent discovery of "mirror neurons" in primates may constitute a
neurological basis for imitation. These are neurons which fire both if the animal does something itself,
and if it observes the action being done by another.

15. WOLFGANG KOHLER

The gestalt movement may be considered to date from Wertheimer’s 1912 paper describing his
investigations of apparent movement. Köhler and Koffka had served as subjects for these
experiments. The movement began as a protest against the then prevailing views of analytic
introspectionism; later it opposed the various forms of associationist and behaviorist psychology. It
is fair to say that Kohler was a member of the “opposition” throughout his career. [SeeGestalt
Theory.]

Perception. To demonstrate that organization is a basic function that is not dependent on

associations of peripheral events, the gestalt psychologists employed several strategies. One was
the logical analysis of contradictions and hidden assumptions in traditional theories. Thus, with
regard to perception, Köhler analyzed the “constancy hypothesis,” an assumption that is implicit in
much psychological theorizing but not always recognized (1913). The constancy hypothesis
assumes a one-to-one correspondence between local peripheral stimulation and the perceptual
experience. Accordingly, if peripheral stimulation on various occasions is the same, the resulting
perception should in all cases be the same; conversely, differences in peripheral stimulation
should result in differences in perceptual experience. However, since the expected
correspondences did not occur, some explanation was required. The most plausible one seemed
to be that past learning experiences had supplied information not contained in the retinal
stimulation. The gestalt psychologists discarded the constancy hypothesis and argued that local
stimulation does not determine perceptual experience. They asserted instead that the effective
stimulus for a given perception is relational in character: what is seen in a given region is
determined not only by the stimulation arriving from that area but also by interaction among stimuli
arriving from neighboring or surrounding areas. Experimental research revealed that many
perceptions depend on such stimulus relationships. When the effective stimulus is defined in
relational terms, reference to past experience is often unnecessary. [SeeLearning, article
onDiscrimination Learning; Perception, article onPerceptual Constancy; see alsoZuckerman &
Rock 1957.]

Another tactic used to throw doubt on traditional explanations of behavior was to demonstrate
particular perceptual phenomena in animal subjects, to which judgments or unconscious
inferences presumably cannot be attributed. Thus Köhler (1915) demonstrated size constancy in
the perception of objects by hens and chimpanzees. In another series of experiments (1918)
Kohler proceeded to show that the perception of relations and of structural aspects is a primitive,
basic function. A hen was presented with two gray samples: a lighter one, A, and a darker one, B.
After the animal was trained to respond to B, further investigations were made to determine
whether the animal had learned a response to the absolute shade of B or to structural features of
a particular arrangement—i.e., to B as the darker of the two samples. The animal was presented
with a new pair of samples consisting of B and of C, C being darker than B. The majority of the
hens chose C. Köhler obtained similar results with chimpanzees, using size as a stimulus factor
as well as degree of brightness. These experiments supported the gestalt view of the priority of
structural properties in perception and learning. This problem (transposition discrimination) has
given rise to a large experimental literature, and attempts have been made to account for the
results without accepting the gestalt view of structure. [SeeLearning, article onDiscrimination
Learningsee alsoSpence 1937.]

Learning. The concept of organization was not limited by gestalt psychologists to the realm of
perceptual events; rather their aim was to show that similar structural principles are valid for
learning, memory, thinking, and other mental functions. Learning had traditionally been viewed as
the building up of associations. An association was defined as a bond or link in the mind between
two (or more) mental contents, A and B; they are so linked that activation of A will lead to the
recall of B. The two most important factors involved in the formation of such a bond were held to
be contiguity and frequency.

In his Gestalt Psychology Köhler offered several criticisms of associationist psychology. First, he

attacked the law of association by contiguity as being a purely mechanical principle:

Two processes A and B happen to occur together and, whatever the nature of A and B may be, a
bond is formed between them! I do not know a single law in physics or chemistry which could in
this respect be compared with the law of contiguity.... There are no examples of interaction in
which the nature of the interacting factors plays no part. And yet, in the classical law of association
by contiguity, the nature of the things which become associated is tacitly ignored. ([1929] 1947,
pp. 258—259)

Köhler argued that the nature of the A and B involved is essential in determining the facility with
which an association between them will be established. For example, pairs of meaningful words
are associated more readily than are pairs of nonsense syllables, because the former can more
easily be organized into a unified whole (see Epstein et al. 1960). In addition, Köhler asserted that
the subject presented with contiguous items does not receive them passively; were this the case,
very few associations would be formed. Instead, the subject strives actively to tie the items
together and may employ various strategies in order to accomplish this task. Köhler then
attempted to derive association from the principles of perceptual organization; in 1941 he reported
experiments de-signed to verify his thesis and concluded, “It seems no longer probable that
association is an indifferent bond between merely contiguous items. Our evidence tends to
support the view that associations are after-effects of specific organization or interaction” (1941, p.
502).

Recall. The associationist conception of recall neglected an important issue: the functionalrelation

between two items. Köhler (1940) revived and extended an argument made by the nineteenth-
century Danish philosopher Hoffding: to say merely that the later presentation of mental
content A leads to the recall of the associated item B omits a necessary prior step. Before Bcan
be recalled, the present perception (A’) must be related to the memory trace of A. As Köhler
explained Hoffding’s view, “any recall on the basis of a previous association presupposes...a more
immediate process,” the tendency of one mental process to select another, “for which there is no
other reason than their kin-ship” (1940, p. 127). Accordingly, a memory trace can be aroused not
only via a previously established connection but also by a present perceptual process on the basis
of the similarity of process and trace.

Köhler maintained that the activation of a memory trace by a percept is analogous to the grouping
which occurs in the perceptual field because of similarity or, more specifically, distinctive similarity.
This means that two objects in the visual field will be readily seen as a pair if they are similar to
each other and at the same time different from other objects present; if the same two objects are
presented in a field containing other similar units, they will not spontaneously be grouped together.
Contact between trace and percept is simply an extension of this principle into the temporal
dimension. This reasoning was subjected to, and substantiated by, experimental tests (see Köhler
& Restorff 1933–1935, part 2; Bartel 1937).

It is unfortunate that neither the Hoffding argument nor the experiments confirming it are widely
known among American psychologists. The explanation of recognition is a core problem in
psychology; an explanation based on the similarity between process and trace has important
implications for a variety of issues. On the basis of the Hoffding function Duncker (1945) explained
the emergence into awareness of specific memory contents during problem-solving processes.
Wallach analyzed the implications of the recognition function for the problem of the influence of
past experience on perception (1949) and studied the effects of memory modalities on recognition
(Wallach & Auerbach 1955). Other implications of Köhler’s argument are discussed by Rock
(1962).

Better known in the United States is the work of Köhler and Restorff on the role of organizational
factors in the realm of memory traces (1933–1935, part 1), which shows that the distinctive item in
a list is recalled better than the items that are similar to each other. Köhler and other gestalt psy
chologists have used this hypothesis to account for many phenomena of learning and retention.
Thus, they maintain that the difficulty of learning non-sense syllables is due to their homogeneity,
which makes it difficult to group and organize the material; that retroactive and proactive inhibition
is caused by the crowding of similar traces; and that the serial-position effect occurs because the
items at the beginning and the end of a list are more isolated than those in the middle and are
therefore better learned and retained. [SeeForgetting.] Other investigators have called into
question the validity of these perceptual analogies. In a more recent paper defending his views
Köhler recommended that the Restorff experiments be replicated (1958a).

Problem solving. Köhler’s most famous work is, of course, his study of the mentality of apes
(1917), based on investigations conducted at the anthropoid research station in Tenerife on
problem solving in chimpanzees. Köhler reported detailed observation on the chimpanzees’ use
and fabrication of simple tools (probably most widely noted is the account of the success of an
ape named Sultan in fitting together two short sticks to fashion one stick long enough to reach the
goal object); on the role of chance, play, and imitation; on the chimpanzees’ ability to build
structures (the box-stacking problem); on the role of perceptual aspects of the problem situation,
etc. Contrary to some secondary accounts of this work, Köhler was interested not only in
demonstrating the apes’ capacity for insightful solutions but also in determining why the animals
failed completely in certain situations (for example, in string-pulling tasks). In addition to the
experimental data, Köhler reported many qualitative observations of chimpanzee behavior.

The polemical part of The Mentality of Apes was aimed at E. L. Thorndike’s treatment of learning
and problem solving in animals. Thorndike had concluded that no evidence can be found of
insightful solutions. According to him, a correct response is made in the course of random trial-
and-error activity; on repeated trials this response is gradually strengthened in a purely automatic
and mechanical way, simply because the animal receives a reward shortly after it makes the
correct response. Thorndike’s law of effect has been widely accepted as an explanation of
learning in animals and man, and it was the foundation of Clark Hull’s attempt to construct a
systematic theory of behavior. Köhler argued that the puzzle-box situation with which Thorndike
confronted his animals is inherently incomprehensible, permitting no “survey of the whole
arrangement” ([1917] 1956, p. 23) and thus no possibility of problem solving. A true test for insight
requires a situation that is both intelligible and “completely visible to the animals. For if essential
portions of the experimental apparatus cannot be seen by the animals, how can they use their
intelligence faculties in tackling the situation?” (ibid., p. 23). [See articles onProblem
Solving; HullThorndike.]

According to Köhler, intelligence can be characterized as detour behavior—the ability to reach a

goal by roundabout means. Thus, many of the problems he used in his research were varieties of
detour: the goal object was so far away that it could be reached only by use of a stick; or the
object was so high up that the animal had to pull over a box to a place directly under it in order to
reach the object by standing on the box. Köhler concluded that the chimpanzees’ solution
behavior cannot be described as random trial and error with gradual mastery of the task. Instead,
the behavior indicated insight, that is, the perception of properties of the object in relation to
certain traits of the problem situation. Solution often comes about suddenly and seems to reflect
reorganization of the perceptual field.

Some aspects of this work have given rise to controversy. Köhler has been accused of using the
term “insight” to explain, rather than to describe, certain kinds of behavior. A careful reading of his
book reveals that this charge is unwarranted, and some years later Köhler himself said, by way of
refutation: “Apparently some readers interpreted this formulation as though it [insight] referred to a
mysterious mental agent or faculty which was made responsible for the apes’ behavior. Actually
nothing of this sort was intended when I wrote my report” ([1929] 1947, p. 341). Again, Köhler is
criticized for divorcing insight from the learning history of the animal and giving the impression that
problem solving is independent of past experience. Yet Köhler’s experimental procedure—starting
with simpler problems and proceeding to more complex ones—shows that he realized that
solution of the present problem depends on skill and knowledge acquired in the past. One
criticism for which there is some justification is that Köhler too sharply distinguished insightful
learning from trial-and-error learning.

Neurophysiology of perception. Köhler’s interest in the physical processes in the brain dates

back to the years on Tenerife. There he wrote a treatise (1920) tracing the parallels between
examples of dynamic self-distribution in physics and the nature of perceptual processes and thus
began a search for the neurological correlates of perceptual experience. He did not concern
himself with the micro-structure of the nervous system but concentrated on the macrophysical
processes that might take place in neural tissue, processes that are not subject to the constraints
normally thought to be effected by the cellular structure of this tissue. These macroscopic
processes thus would transcend the conventional picture of brain activity as a pattern of nerve
impulses running along individual fibers and shunted from pathway to pathway. Rather, the
processes would, at the cortical level, distribute themselves freely in the nervous tissue. Their
nature would depend on the laws of physics and on the physicochemical characteristics of nerve
tissue rather than on its microanatomy, while the specific form they would assume and their rough
localization would depend on the pattern of nerve processes originating in the sense organ.

It was to this end that Köhler directed his work on figural aftereffects. Figural aftereffects are those
distortions of shape and displacement that occur after a subject has been given a prolonged
exposure to a specific form pattern. Their existence fits well with the idea that the
neurophysiological correlate of pattern vision is to a degree free from micro-anatomical
constraints. Under favorable conditions such distortions or displacements can be quite
conspicuous and can therefore be measured by compensation or by matching.

By experimentation Köhler established a single rule that permits prediction of the directions, but
not the magnitudes, of the displacement of the aftereffect: There will be a receding from areas
where contours or boundaries of an inspection figure have previously been located. This rule also
applies to Gibson’s form-adaptation phenomena, the first figural aftereffects to have been
discovered (Gibson 1933).

16. Report Advertisement

Köhler’s explanation of figural afteraffects is based on his assumption that direct currents are
generated in the cortex at the boundaries between areas of different neural excitation. Such
boundaries are the cortical correlate of differences in intensities of stimulation, that is, of retinal
contours. The cortical-current theory is hard to test. A demonstration of the existence of direct
currents generated in the cortex and dependent on stimulation does not suffice. The role of direct
 currents in pattern vision needs to be demonstrated. The demonstrations attempted by Lashley
(Lashley et al. 1951) and by Sperry (Sperry & Miner 1955; Sperry et al. 1955) were not successful,
but their negative results were not conclusive. Kohler (1965) correctly criticized Lashley’s
technique and found good cause to doubt Sperry’s results. The electric-current theory has not
been developed to the point where predictions about figural aftereffects or other perceptual
phenomena can be made so specific that they can be tested by psychological experimentation.
Until more is known about nerve tissue as a medium for direct current, such a development will
not be possible.

17. KURT KOFFKA

Working with Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka helped establish the

theories of Gestalt psychology. It was Koffka who promoted this new psychology in Europe
and introduced it to the United States. He was responsible for systematizing Gestalt
psychology into a coherent body of theories. He extended Gestalt theories to developmental
psychology, and his ideas about perception, interpretation, and learning influenced American
educational theories and policies.

Koffka's first published research, an examination of his own color blindness, was carried out in the
physiology laboratory of Wilibald Nagel. Koffka completed his doctoral research at Berlin, on the
perception of musical and visual rhythms, under Carl Stumpf, one of the major experimental
psychologists of the time.

Cofounds Gestalt psychology

Koffka moved to the University of Freiburg in 1909, as assistant to the physiologist Johannes von
Kries, a professor on the medical faculty. Shortly thereafter, he became an assistant to Oswald Külpe
and Karl Marbe at the University of Würzburg, a major center of experimental psychology. That
same year, Koffka married Mira Klein, who had been an experimental subject for his doctoral
research. It was Koffka's next move, in 1910, that was to prove the most fateful for his career. Koffka
and Köhler both went to work as assistants to Friedrich Schumann at the Psychological Institute in
Frankfurt am Main. They shared a laboratory with Wertheimer, who was studying the perception of
motion. Soon, Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler were establishing the theoretical and experimental
basis of Gestalt psychology. Their new approach rejected the mechanistic psychology of the
nineteenth century, which had attempted to reduce experience and perception into smaller
components or sensations. Instead, they favored a holistic approach to perception. Wertheimer had
studied with the phenomenologist Christian von Ehrenfels, and the three scientists tried to combine
this philosophy with experimental methods. Koffka left to take a position as lecturer at the

Applies Gestalt principles to child development

Koffka's major work extending Gestalt theory to developmental psychology was published in 1921. He
maintained that infants first perceive and respond holistically. Only later are they able to perceive the
individual sensations that comprise the whole. Soon, Koffka was being invited to lecture in the United
States, where his ideas were well received by psychologists. In 1922, he published his first English-
language paper, on Gestalt theories of perception, in Psychological Bulletin. Robert Ogden, the editor
of the Bulletin, translated Koffka's work on developmental psychology, and it was published in 1924
as The Growth of the Mind: An Introduction to Child Psychology. Translated into numerous
languages, this work had a major influence on theories of learning and development. In 1923, Koffka
divorced his wife and married Elisabeth Ahlgrimm, who had just finished her Ph.D. at Giessen.
However, they were divorced in the same year and he remarried his first wife.

Gestalt psychology was strongly opposed by the traditional psychologists of German academia, and
Koffka, as the public advocate for Gestalt, encountered many obstacles to advancement in Germany.
Therefore, he spent 1924-1925 as a visiting professor at Cornell University and 1926-1927 at the
University of Wisconsin. In 1927, Koffka was offered a five-year appointment as the William Allan
Neilson Research Professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. The non-teaching
position included an equipped and funded laboratory staffed with assistants. He continued his
research on visual perception, and his results were published in the four-volume Smith College
Studies in Psychology (1930-1933), as well as in the German Gestalt journal that he continued to
edit. Koffka remained a professor of psychology at Smith until his death. In 1928, he was divorced
again and he remarried his second wife, Ahlgrimm.

18. MAX MERTHEIMER

The Gestalt Theory (Gestaltism)

According to the Gestalt Theory, which is commonly known as the Law of Simplicity, every

stimulus is perceived by humans in its “most simple form”. The main focus of the theory is “grouping”
and the entire theory emphasizes on the fact that the whole of anything is greater than the sum of its
parts. Besides, “gestalt” in German means the “shape of an entity’s complete form”. Thus, the
operational principle of the brain is holistic and has a self-organizing inclination.

The 4 Laws of Organization

The factors that determine the principle of “grouping” –also known as the “laws of organization”- are
the following:

1. Proximity
Elements are typically grouped together based on their immediacy
2. Similarity
Elements similar to one another tend to be grouped together
3. Closure
Elements are typically grouped together if they are a part of an entity
4. Simplicity
Elements should be organized into simplistic figures, based on their symmetry, smoothness
and regularity
The primary goal of the Gestalt Theory is to encourage the brain to view not just the whole, but also
the parts that make up that whole. For example, when someone is looking at a tree, is he just staring
at this tree, or does he also see the leaves, the branches, and the trunk? The whole and the sum of
its parts are two entirely different things, and learning can be achieved if learners are able to
cognitively process how parts can make up this whole.

The main principles of the Gestalt Theory

The main principles of the Gestalt Theory in Learning are:

1. Teachers should encourage their students to discover the relationship of the elements that
make up a problem
2. Incongruities, gaps, or disturbances are essential stimuli in the learning process
3. Educational instruction should be based on the Laws of Organization
In a learning environment, the Gestalt Theory applies to problem solving and perception. However, it
can be used in all aspects of education. A perfect example was provided by Wertheimer himself,
when he asked children to find the area of a parallelogram. He suggested that, as long as
parallelograms had a normal shape, the children could apply the standard procedure in order to
determine the area. However, if the parallelogram had an irregular shape, children could not apply the
same logic or principles, but had to solve the problem by understanding the actual structure of the
shape.

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19. ROBERT GAGNE

Conditions of Learning (Robert Gagne)
This theory stipulates that there are several different types or levels of learning. The significance of
these classifications is that each different type requires different types of instruction. Gagne identifies
five major categories of learning: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor
skills and attitudes. Different internal and external conditions are necessary for each type of learning.
For example, for cognitive strategies to be learned, there must be a chance to practice developing
new solutions to problems; to learn attitudes, the learner must be exposed to a credible role model or
persuasive arguments.

Gagne suggests that learning tasks for intellectual skills can be organized in a hierarchy according to
complexity: stimulus recognition, response generation, procedure following, use of terminology,
discriminations, concept formation, rule application, and problem solving. The primary significance of
the hierarchy is to identify prerequisites that should be completed to facilitate learning at each level.
Prerequisites are identified by doing a task analysis of a learning/training task. Learning hierarchies
provide a basis for the sequencing of instruction.

In addition, the theory outlines nine instructional events and corresponding cognitive processes:

1. Gaining attention (reception)

2. Informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
3. Stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)
4. Presenting the stimulus (selective perception)
5. Providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
6. Eliciting performance (responding)
7. Providing feedback (reinforcement)
8. Assessing performance (retrieval)
9. Enhancing retention and transfer (generalization).
These events should satisfy or provide the necessary conditions for learning and serve as the basis
for designing instruction and selecting appropriate media (Gagne, Briggs & Wager, 1992).

Application
While Gagne’s theoretical framework covers all aspects of learning, the focus of the theory is on
intellectual skills. The theory has been applied to the design of instruction in all domains (Gagner &
Driscoll, 1988). In its original formulation (Gagne, 1 962), special attention was given to military
training settings. Gagne (1987) addresses the role of instructional technology in learning.
Example
The following example illustrates a teaching sequence corresponding to the nine instructional events
for the objective, Recognize an equilateral triangle:

1. Gain attention – show variety of computer generated triangles

2. Identify objective – pose question: “What is an equilateral triangle?”
 3. Recall prior learning – review definitions of triangles
4. Present stimulus – give definition of equilateral triangle
5. Guide learning- show example of how to create equilateral
6. Elicit per formance – ask students to create 5 different examples
7. Provide feedback – check all examples as correct/incorrect
8. Assess performance- provide scores and remediation
9. Enhance retention/transfer – show pictures of objects and ask students to identify equilaterals
Gagne (1985, chapter 12) provides examples of events for each category of learning outcomes.

Principles
1. Different instruction is required for different learning outcomes.
2. Events of learning operate on the learner in ways that constitute the conditions of learning.
3. The specific operations that constitute instructional events are different for each different type
of learning outcome.
4. Learning hierarchies define what intellectual skills are to be learned and a sequence of
instruction.

20. DAVID P. AUSUBEL

Ausubel’s theory is concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material from
verbal/textual presentations in a school setting (in contrast to theories developed in the context of
laboratory experiments). According to Ausubel, learning is based upon the kinds of superordinate,
representational, and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of information. A
primary process in learning is subsumption in which new material is related to relevant ideas in the
existing cognitive structure on a substantive, non-verbatim basis. Cognitive structures represent the
residue of all learning experiences; forgetting occurs because certain details get integrated and lose
their individual identity.

A major instructional mechanism proposed by Ausubel is the use of advance organizers:

“These organizers are introduced in advance of learning itself, and are also presented at a higher
level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness; and since the substantive content of a given
organizer or series of organizers is selected on the basis of its suitability for explaining, integrating,
and interrelating the material they precede, this strategy simultaneously satisfies the substantive as
well as the programming criteria for enhancing the organization strength of cognitive structure.” (1963
, p. 81).

Ausubel emphasizes that advance organizers are different from overviews and summaries which
simply emphasize key ideas and are presented at the same level of abstraction and generality as the
rest of the material. Organizers act as a subsuming bridge between new learning material and
existing related ideas.

Ausubel’s theory has commonalities with Gestalt theories and those that involve schema (e.g.,

Bartlett< ) as a central principle. There are also similarities with Bruner’s “spiral learning” model ,
although Ausubel emphasizes that subsumption involves reorganization of existing cognitive
structures not the development of new structures as constructivist theories suggest. Ausubel was
apparently influenced by the work of Piaget on cognitive development.
Application
Ausubel clearly indicates that his theory applies only to reception (expository) learning in school
settings. He distinguishes reception learning from rote and discovery learning; the former because it
doesn’t involve subsumption (i.e., meaningful materials) and the latter because the learner must
discover information through problem solving. A large number of studies have been conducted on the
effects of advance organizers in learning (see Ausubel, 1968, 1978).

Example
Ausubel (1963, p. 80) cites Boyd’s textbook of pathology as an example of progressive differentiation
because the book presents information according to general processes (e.g., inflammation,
degeneration) rather than by describing organ systems in isolation. He also cites the Physical
Science Study Committee curriculum which organizes material according to the major ideas of
physics instead of piece-meal discussion of principle or phenomenon (p. 78).

Principles
1. The most general ideas of a subject should be presented first and then progressively
differentiated in terms of detail and specificity.
2. Instructional materials should attempt to integrate new material with previously presented
information through comparisons and cross-referencing of new and old ideas.

21. JEROME BRUNER

In his research on the cognitive development of children,  Jerome Bruner proposed three modes of
representation:
 Enactive representation (action-based)
 Iconic representation (image-based)
 Symbolic representation (language-based)

Bruner's constructivist theory suggests it is effective when faced with new material to follow a

progression from enactive to iconic to symbolic representation; this holds true even for adult learners.
Bruner's work also suggests that a learner even of a very young age is capable of learning any
material so long as the instruction is organized appropriately, in sharp contrast to the beliefs of Piaget
and other stage theorists.

Enactive (0 - 1 years)
The first kind of memory. This mode is used within the first year of life (corresponding with Piaget’s
sensorimotor stage). Thinking is based entirely on physical actions, and infants learn by doing,
rather than by internal representation (or thinking).
It involves encoding physical action based information and storing it in our memory. For example, in
the form of movement as a muscle memory, a baby might remember the action of shaking a rattle.
This mode continues later in many physical activities, such as learning to ride a bike.
Many adults can perform a variety of motor tasks (typing, sewing a shirt, operating a lawn mower)
that they would find difficult to describe in iconic (picture) or symbolic (word) form.

Iconic (1 - 6 years)
Information is stored as sensory images (icons), usually visual ones, like pictures in the mind. For
some, this is conscious; others say they don’t experience it.
This may explain why, when we are learning a new subject, it is often helpful to have diagrams or
illustrations to accompany the verbal information.
Thinking is also based on the use other mental images (icons), such as hearing, smell or touch.

Symbolic (7 years onwards)

This develops last. This is where information is stored in the form of a code or symbol, such
as language. This mode is acquired around six to seven years-old (corresponding to Piaget’s
concrete operational stage).
In the symbolic stage, knowledge is stored primarily as words, mathematical symbols, or in other
symbol systems, such as music.
Symbols are flexible in that they can be manipulated, ordered, classified etc., so the user isn’t
constrained by actions or images (which have a fixed relation to that which they represent).
The Importance of Language
Language is important for the increased ability to deal with abstract concepts. Bruner argues that
language can code stimuli and free an individual from the constraints of dealing only with
appearances, to provide a more complex yet flexible cognition.
The use of words can aid the development of the concepts they represent and can remove the
constraints of the “here & now” concept. Bruner views the infant as an intelligent & active problem
solver from birth, with intellectual abilities basically similar to those of the mature adult.

Educational Implications
The aim of education should be to create autonomous learners (i.e., learning to learn).
For Bruner (1961), the purpose of education is not to impart knowledge, but instead to facilitate a
child's thinking and problem-solving skills which can then be transferred to a range of situations.
Specifically, education should also develop symbolic thinking in children.
In 1960 Bruner's text, The Process of Education was published. The main premise of Bruner's text
was that students are active learners who construct their own knowledge.
Bruner (1960) opposed Piaget's notion of readiness. He argued that schools waste time trying to
match the complexity of subject material to a child's cognitive stage of development.
This means students are held back by teachers as certain topics are deemed too difficult to
understand and must be taught when the teacher believes the child has reached the appropriate state
of cognitive maturity.
Bruner (1960) adopts a different view and believes a child (of any age) is capable of understanding
complex information: 'We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some
intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.' (p. 33)
Bruner (1960) explained how this was possible through the concept of the spiral curriculum. This
involved information being structured so that complex ideas can be taught at a simplified level first,
and then re-visited at more complex levels later on.
Therefore, subjects would be taught at levels of gradually increasing difficultly (hence the spiral
analogy). Ideally, teaching his way should lead to children being able to solve problems by
themselves.
Bruner (1961) proposes that learners’ construct their own knowledge and do this by organizing and
categorizing information using a coding system. Bruner believed that the most effective way to
develop a coding system is to discover it rather than being told it by the teacher.
The concept of discovery learning implies that students construct their own knowledge for
themselves (also known as a constructivist approach).
The role of the teacher should not be to teach information by rote learning, but instead to facilitate the
learning process. This means that a good teacher will design lessons that help students discover the
relationship between bits of information.
To do this a teacher must give students the information they need, but without organizing for them.
The use of the spiral curriculum can aid the process of discovery learning.

Bruner and Vygotsky

Both Bruner and Vygotsky emphasize a child's environment, especially the social environment, more
than Piaget did. Both agree that adults should play an active role in assisting the child's learning.
Bruner, like Vygotsky, emphasized the social nature of learning, citing that other people should help a
child develop skills through the process of scaffolding.
'[Scaffolding] refers to the steps taken to reduce the degrees of freedom in carrying out some task so
that the child can concentrate on the difficult skill she is in the process of acquiring' (Bruner, 1978, p.
19).
The term scaffolding first appeared in the literature when Wood, Bruner, and Ross described how
tutors' interacted with a preschooler to help them solve a block reconstruction problem (Wood et al.,
1976).
The concept of scaffolding is very similar to Vygotsky's notion of the zone of proximal development,
and it's not uncommon for the terms to be used interchangeably.
Scaffolding involves helpful, structured interaction between an adult and a child with the aim of
helping the child achieve a specific goal. The purpose of the support is to allow the child to achieve
higher levels of development by:

1. simplifying the task or idea

2. motivating and encouraging the child
3. Highlighting important task elements or errors
4. Giving models that can be imitated.

Bruner and Piaget

Obviously, there are similarities between Piaget and Bruner, but an important difference is that
Bruner’s modes are not related in terms of which presuppose the one that precedes it. While
sometimes one mode may dominate in usage, they coexist.
Bruner states that what determines the level of intellectual development is the extent to which the
child has been given appropriate instruction together with practice or experience.
So - the right way of presentation and the right explanation will enable a child to grasp a concept
usually only understood by an adult. His theory stresses the role of education and the adult.
Although Bruner proposes stages of cognitive development, he doesn’t see them as representing
different separate modes of thought at different points of development (like Piaget).
Instead, he sees a gradual development of cognitive skills and techniques into more integrated “adult”
cognitive techniques.
Bruner views symbolic representation as crucial for cognitive development, and since language is
our primary means of symbolizing the world, he attaches great importance to language in determining
cognitive development.

BRUNER AGREES WITH

PIAGET BRUNER DISAGREES WITH PIAGET

Children are innately PRE- Social factors, particularly language, were

ADAPTED to learning important for cognitive growth. These
underpin the concept of ‘scaffolding’.

Children have a NATURAL The development of LANGUAGE is a cause

CURIOSITY not a consequence of cognitive development
BRUNER AGREES WITH
PIAGET BRUNER DISAGREES WITH PIAGET

Children’s COGNITIVE You can SPEED-UP cognitive development.

STRUCTURES develop You don’t have to wait for the child to be ready
over time

Children are ACTIVE The involvement of ADULTS and MORE

participants in the learning KNOWLEDGEABLE PEERS makes a big
process difference

Cognitive development The involvement of ADULTS and MORE

entails the acquisition of KNOWLEDGEABLE PEERS makes a big
SYMBOLS difference

22. BENJAMIN BLOOM

The Three Domains of Learning

The committee identified three domains of educational activities or learning (Bloom, et al.

1956):

o Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)

o Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)

o Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

Since the work was produced by higher education, the words tend to be a little bigger than
we normally use. Domains may be thought of as categories. Instructional designers,
trainers, and educators often refer to these three categories as KSA
(Knowledge  [cognitive], Skills  [psychomotor], and Attitudes [affective]). This taxonomy of
learning behaviors may be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” That is, after a
learning episode, the learner should have acquired a new skill, knowledge, and/or attitude.

Cognitive Domain

The cognitive domain involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills (Bloom,
1956). This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural patterns, and
concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and skills. There are six
major categories of cognitive an processes, starting from the simplest to the most complex
(see the table below  for an in-depth coverage of each category):

o Knowledge
o Comprehension
 o Application
o Analysis
o Synthesis
o Evaluation

The categories can be thought of as degrees of difficulties. That is, the first ones must
normally be mastered before the next one can take place.

23. ROBERT J. STENBERG

Sternberg's Theory of Intelligence and Information Processing

Intelligence is one of the most complex, talked about concepts within the field of psychology. In the
past century, several theories about what constitutes intelligence have been created. Robert
Sternberg, an American psychologist, created one of the most well-known theories of intelligence.
Unlike most theories of intelligence, Sternberg's theory calls for the integration of intelligence and
creativity.
According to Robert Sternberg's theory, there are three basic mental processes that underlie all
intelligent behavior. The three basic mental processes are:

 Metacomponents
 Performance components
 Knowledge-acquisition components

Although what is viewed as intelligent in one culture might not be viewed as intelligent in another, the
basic mental processes are the same across different cultures.
Metacomponents are the executive processes that we use to solve problems, plan what to do, make
decisions, and evaluate outcomes. Performance components carry out the directions of the
metacomponents. It is performance components that allow us to store information in short-term
memory, compare two concepts, compare solutions to the task, etc. Knowledge-acquisition
components are what we use to learn and store new information. In other words, metacomponents
tell us what to do, performance components actually do it, and knowledge-acquisition components
make sure we learn things along the way.
For example, you may plan to read a book - that involves metacomponents. When you grab a book
off the shelf and actually read it, that involves performance components. If you learn new vocabulary
words while reading, that involves knowledge-acquisition components.

Three Parts of Intelligence

So what makes a person intelligent? According to Sternberg, intelligence cannot be defined by
intelligence tests such as the Stanford-Binet scales. Rather, intelligence should be defined in terms of
how you perform in your everyday world.
Sternberg refers to what he calls successful intelligence. People who are successfully intelligent are
able to define and achieve their own idea of success within their culture. People who are successfully
intelligent are skilled at adapting to and modifying their environment to fit their needs. Because your
intelligence is highly dependent upon the culture that you live in, an individual that is considered
intelligent in one culture might not be considered intelligent in another.

24. ELLIS PAUL TORRANCE

1. Creativity. Torrance devoted his career to teaching and researching creativity. His interest in
creativity emerged in 1937 from his observation that many his difficult student went on to
become successful in life and work. During his working for the U.S. Air Force (1951-57), he
developed his survival definition of creativity, which stated that  a courageous risk- taking is
 essential for creativity.
Later he defines creativity as “…the process of sensing gaps or disturbing, missing elements;
forming ideas or hypotheses concerning them; testing these hypotheses; and communicating
the results, possibly modifying and retesting the hypotheses” (1962).
2. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) or Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking
(MTCT).
3. Threshold hypothesis. Torrance proposed popular model is what has come to be known as
“the threshold hypothesis”, which holds that, in a general sample, there will be a positive
correlation between low creativity and intelligence scores, but a correlation will not be found
with higher scores.

4. Future Problem Solving Program. Torrance created the Future Problem Solving Program
and developed the Incubation Model of Teaching, which has now expanded and reached over
250,000 students internationally.
This program stimulates critical and creative thinking skills, extend perceptions of the real
world, encourages students to develop a vision for the future, Integrate problem solving into
the curriculum, offer authentic assessment and prepares students for leadership roles.”

5. Manifesto for Children (1983).

1.Don’t be afraid to fall in love with something & pursue it with intensity.
2.Know, understand, take pride in, practice, develop, exploit, & enjoy your greatest strengths.
3.Learn to free yourself from the expectations of others and to walk away from the games they
impose on you.
4.Find a great teacher or mentor who will help you.
5.Don’t waste energy trying to be well rounded.
6.Do what you love and can do well.
7.Learn the skill of interdependence.

6. Manifesto for Adults (by E. Paul Torrance and Garnet Millar).

Being a Beyonder means doing your very best, going beyond where you have been before,
and going beyond where others have gone.

1.The beyonders take delight in deep thinking.

2.They are tolerant of mistakes by themselves and others.
3.They are able to feel comfortable as a minority of one.
4.They love the work that they do and do it well.
5.They have a sense of mission and have the courage to be creative.
6.They do not waste needless energy trying to be well-rounded.

25. ALEX OSBORN

THE GROUP

The optimum size for a brainstorming group seems to be six to twelve members, and the
optimum group consists of women as well as men. Brainstorming is a total-group effort.
Breaking into smaller groups would defeat the purpose of the brainstorming session

BEGINNING

Prior to the actual session, group members should be provided with a one-page memorandum
that states the problem to be considered and outlines the brainstorming procedure.

At the beginning of the actual session, if group members are not already acquainted with one
another, they should be introduced (a getting-acquainted activity can be used for this). It is a
good idea to conduct a warm-up activity, with the group members directed to brainstorm
solutions to a simple problem that is unrelated to the topic of the actual session.

THE PROCESS

The leader begins the work session by stating the problem or topic in specific, not general,
terms. The problem should be simple rather than complex, so that the group can focus on a
 single target. The leader should have a list of categories, classifications, or leads (new uses,
adaptation, modification, increase, decrease, substitute, rearrange, combine) that can be
suggested to the group members if they seem to be getting off track. The leader also can have
a few ideas about solutions ready to throw in when the group seems to lag. It seems to work
best if one idea at a time is offered by any one member. This allows all members the space to
participate and encourages “piggybacking” on previous ideas. A recorder (not necessarily the
leader) lists all ideas (but not who suggested them) on newsprint as soon as they are
generated. This list is positioned so that all members can see it. The session also may be tape
recorded to make sure that no ideas are lost.

The Rules of Brainstorming:

1. There is no criticism, evaluation, judgment, or defense of ideas during the brainstorming

session. The purpose of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas related to the topic
as possible in the time allowed. Evaluation, judgment, and selection of ideas are the
purposes of subsequent sessions.

2. Free wheeling and free association is encouraged. Group members are asked to voice
any solutions they can think of, no matter how outrageous or impractical The Pfeiffer
Library Volume 26, 2nd Edition. Copyright © 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 3 they
seem. There is no limit on “wild” or “far-fetched” ideas. Every idea is to be expressed. It
is easier to tone down an idea and to select out later than it is to think up new and
creative possibilities.

3. Quantity is more desired than quality. Group members are encouraged to contribute as
many ideas as they think of. The greater the number of ideas generated, the more likely
it is that there will be several useful ideas.

4. Building on ideas is encouraged. Combining, adding to, and “piggybacking” on ideas is

part of the creative process. Members can suggest improvements, variations, or
combinations of previous ideas.

26. ABRAHAM MASLOW

The original hierarchy of needs five-stage model includes:

Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs
take precedence over others. Our most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first
thing that motivates our behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates us,
and so on.
1. Physiological needs - these are biological requirements for human survival, e.g. air, food, drink,
shelter, clothing, warmth, sex, sleep.
If these needs are not satisfied the human body cannot function optimally. Maslow considered
physiological needs the most important as all the other needs become secondary until these needs
are met.
2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, freedom from fear.
3. Love and belongingness needs - after physiological and safety needs have been fulfilled, the
third level of human needs is social and involves feelings of belongingness. The need for
interpersonal relationships motivates behavior
Examples include friendship, intimacy, trust, and acceptance, receiving and giving affection and love.
Affiliating, being part of a group (family, friends, work).
4. Esteem needs - which Maslow classified into two categories: (i) esteem for oneself (dignity,
achievement, mastery, independence) and (ii) the desire for reputation or respect from others (e.g.,
status, prestige).
Maslow indicated that the need for respect or reputation is most important for children and
adolescents and precedes real self-esteem or dignity.
5. Self-actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal
growth and peak experiences. A desire “to become everything one is capable of
becoming”

5. RESEARCH ANY SHORT ARTICLE, JOURNAL, THESIS OR A DISSERTATION ON

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983, the theory of multiple intelligences has

revolutionized how we understand intelligence. Learn more about the research behind his
theory.

Many educators have had the experience of not being able to reach some students until
presenting the information in a completely different way or providing new options for
student expression. Perhaps it was a student who struggled with writing until the teacher
provided the option to create a graphic story, which blossomed into a beautiful and complex
narrative. Or maybe it was a student who just couldn't seem to grasp fractions, until he
created them by separating oranges into slices.

Because of these kinds of experiences, the theory of multiple intelligences resonates with
many educators. It supports what we all know to be true: A one-size-fits-all approach to
education will invariably leave some students behind. However, the theory is also often
misunderstood, which can lead to it being used interchangeably with  learning styles or
applying it in ways that can limit student potential. While the theory of multiple intelligences
is a powerful way to think about learning, it’s also important to understand the research that
supports it.

Howard Gardner's Eight Intelligences

The theory of multiple intelligences challenges the idea of a single IQ, where human beings
have one central "computer" where intelligence is housed. Howard Gardner, the Harvard
professor who originally proposed the theory, says that there are multiple types of human
intelligence, each representing different ways of processing information:

 Verbal-linguistic intelligence refers to an individual's ability to analyze information and

produce work that involves oral and written language, such as speeches, books, and
emails.

 Logical-mathematical intelligence describes the ability to develop equations and proofs,

make calculations, and solve abstract problems.
  Visual-spatial intelligence allows people to comprehend maps and other types of graphical
information.

 Musical intelligence enables individuals to produce and make meaning of different types of
sound.

 Naturalistic intelligence refers to the ability to identify and distinguish among different types
of plants, animals, and weather formations found in the natural world.

 Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails using one's own body to create products or solve
problems.

 Interpersonal intelligence reflects an ability to recognize and understand other people's

moods, desires, motivations, and intentions.

 Intrapersonal intelligence refers to people's ability to recognize and assess those same
characteristics within themselves.

The Difference Between Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles

One common misconception about multiple intelligences is that it means the same thing as
learning styles. Instead, multiple intelligences represents different intellectual abilities.
Learning styles, according to Howard Gardner, are the ways in which an individual
approaches a range of tasks. They have been categorized in a number of different ways --
visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, impulsive and reflective, right brain and left brain, etc.
Gardner argues that the idea of learning styles does not contain clear criteria for how one
would define a learning style, where the style comes, and how it can be recognized and
assessed. He phrases the idea of learning styles as "a hypothesis of how an individual
approaches a range of materials."

Everyone has all eight types of the intelligences listed above at varying levels of aptitude
-- perhaps even more that are still undiscovered --  and all learning experiences do not have
to relate to a person's strongest area of intelligence. For example, if someone is skilled at
learning new languages, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they prefer to learn through
lectures. Someone with high visual-spatial intelligence, such as a skilled painter, may still
benefit from using rhymes to remember information. Learning is fluid and complex, and it’s
important to avoid labeling students as one type of learner. As Gardner states, "When one
has a thorough understanding of a topic, one can typically think of it in several ways."

What Multiple Intelligences Theory Can Teach Us

While additional research is still needed to determine the best measures for assessing and
supporting a range of intelligences in schools, the theory has provided opportunities to
broaden definitions of intelligence. As an educator, it is useful to think about the different
ways that information can be presented. However, it is critical to not classify students as
being specific types of learners nor as having an innate or fixed type of intelligence.
Practices Supported by Research
Having an understanding of different teaching approaches from which we all can learn,  as
well as a toolbox with a variety of ways to present content to students, is valuable for
increasing the accessibility of learning experiences for all students. To develop this
toolbox, it is especially important to gather ongoing information about student strengths and
challenges as well as their developing interests and activities they dislike. Providing
different contexts for students and engaging a variety of their senses -- for example,
learning about fractions through musical notes, flower petals, and poetic meter
-- is supported by research. Specifically:

 Providing students with multiple ways to access content improves learning (Hattie, 2011).

 Providing students with multiple ways to demonstrate knowledge and skills increases
engagement and learning, and provides teachers with more accurate understanding of
students' knowledge and skills (Darling-Hammond, 2010).

 Instruction should be informed as much as possible by detailed knowledge about students'

specific strengths, needs, and areas for growth (Tomlinson, 2014).

6. PRACTICE TEST IN THEO 2 – FACILITATING LEARNING

Saint Anthony College of Technology

Mabalacat, Pampanga
PRACTICE TEST IN THEORY II – FACILITATING LEARNING
Name: ________________________________ Course/Year: _______ Date: __________ Rating: _____

True or False
___False__1. B. F. Skinner is considered the father of behaviorism.
___False__2. In the original classical conditioning experiments, the sound of the bell is considered the
conditioned response.
___True__3. In the original classical conditioning experiments, the salivation after being presented with food is
considered an unconditioned response.
___False__4. In Operant conditioning, the response comes after the consequence.
___True__5. Positive reinforcement refers to adding something positive in order to increase the probability of
a behavior occurring.
___False__6. Negative reinforcement refers to the adding of something negative in order to reduce the
probability of a behavior occurring.
___True__7. Slot machines work well because they are based on a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement.
___False__8. Not using a candy machine again after losing money one time represents a major problem with
variable interval schedules of reinforcement.
___True__9. The experiments in classical conditioning were originally developed by Ivan Pavlov after
accidentally stumbling on the phenomenon.
___True__10. Conditioning could be considered synonymous with learning in that a conditioned response
occurs only after it has been learned.
Write the letter of the correct answer on the blank provided for:
___D__11. Which of the following is a law of learning?
(a) Law of readiness (b) Law of exercise (c) Law of effect (d) All the above.
___B__12. Mental development includes
(a) External and internal organs (b) reasoning and thinking (c) Ethical and moral (d) emotional
maturity.
___C__13. Through which of the following methods, desirable channels are provided for the release of
emotional energy?
(a) Inhibition (b) Sublimation (c) Catharsis (d) Repression.
___A__14. The rate of progress in learning slows down and reaches a limit beyond which further improvement
seems impossible. It is known as
(a) Plateau (b) loss of interest (c) Boredom (d) difficult stage.
___B__15. The therapy of psychoanalysis was developed by
(a) Skinner (b) Sigmund Freud (c) Plato (d) Darwin.
___C__16. Sports performance is the bi-product of
(a) Skill (b) conditional ability (c) Total personality (d) tactical ability.
___A__17. The first metamorphosis falls between the ages of
(a) 7-10 years (b) 3-5 years (c) 11-14 years (d) 2-4 years.
___C__18. Which is the most effective method for encouraging self learning?
(a) Demonstration method (b) Lecture method (c) Observation method (d) Task method.
___C__19. Which one is the simplest form of cognition?
(a) Conception (b) Perception (c) Sensation (d) Affection.
___B__20. The functional division of spinal cord are
(a) somatic-motor (b) somatic-sensory (c) visceral-motor (d) none of the above.
___C__21. The response defined as a result of training is called
(a) Conditioned stimulus (b) unconditioned reflex (c) Conditioned reflex (d) conation.
___A__22. Which need is on top of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs?
(a) Self-actualization (b) Esteem (c) Belongingness (d) Safety.
___B__23. ERG theory was given by
(a) Maslow (b) Alderfer (c) Jung (d) Mcclellan
___C__24. Alderfer's theory categorizes needs into three categories. The most important is
(a) Growth needs (b) ralatedness need (c) Existence need (d) none of the above.
___D__25. Which of the following is an intrinsic motivator?
(a) Pay (b) Promotion (c) Feedback (d) Interest of play.
___D__26. The two factor theory of motivation is given by
(a) Maslow (b) Jung (c) Alderfer (d) Harzberg.
___C__27. Reinforcement theory of motivation is given by
(a) Jung (b) Herzberg (c) Skinner (d) Maslow.
___A__28. Achievement motivation relates to
(a) Need of the person (b) Knowledge of the person (c) experience of the person (d) aptitude of the person.
___C__29. Terminal feedback is the information provided to the learner
(a) Before the activity (b) During the activity (c) After the activity (d) none of the above.

___B__30. The initial steep rise in the learning graph is an indication of quick progress and is technically
known as
(a) 'End spurt' (b) 'Initial spurt' (c) Saturation point (d) None of the above.
___A__31. What type of motivation is not applicable to young children?
(a) Intrinsic motivation (b) Extrinsic motivation (c) Achievement motivation (d) none of the above.
___C__32. The 'trial and error' theory of learning was propounded by
(a) Newton (b) Pavlov (c) Thorndike (d) Homer.
___D__33. In the childhood, individual's behaviour is most influenced by
(a) Community (b) School (c) Peer group (d) family.
___B__34. The cause of frustration among sports person is
(a) Result of own performance
(b) Normally due to mismatched level of aspiration and ability
(c) Result of good performance
(d) Natural outcome of competitive sports.
___D__35. Which is the description of the methods of personality measurement?
(a) Rating scale (b) Interviews & observations (c) Paper & pencil test (d) All the above.
___B__36. Trial & Error learning is also known as
(a) Conditioning (b) connectionism (c) Insight (d) none of the above.
___C__37. 'Exercise for the body and music for the soul, in which country the common adage was used?
(a) Italy (b) France (c) Greece (d) Germany.
___D__38. What aspect of movement refers to body awareness?
(a) To identify the parts of the body and the whole
(b) To establish the relationship of the body parts
(c) Able to identify the body parts
(d) All the above.
___B__39. Law of effect in learning was started by
(a) Pavlov (b) Thomdike (c) Skinner (d) Gestalt.
___D__40. What is the population that psychologists usually study?
(a) Cats & Dogs (b) Monkeys (c) People (d) Pigeons and rats.
___C__41. Which of the following is a basic assumption of behaviorism?
a.Age is a factor in learning.
b.Behavior precedes cognitive change.
c.Learning is defined as behavioral change.
d.Research should investigate behavior in natural settings.
___A__42. According to Watson, the adult’s complex repertory of emotional responses is the result of
conditioning the
a.basic emotional responses to many different situations.
b.child’s inclination to please adults.
c.infant’s early habits to new responses.
d.parent’s actions to develop certain infant behaviors.
___B__43. The procedure of gradually introducing a feared object to a child while he/she is eating is an
example of
a.classical conditioning.
b.counter conditioning.
c.extinction.
d.stimulus generalization.
___A__44. In classical conditioning, stimulus generalization refers to
a.the tendency of a secondary stimulus to elicit a reflex.
b.the tendency for similar reflexes to respond to the same stimulus.
c.training a reflex to respond in different situations.
d.training a reflex to be resistant to an original stimulus.
___B__45. According to Watson, emotional reactions that are instinctual include all of the following except
a.fear. b.hate. c.love. d.rage.
___B__46. The major law of learning according to Thorndike, is the presence of
a.a response to partial stimulus elements.
b.a satisfying state following a response.
c.the repeated practice of all responses.
d.the transfer to responses to similar stimuli.
___D__47. According to Thorndike, attaining food produces behavioral change because it is a/an
a.consequence for responses.
b.example of the repeated practice of responses.
c.primary reinforcer.
d.satisfying state following a response.

___B__48. According to Thorndike, knowledge is accounted for by

a.a triggering stimulus and a response.
b.established links between ideas.
c.the presence of the practice effect.
d. the phenomenon of associative shifting.
___A__49. Pairing a product with pleasant images and/or sounds in a commercial is an example of
a.classical conditioning.
b.habit - formation theory.
c.Hull’s hypothetico - deductive method.
d. Thorndike’s connectionism.
___A__50. The major assumption of Gestalt psychology is that
a. learners respond to meaningful wholes.
b. perception is the only learning process.
c. problem solving is essential to learning.
d. simplicity of elements is essential to learning.
___A__51. According to Gestalt theory, all of the following influence one’s perception organization of a visual
field except
a.experience. b.proximity. c.similarity. d.simplicity.
___C__52. According to the law of Prägnanz, the characteristics of a stimulus array that influence perception
are
a.causal and arbitrary. b.comprehensive and causal. c.comprehensive and stable. d.stable and causal.
___C__53. According to Gestalt psychology, learning depends upon the learner’s
a.analysis of the stimulus elements.
b.analysis of the skill to be learned.
c.structuring of the stimulus situation.
d.synthesis of prior similar problems.
___D__54. According to the Gestalt psychologists, insight refers to
a.perception of a dynamic visual field.
b.perception of disparate stimulus elements.
c.recognition of stimuli as organized wholes.
d.reorganization of the perceptual field.
___B__55. Recommendations of Gestalt psychology for classroom instruction of problem solving include all of
the following except
a.develop problems that reflect substance in the subject area.
b.present problems isolated from other information.
c.provide cues or hints to overcome students’ inadequate problem representations.
d.use problems that have broadly applicable solutions.