Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a

five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher
up. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and
belonging, esteem and self-actualization.
Deficiency needs vs. growth needs

This five-stage model can be divided into deficiency needs and growth needs. The first four levels
are often referred to as deficiency needs (D-needs), and the top level is known as growth or being
needs (B-needs).

Deficiency needs arise due to deprivation and are said to motivate people when they are unmet.
Also, the motivation to fulfill such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are
denied. For example, the longer a person goes without food, the more hungry they will become.
Maslow (1943) initially stated that individuals must satisfy lower level deficit needs before
progressing on to meet higher level growth needs. However, he later clarified that satisfaction of a
needs is not an “all-or-none” phenomenon, admitting that his earlier statements may have given
“the false impression that a need must be satisfied 100 percent before the next need emerges”
(1987, p. 69). When a deficit need has been 'more or less' satisfied it will go away, and our activities
become habitually directed towards meeting the next set of needs that we have yet to satisfy. These
then become our salient needs. However, growth needs continue to be felt and may even become
stronger once they have been engaged. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs five stage pyramid showing
deficiency needs and growth needs Growth needs do not stem from a lack of something, but rather
from a desire to grow as a person. Once these growth needs have been reasonably satisfied, one
may be able to reach the highest level called self-actualization. Every person is capable and has the
desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often
disrupted by a failure to meet lower level needs. Life experiences, including divorce and loss of a
job, may cause an individual to fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy. Therefore, not everyone
will move through the hierarchy in a uni-directional manner but may move back and forth between
the different types of needs.

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”(Maslow, 1987,
p. 64).

Maslow posited that human needs are arranged in a hierarchy:

"It is quite true that man lives by bread alone — when there is no bread. But what happens to man’s
desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?

At once other (and “higher”) needs emerge and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the
organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still “higher”) needs emerge and so on.
This is what we mean by saying that the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy of relative
prepotency" (Maslow, 1943, p. 375).

Maslow continued to refine his theory based on the concept of a hierarchy of needs over several
decades (Maslow, 1943, 1962, 1987).

Regarding the structure of his hierarchy, Maslow (1987) proposed that the order in the hierarchy “is
not nearly as rigid” (p. 68) as he may have implied in his earlier description.

Maslow noted that the order of needs might be flexible based on external circumstances or individual
differences. For example, he notes that for some individuals, the need for self-esteem is more important
than the need for love. For others, the need for creative fulfillment may supersede even the most basic
needs.

Maslow (1987) also pointed out that most behavior is multi-motivated and noted that “any
behavior tends to be determined by several or all of the basic needs simultaneously rather
than by only one of them” (p. 71).
Hierarchy of needs summary

(a) human beings are motivated by a hierarchy of needs.

(b) needs are organized in a hierarchy of prepotency in which more basic needs must be more or
less met (rather than all or none) prior to higher needs.

(c) the order of needs is not rigid but instead may be flexible based on external circumstances or
individual differences.

(d) most behavior is multi-motivated, that is, simultaneously determined by more than one basic
need.

Changes to the original five-stage model are highlighted and include a seven-stage model
and an eight-stage model; both developed during the 1960's and 1970s.

1. Biological and physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.

2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, etc.

3. Love and belongingness needs - 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).

5. Cognitive needs - knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning and
predictability.

6. Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.

7. Self-actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth

and peak experiences.

8. Transcendence needs - A person is motivated by values which transcend beyond the personal self
(e.g., mystical experiences and certain experiences with nature, aesthetic experiences, sexual
experiences, service to others, the pursuit of science, religious faith, etc.).

Self-actualization

Instead of focusing on psychopathology and what goes wrong with people, Maslow (1943)
formulated a more positive account of human behavior which focused on what goes right. He was
interested in human potential, and how we fulfill that potential.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1943, 1954) stated that human motivation is based on people
seeking fulfillment and change through personal growth. Self-actualized people are those who were
fulfilled and doing all they were capable of.

The growth of self-actualization (Maslow, 1962) refers to the need for personal growth and
discovery that is present throughout a person’s life. For Maslow, a person is always 'becoming' and
never remains static in these terms. In self-actualization, a person comes to find a meaning to life
that is important to them.

As each individual is unique, the motivation for self-actualization leads people in different
directions (Kenrick et al., 2010). For some people self-actualization can be achieved through
creating works of art or literature, for others through sport, in the classroom, or within a corporate
setting.

Maslow (1962) believed self-actualization could be measured through the concept of peak
experiences. This occurs when a person experiences the world totally for what it is, and there are
feelings of euphoria, joy, and wonder.

It is important to note that self-actualization is a continual process of becoming rather than a

perfect state one reaches of a 'happy ever after' (Hoffman, 1988).

Maslow offers the following description of self-actualization:

'It refers to the person’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become
actualized in what he is potentially.

The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In
one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be
expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions'
(Maslow, 1943, p. 382–383).

Characteristics of self-actualized people

Although we are all, theoretically, capable of self-actualizing, most of us will not do so, or only to a
limited degree. Maslow (1970) estimated that only two percent of people would reach the state of
self-actualization. He was especially interested in the characteristics of people whom he considered
to have achieved their potential as individuals.

By studying 18 people he considered to be self-actualized (including Abraham Lincoln and Albert

Einstein) Maslow (1970) identified 15 characteristics of a self-actualized person.

Characteristics of self-actualizers:

1. They perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty;

2. Accept themselves and others for what they are;

3. Spontaneous in thought and action;

4. Problem-centered (not self-centered);

5. Unusual sense of humor;

6. Able to look at life objectively;

7. Highly creative;

8. Resistant to enculturation, but not purposely unconventional;

9. Concerned for the welfare of humanity;

10. Capable of deep appreciation of basic life-experience;

11. Establish deep satisfying interpersonal relationships with a few people;

12. Peak experiences;

13. Need for privacy;

14. Democratic attitudes;

15. Strong moral/ethical standards.

Behavior leading to self-actualization:

(a) Experiencing life like a child, with full absorption and concentration;

(b) Trying new things instead of sticking to safe paths;

(c) Listening to your own feelings in evaluating experiences instead of the voice of tradition,
authority or the majority;

(d) Avoiding pretense ('game playing') and being honest;

(e) Being prepared to be unpopular if your views do not coincide with those of the majority;

(f) Taking responsibility and working hard;

(g) Trying to identify your defenses and having the courage to give them up.

The characteristics of self-actualizers and the behaviors leading to self-actualization are shown in
the list above. Although people achieve self-actualization in their own unique way, they tend to
share certain characteristics. However, self-actualization is a matter of degree, 'There are no
perfect human beings' (Maslow,1970a, p. 176).

It is not necessary to display all 15 characteristics to become self-actualized, and not only self-
actualized people will display them. Maslow did not equate self-actualization with perfection. Self-
actualization merely involves achieving one's potential. Thus, someone can be silly, wasteful, vain
and impolite, and still self-actualize. Less than two percent of the population achieve self-
actualization.

Educational applications

Maslow's (1962) hierarchy of needs theory has made a major contribution to teaching and
classroom management in schools. Rather than reducing behavior to a response in the
environment, Maslow (1970a) adopts a holistic approach to education and learning. Maslow looks
at the complete physical, emotional, social, and intellectual qualities of an individual and how they
impact on learning.

Applications of Maslow's hierarchy theory to the work of the classroom teacher are obvious. Before
a student's cognitive needs can be met, they must first fulfill their basic physiological needs. For
example, a tired and hungry student will find it difficult to focus on learning. Students need to feel
emotionally and physically safe and accepted within the classroom to progress and reach their full
potential.

Maslow suggests students must be shown that they are valued and respected in the classroom, and
the teacher should create a supportive environment. Students with a low self-esteem will not
progress academically at an optimum rate until their self-esteem is strengthened.

Maslow (1971, p. 195) argued that a humanistic educational approach would develop people who
are “stronger, healthier, and would take their own lives into their hands to a greater extent. With
increased personal responsibility for one’s personal life, and witha rational set of values to guide
one’s choosing, people would begin to actively change the society in which they lived”.

Critical evaluation

The most significant limitation of Maslow's theory concerns his methodology. Maslow formulated
the characteristics of self-actualized individuals from undertaking a qualitative method called
biographical analysis.

He looked at the biographies and writings of 18 people he identified as being self-actualized. From
these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed characteristic of this specific group of
people, as opposed to humanity in general.

From a scientific perspective, there are numerous problems with this particular approach. First, it
could be argued that biographical analysis as a method is extremely subjective as it is based
entirely on the opinion of the researcher. Personal opinion is always prone to bias, which reduces
the validity of any data obtained. Therefore Maslow's operational definition of self-actualization
must not be blindly accepted as scientific fact.

Furthermore, Maslow's biographical analysis focused on a biased sample of self-actualized

individuals, prominently limited to highly educated white males (such as Thomas Jefferson,
Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, William James, Aldous Huxley, Beethoven).
Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to empirically test Maslow's concept of self-actualization in a
way that causal relationships can be established.

Another criticism concerns Maslow's assumption that the lower needs must be satisfied before a
person can achieve their potential and self-actualize. This is not always the case, and therefore
Maslow's hierarchy of needs in some aspects has been falsified.

Through examining cultures in which large numbers of people live in poverty (such as India), it is
clear that people are still capable of higher order needs such as love and belongingness. However,
this should not occur, as according to Maslow, people who have difficulty achieving very basic
physiological needs (such as food, shelter, etc.) are not capable of meeting higher growth needs.

Also, many creative people, such as authors and artists (e.g., Rembrandt and Van Gogh) lived in
poverty throughout their lifetime, yet it could be argued that they achieved self-actualization.

Psychologists now conceptualize motivation as a pluralistic behavior, whereby needs can operate
on many levels simultaneously. A person may be motivated by higher growth needs at the same
time as lower level deficiency needs.

Contemporary research by Tay and Diener (2011) has tested Maslow’s theory by analyzing the data
of 60,865 participants from 123 countries, representing every major region of the world. The
survey was conducted from 2005 to 2010.

Respondents answered questions about six needs that closely resemble those in Maslow's model:
basic needs (food, shelter); safety; social needs (love, support); respect; mastery; and autonomy.
They also rated their well-being across three discrete measures: life evaluation (a person's view of
his or her life as a whole), positive feelings (day-to-day instances of joy or pleasure), and negative
feelings (everyday experiences of sorrow, anger, or stress).

The results of the study support the view that universal human needs appear to exist regardless of
cultural differences. However, the ordering of the needs within the hierarchy was not correct.

"Although the most basic needs might get the most attention when you don't have them," Diener
explains, "you don't need to fulfill them in order to get benefits [from the others]." Even when we
are hungry, for instance, we can be happy with our friends. "They're like vitamins," Diener says
about how the needs work independently. "We need them all."

Although Maslow (1970) did study self-actualized females, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Mother
Teresa, they comprised a small proportion of his sample. This makes it difficult to generalize his
theory to females and individuals from lower social classes or different ethnicity. Thus questioning
the population validity of Maslow's findings.
BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES

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

During the 1890s, Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov was looking at salivation in dogs in response to
being fed when he noticed that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever he entered the room,
even when he was not bringing them food.

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.

Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivate)

Pavlov showed the existence of the unconditioned response by presenting a dog with a bowl of food
and the measuring its salivary secretions (see image below).

However, 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.

This must have been learned, because at one point the dogs did not do it, and there came a point
where they started, so their behavior had changed. A change in the behavior of this type must be
the result of learning.

In behaviorist terms, the lab assistant was originally a neutral stimulus. It is called neutral becauseit
produces no response. What had happened was that the neutral stimulus (the lab assistant) had
become associated with an unconditioned stimulus (food).

In his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he
also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. As you
might expect, the bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation.

So the dog had learned an association between the bell 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. 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 John Watson) 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.

Skinner - Operant Conditioning

By Saul McLeod, updated 2018

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.

The work of Skinner was rooted in a view that classical conditioning was far too simplistic to be a
complete explanation of complex human behavior. He believed that the best way to understand
behavior is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. He called this approach operant
conditioning.

BF Skinner: Operant Conditioning

Skinner is regarded as the father of Operant Conditioning, but his work was based on Thorndike’s
(1898) law of effect. According to this principle, behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences
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.

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.

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
(A)Continuous Reinforcement

An animal/human is positively reinforced every time a specific behavior occurs, e.g., every time a
lever is pressed a pellet is delivered, and then food delivery is shut off.

Response rate is SLOW

Extinction rate is FAST

(B) Fixed Ratio Reinforcement

Behavior is reinforced only after the behavior occurs a specified number of times. e.g., one
reinforcement is given after every so many correct responses, e.g., after every 5th response. For
example, a child receives a star for every five words spelled correctly.

Response rate is FAST

Extinction rate is MEDIUM

(C) Fixed Interval Reinforcement

One reinforcement is given after a fixed time interval providing at least one correct response has
been made. An example is being paid by the hour. Another example would be every 15 minutes
(half hour, hour, etc.) a pellet is delivered (providing at least one lever press has been made) then
food delivery is shut off.

Response rate is MEDIUM

Extinction rate is MEDIUM

(D) Variable Ratio Reinforcement

Behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable number of times. For examples gambling or fishing.

Response rate is FAST

Extinction rate is SLOW (very hard to extinguish because of unpredictability)

(E) Variable Interval Reinforcement

Providing one correct response has been made, reinforcement is given after an unpredictable
amount of time has passed, e.g., on average every 5 minutes. An example is a self-employed person
being paid at unpredictable times.

Response rate is FAST

Extinction rate is SLOW

Behavior Modification

Behavior modification is a set of therapies / techniques based on operant conditioning (Skinner,

1938, 1953). The main principle comprises changing environmental events that are related to a
person's behavior. For example, the reinforcement of desired behaviors and ignoring or punishing
undesired ones.

This is not as simple as it sounds — always reinforcing desired behavior, for example, is basically
bribery.
There are different types of positive reinforcements. Primary reinforcement is when a reward
strengths a behavior by itself. Secondary reinforcement is when something strengthens a behavior
because it leads to a primary reinforcer.

Examples of behavior modification therapy include token economy and behavior shaping.

BEHAVIORISM (JOHN B. WATSON – 1913)

Thorndike and Pavlov provided important contributions to behavioral psychology, but it was John
B. Watson (1878-1958) who championed the popular behaviorist movement. Pavlov’s contribution
was made from the discipline of physiology and was somewhat indirect. His connection with
American behavioral psychology was initially made by Watson, who felt that Pavlov’s experiments
provided a good example of a sound experimental method used to observe the conditioning process
of the secretory reflex, by monitoring the flow of saliva (Watson, 1916, p. 92; 1928, p. 35; 1930, p.
50). As for Thorndike, it is unlikely that he would have labeled himself a ‘behaviorist’, since it
wasn’t until 1913 that the term began to come into vogue. This new term, and the perspective on
the study of psychology to which it referred, quickly became the dominating school of psychology in
American universities. It was in his article entitled, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, that
Watson (1913) positioned behavioral psychology as “a purely objective experimental branch of
natural science” with a “theoretical goal” of “prediction and control of behavior” (p. 158). Watson
(1928) more plainly defined behaviorism by saying that,

Behaviorism is the scientific study of human behavior. Its real goal is to provide the basis for
prediction and control of human beings: Given the situation, to tell what the human being will do;
given the man in action, to be able to say why he is reacting in that way. (p. 2)

Later, in reflecting on the behaviorist movement, he wrote,

Behaviorism, as I tried to develop it in my lectures at Columbia in 1912 and in my earliest writings,

was an attempt to do one thing—to apply to the experimental study of man the same kind of
procedure and the same language of description that man research men had found useful for so
many years in the study of animals lower than man. (Watson, 1930, p. v)

Watson’s initial research focused on animal subjects such as rats (1903), rabbits (Watson &
Watson, 1913), birds (e.g., 1907; 1908a; 1910), and monkeys (1908b; 1909). But by the year 1919
he had been able to apply the same experimental procedures to the study of man—the goal he had
established for himself in his 1913 article. This article has come to be referred to as the Behaviorist
Manifesto.

Through his own efforts and through the reports of other researchers working in the same field,
Watson collected data through “daily observation of several hundred infants from birth, through
the first thirty days of infancy and of a smaller number through the first years of childhood”
(Watson, 1930, p. 118). From this data he concluded that “young children taken at random from
homes of both the poor and of the well-to-do do not make good subjects” (p. 149) because their
behavior was too complex. His solution to this problem was to study hospital-reared children
belonging to wet nurses. Perhaps his most famous experiments were those conducted to establish
conditioned emotional responses in “Little Albert” by exposing him to various small animals and
simultaneously sounding a loud noise that had been found to elicit crying. Through repeated
pairing of the animals with the noise, the animals themselves came to elicit responses of fear,
crying, and avoidance behavior—where previously they had not (Watson & Rayner, 1920). Several
other experiments conducted with children are accounted in Watson’s 1930 publication entitled,
Behaviorism.

Watson’s perspective on learning—i.e., his theory of habit formation—is illustrated in the following
example generalized from his observations of several children in similar situations:

To make the whole process a little more concrete, let us put in front of the three-year-old child,
whose habits of manipulation are well established, a problem box—a box that can be opened only
after a certain thing has been done; for example, he has to press inward a small wooden button.
Before we hand it to him, we show him the open box containing several small pieces of candy and
then we close it and tell him that if he opens it he may have a piece of candy. This situation is new to
him. None of his previously learned formed manipulation habits will completely and instantly work
in this situation. None of his unlearned reactions will help him very much. What does he do? That
depends upon his previous organization. If well organized by previous handling of toys, he goes at
the problem at once—(1) he picks the box up, (2) he pounds it on the floor, (3) he drags it round
and round, (4) he pushes it up against the base-board, (5) he turns it over, (6) he strikes it with his
fist. In other words, he does everything he has learned to do in the past in similar situations. He
displays his whole repertoire of acts—brings all of his previously acquired organization to bear
upon the new problem. Let us suppose that he has 50 learned and unlearned separate responses at
his command. At one time or another during his first attempt to open the box, let us assume that he
displays, as he will, nearly all of them before he pushes the button hard enough to release the catch.
The time the whole process takes, we will say, is about twenty minutes. When he opens it, we give
him his bit of candy, close up the box and hand it to him again. The next time he makes fewer
movements; the third time fewer still. In 10 trials or less he can open the box without making a
useless movement and he can open it in two seconds. (Watson, 1930, p. 204)

Watson explained this instance of learning—the ability to open the box with increasing speed and
with fewer and fewer useless movements—as a function of frequency and recency. The act that is
performed most frequently persists while the rest die away. The act that has been performed most
recently is more likely to appear sooner in the next succeeding trial. Watson’s explanation of
recency and frequency as the basis for habit formation was criticized by some writers, and specific
experiments were performed to demonstrate the inadequacy of these two factors alone to account
for learning (Gengerelli, 1928). However, these factors do not form Watson’s complete picture of
learning. In his introduction to a republication of Watson’s Behaviorism (Watson & Kimble, 2002, p.
xii) Kimble lists nine hypothetical laws of learning identified by Watson.[1] The first two are
frequency and recency. The remaining seven are

3. Conditioning is a process of stimulus substitution: “The [conditioned stimulus] now becomes a

substitute stimulus—it will call out the [response] whenever it stimulates the subject” (p. 21)
4. The process of conditioning is ubiquitous, “So far as we know we can substitute another stimulus
for any stimulus calling out a standard reaction” (p. 22). Thus, learning never produces truly new
responses. “The organism starts out life with more unit responses than it needs” (p. 24). The
process that appears to establish new responses “concerns itself really with stimulus substitutions
and not reaction substitutions (pp. 25-26).

Laws 5-9 came from Pavlov, by way of G. V. Anrep (Watson does not give a reference).

5. “Conditioned responses [may be] temporary and unstable. After periods of no practice they cease
to work [but they can] be quickly reestablished.”

6. “The substituted stimulus can be made [so specific that no] other stimulus of its class will then
call out the reflex.” But, in apparent contradiction to this idea, Watson also noted that conditioned
responses generalize (transfer) to similar conditioned stimuli.

7. “The magnitude of the response is dependent upon the strength of the [conditioned] stimulus”.

8. “There is a marked summation effect. If a dog is conditioned separately to [two stimuli], there is a
marked increase in the [strength of the response] if the stimuli are given simultaneously.”

9. “Conditioned responses can be ‘extinguished’” (pp. 28-29).

Though Watson’s role as the recognized founder of behaviorism as a school of psychology is clear
(Morris & Todd, 1999), his impact on educational learning theory is limited, as evidenced by the (at
best) tangential coverage he is given in comprehensive books on learning theory (e.g., Bohlin et al.,
2009; Bower & Hilgard, 1981; Driscoll, 2000; Eggen & Kauchak, 1999; Hilgard, 1948; O’Donnell et
al., 2007; Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009; Ormrod, 2003; Sternberg & Williams, 2010; Woolfolk, 2010).
Perhaps this is because his explanation of frequency and recency was never fully accepted as
sufficient to account for learning, and because his other laws—as summarized by Kimble—weren’t
really unique, with most of them having been adopted without change from Pavlov.

[1] The page number references used by Kimble are based on the 1925 printing of Watson

CONNECTIONISM (EDWARD L. THORNDIKE – 1898)

The prominent role of Aristotle’s laws of association in the 1900s may largely be due to the work of
Edward L. Thorndike—the recognized founder of a “learning theory [that] dominated all others in
America” for “nearly half a century” (Bower & Hilgard, 1981, p. 21). Thorndike’s theory was based
initially on a series of puzzle box experiments that he used to plot learning curves of animals. In
these experiments learning was defined as a function of the amount of time required for the animal
to escape from the box. A full account of his experiments, including detailed descriptions of the
puzzle boxes he used and examples of learning curves that were plotted, can be found in Animal
intelligence (Thorndike, 1898).

In Thorndike’s view, learning is the process of forming associations or bonds, which he defined as
“the connection of a certain act with a certain situation and resultant pleasure” (p. 8). His work
leading up to 1898 provided “the beginning of an exact estimate of just what associations, simple
and compound, an animal can form, how quickly he forms them, and how long he retains them” (p.
108).

Although his original experimental subjects were cats, dogs, and chicks, Thorndike clearly
expressed his intention of applying his work to human learning when he said, “the main purpose of
the study of the animal mind is to learn the development of mental life down through the phylum,
to trace in particular the origin of human faculty” (1898, p. 2). From his work with animals he
inferred “as necessary steps in the evolution of human faculty, a vast increase in the number of
associations” (p. 108). A decade and a half later he expanded on the theme of human learning in a
three volume series entitled, Educational psychology, with volume titles, The original nature of man
(1913a), The psychology of learning (1913b), and Mental work and fatigue and individual
differences and their causes (1914b). The material in these books was very comprehensive and
targeted advanced students of psychology. He summarized the fundamental subject matter of the
three volumes in a single, shorter textbook entitled, Educational psychology: briefer course
(Thorndike, 1914a). In these volumes Thorndike provided a formative culmination of his theory of
learning in the form of three laws of learning:

1. Law of Readiness – The law of readiness was intended to account for the motivational aspects of
learning and was tightly coupled to the language of the science of neurology. It was defined in terms
of the conduction unit, which term Thorndike (1914a) used to refer to “the neuron, neurons,
synapse, synapses, part of a neuron, part of a synapse, parts of neurons or parts of synapses—
whatever makes up the path which is ready for conduction” (p. 54). In its most concise form, the
law of readiness was stated as follows, “for a conduction unit ready to conduct to do so is satisfying,
and for it not to do so is annoying” (p. 54). The law of readiness is illustrated through two intuitive
examples given by Thorndike:

The sight of the prey makes the animal run after it, and also puts the conductions and connections
involved in jumping upon it when near into a state of excitability or readiness to be made….When a
child sees an attractive object at a distance, his neurons may be said to prophetically prepare for the
whole series of fixating it with the eyes, running toward it, seeing it within reach, grasping, feeling it
in his hand, and curiously manipulating it. (p. 53)

2. Law of Exercise – The law of exercise had two parts: (a) the law of use and (b) the law of disuse.
This law stated that connections grow stronger when used—where strength is defined as “vigor
and duration as well as the frequency of its making” (p. 70)—and grow weaker when not used.

3. Law of Effect – The law of effect added to the law of exercise the notion that connections are
strengthened only when the making of the connection results in a satisfying state of affairs and that
they are weakened when the result is an annoying state of affairs.

These three laws were supplemented by five characteristics of learning “secondary in scope and
importance only to the laws of readiness, exercise, and effect” (Thorndike, 1914a, p. 132). They are

1. Multiple response or varied reaction – When faced with a problem an animal will try one
response after another until it finds success.
2. Set or attitude – The responses that an animal will try, and the results that it will find satisfying,
depend largely on the animal’s attitude or state at the time.

The chick, according to his age, hunger, vitality, sleepiness, and the like, may be in one or another
attitude toward the external situation. A sleepier and less hungry chick will, as a rule, be ‘set’ less
toward escape-movements when confined; its neurons involved in roaming, perceiving companions
and feeding will be less ready to act; it will not, in popular language, ‘try so hard to’ get out or ‘care
so much about’ being out. (Thorndike, 1914a, p. 133)

3. Partial activity or prepotency of elements – Certain features of a situation may be prepotent in

determining a response than others and an animal is able to attend to critical elements and ignore
less important ones. This ability to attend to parts of a situation makes possible response by
analogy and learning through insight.

Similarly, a cat that has learned to get out of a dozen boxes—in each case by pulling some loop,
turning some bar, depressing a platform, or the like—will, in a new box, be, as we say, ‘more
attentive to’ small objects on the sides of the box than it was before. The connections made may
then be, not absolutely with the gross situation as a total, but predominantly with some element or
elements of it. (Thorndike, 1914a, p. 134)

4. Assimilation – Due to the assimilation of analogous elements between two stimuli, an animal will
respond to a novel stimulus in the way it has previously responded to a similar stimulus. In
Thorndike’s words, “To any situations, which have no special original or acquired response of their
own, the response made will be that which by original or acquired nature is connected with some
situation which they resemble.” (Thorndike, 1914a, p. 135)

5. Associative shifting – Associative shifting refers to the transfer of a response evoked by a given
stimulus to an entirely different stimulus.

The ordinary animal ‘tricks’ in response to verbal signals are convenient illustrations. One, for
example, holds up before a cat a bit of fish, saying, “Stand up.” The cat, if hungry enough, and not of
fixed contrary habit, will stand up in response to the fish. The response, however, contracts bonds
also with the total situation, and hence to the human being in that position giving that signal as well
as to the fish. After enough trials, by proper arrangement, the fish can be omitted, the other
elements of the situation serving to evoke the response. Association may later be further shifted to
the oral signal alone. (Thorndike, 1914a, p. 136)

Sixteen years after publishing his theory in the Educational Psychology series based on
experiments with animals, Thorndike published twelve lectures that reported on experiments
performed with human subjects between 1927 and 1930 (see Thorndike, 1931). The results of
these experiments led Thorndike to make some modifications to his laws of connectionism.
The first change was to qualify the law of exercise. It was shown that the law of exercise, in and of
itself, does not cause learning, but is dependent upon the law of effect. In an experiment in which
subjects were blindfolded and repeatedly asked to draw a four-inch line with one quick movement
Thorndike discovered that doing so 3,000 times “caused no learning” because the lines drawn in
the eleventh or twelfth sittings were “not demonstrably better than or different from those drawn
in the first or second” (Thorndike, 1931, p. 10). He summarized this finding by saying,

Our question is whether the mere repetition of a situation in and of itself causes learning, and in
particular whether the more frequent connections tend, just because they are more frequent, to
wax in strength at the expense of the less frequent. Our answer is No. (p. 13

However, in drawing this conclusion, Thorndike was not disproving the law of exercise, but merely
qualifying it (by saying that repetition must be guided by feedback):

It will be understood, of course, that repetition of a situation is ordinarily followed by learning,

because ordinarily we reward certain of the connections leading from it and punish others by
calling the responses to which they respectively lead right or wrong, or by otherwise favoring and
thwarting them. Had I opened my eyes after each shove of the pencil during the second and later
sittings and measured the lines and been desirous of accuracy in the task, the connections leading
to 3.8, 3.9, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 would have become more frequent until I reached my limit of skill in the
task. (p. 12-13)

The second change was to recast the relative importance of reward and punishment under the law
of effect. Through a variety of experiments Thorndike concluded that satisfiers (reward) and
annoyers (punishment) are not equal in their power to strengthen or weaken a connection,
respectively. In one of these experiments students learned Spanish vocabulary by selecting for each
Spanish word one of five possible English meanings followed by the rewarding feedback of being
told “Right” or the punishing feedback of being told “Wrong.” From the results of this experiment
Thorndike concluded that punishment does not diminish response as originally stated in the law of
effect. In his own words,

Indeed the announcement of “Wrong” in our experiments does not weaken the connection at all, so
far as we can see. Rather there is more gain in strength from the occurrence of the response than
there is weakening by the attachment of “Wrong” to it. Whereas two occurrences of a right
response followed by “Right” strengthen the connection much more than one does, two occurrences
of a wrong response followed by “Wrong” weaken that connection less than one does. (p. 45)

In another experiment a series of words were read by the experimenter. The subject responded to
each by stating a number between 1 and 10. If the subject picked the number the experimenter had
predetermined to be “right” he was rewarded (the experimenter said “Right”), otherwise he was
punished (the experimenter said “Wrong”). Other than the feedback received from the
experimenter, the subject had no logical basis for selecting one number over another when
choosing a response. Each series was repeated many times, however, the sequence of words was
long, making it difficult for the subject to consciously remember any specific right and wrong word-
number pairs. From the results of this and other similar experiments Thorndike demonstrated
what he called the “spread of effect.” What he meant by this was that “punished connections do not
behave alike, but that the ones that are nearest to a reward are strengthened” and that “the
strengthening influence of a reward spreads to influence positively not only the connection which it
directly follows…but also any connections which are near enough to it” (Thorndike, 1933, p. 174).
More specifically,

A satisfying after-effect strengthens greatly the connection which it follows directly and to which it
belongs, and also strengthens by a smaller amount the connections preceding and following that,
and by a still smaller amount the preceding and succeeding connections two steps removed. (p.
174)

In addition to these two major changes to the law of exercise and the law of effect, Thorndike also
began to explore four other factors of learning that might be viewed as precursors to cognitive
learning research, which emerged in the decades that followed. They are summarized by Bower and
Hilgard (1981):

Belongingness – “a connection between two units or ideas is more readily established if the subject
perceives the two as belonging or going together” (p. 35).

Associative Polarity – “connections act more easily in the direction in which they were formed than
in the opposite direction” (p. 35). For example, if when learning German vocabulary a person
always tests themselves in the German-to-English direction it is more difficult for them to give the
German equivalent when prompted with an English word than to give the English word when
prompted with the German equivalent.

Stimulus Identifiability – “a situation is easy to connect to a response to the extent that the situation
is identifiable, distinctive, and distinguishable from others in a learning series” (p. 36).

Response Availability – the ease of forming connections is directly proportional to the ease with
which the response required by the situation is summoned or executed:

Some responses are overlearned as familiar acts (e.g., touching our nose, tapping our toes) which
are readily executed upon command, whereas more finely skilled movements (e.g., drawing a line 4
inches as opposed to 5 inches long while blindfolded) may not be so readily summonable. (p.36-37)

COGNITIVE APPROACHES

1. Gestalf – insight theory

Learning means to bring changes in the behaviour of the organism. It is very difficult to give a
universally acceptable explanation of learning because various theories developed by
psychologists attempt to explain the process from different angles.

During the first quarter of 20th century the quarrels within academic psychology lay chiefly inside
the framework of association psychology .Structuralism, functionalism and behaviourism were all
members of the association family. They are all examples of the working out of an empirical
methodology of science, where by the accumulation of facts was supposed to lead one to the proper
conception of nature.

Meaning of Gestalt Theory

The Gestalt theorists were the first group of psychologists to systematically study perceptual
organisation around the 1920’s, in Germany. They were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ernst
Mach, and particularly of Christian von Ehrenfels and the research work of Max Wertheimer,
Wolfgang Kö hler, Kurt Koffka, and Kurt Lewin According to the Gestalt psychologists certain
features in visual perception are universal. In semiotic terms, these universal features can be
thought of as a perceptual code.

Gestalt is a sensual theory, what we see is a result of light and dark objects, edges and contours
that we form into a whole image. Sensual theories are of a lower order of thinking than
perceptual theories, such as semiotics, that are concerned with the meaning we attach to what
we see

Dissatisfied with the behaviourist approach of learning, the psychologists tried to see learning
as a more deliberate and conscious effort of the individual rather than a mere product of habit
formation or a machine-like stimulus-response connection. According to them the learner does
not merely respond to a stimulus, but mentally processes what he receives or perceives. Thus
learning is a purposive, explorative and creative activity instead of trial and error.Things cannot
be understood by the study of its constituent parts only ,bu actually it is understood only by
perceiving it as a totality or whole.

Gestalt theory focused on the mind’s perceptive. The word ‘Gestalt’ has no direct translation in
English, but refers to “a way a thing has been gestalt; i.e., placed, or put together”; common
translations include ‘form’ and ‘shape’. Gaetano Kanizca refers to it as ‘organized structure’.
Gestalt theorists followed the basic principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
In other words, the whole (a picture, a car) carried a different and altogether greater meaning
than its individual components (paint,canvas,brush;or tire, paint, metal, respectively). In
viewing the “whole,” a cognitive process takes place –the mind makes a leap from
understanding the parts to realizing the whole.

Gestalt theory was introduced as a contrast to at the time dominant structuralism, which
claimed that complex perceptions could be understood through breaking them into smaller
elementary parts of experience, like splitting graphical forms into sets of dots or melody into
sequence of sounds. Gestalt theory attacked this theory and holds that same melody can be
recognized if transposed into another key and perception of a rectangle can be achieved
through other forms than four lines. The idea of Wertheimer was that the ability to perceive
objects was an ability of the nervous system, which tends to group together objects that are
nearby, similar, form smooth lines, form most of the shape we can recognize.
 According to Gestalt psychology, the whole is different than the sum of its parts. Based upon
this belief, Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles to explain perceptual
organization, or how smaller objects are grouped to form larger ones. These principles are often
referred to as the ‘laws of perceptual organization.’

Gestalt (t German word means form or whole) is a psychology term which means “unified
whole”. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the
1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into
groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied.

Gestalt is a theory that the brain operates holistically, with self-organizing tendencies. The
statement, whole is different from the sum of its parts sums up the way we recognize figures
and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines, curves and shapes.

e.g. describing a tree – it’s parts are trunk, branches, leaves, perhaps blossoms or fruit. But
when you look at an entire tree, you are not conscious of the parts, you are aware of the overall
object – the tree. Parts are of secondary importance even though they can be clearly seen.

Perhaps the best known example of a gestalt is the vase/face profile which is fully explained in
the six Gestalt Principles detailed below.

Insight Learning: This is an extension of the term, insight which was identified by Wolfgang
Kohler while studying the behaviour of chimpanzees. He said that insight learning is a type of
learning or problem solving that happens all-of-a-sudden through understanding the
relationships various parts of a problem rather than through trial and error.

Gestalt views on learning and problem-solving were opposed to at the time dominant pre-
behaviourist and behaviourist views. It emphasized importance of seeing the whole structure of the
problem. Discovery of correct solution to the problem was followed by insight occurrence. This
presents insightful learning, which has following properties:

o Transition from pre-solution to solution is sudden and complete.

o When problem solution is found, performance is smooth and without errors.

o Insightful learning results in longer retention.

o The principle learned by insight can easily be applied to other problems

o Its an Aha experience. Flash of understanding which comes to us all of sudden

o A type of learning that uses reason, especially to form conclusions, inferences, or

judgments, to solve a problem.

Insight, in learning theory, immediate and clear learning or understanding that takes place
without overt trial-and-error testing. Insight occurs in human learning when people recognize
relationships (or make novel associations between objects or actions) that can help them solve
new problems.
 Steps in Insight Learning

1. Identification of the problem: The learner identify the presence of a block as an intervening
obstacles on his way to the goal.

2. Analysis of the Problem situation: The learner observes the problematic situation, analyse the
different components in the problematic situation and perceive the relation between the goal
and the block.

3. Establishing mental association in between similar previously acquired ideas : After

analyzing the total situation he selects probable solutions in conclusions by means of
hesitation, pause, concentrated attention etc.

4. Trail of Mode of Response: The learner makes initial efforts in the form of a simple trial and
error mechanism.

5. Sustained Attention: The learner maintains frequently recurrent attention to the goal and
motivation.

6. Establishing cause-effect relationship: In a certain moment there is a sudden perception of

the relationship in the total situation and the organism directly performs the required acts. This
is Insight development.

7. Steady Repetition of Adaptive Behaviour: After getting an insightful solution, the individual
tries to implement it in another situation.

Gestalt laws (law of pragnanz )

In perception, there are many organizing principles called gestalt laws. The most general version is
called the law of pragnanz. Pragnanz is German for pregnant, but in the sense of pregnant with
meaning, rather than pregnant with child. This law says that we are innately driven to experience
things in as good a gestalt as possible. “Good” can mean many things here, such a regular, orderly,
simplicity, symmetry, and so on, which then refer to specific gestalt laws

The Law of Similarity

As Gestalt principles go, the principle of similarity would seem to be one of the simplest to
grasp. It states things that are similar are perceived to be more related than things that are
dissimilar. Similarity occurs when objects look similar to one another. People often perceive
them as a group or pattern.

Similarity means there is a tendency to see groups which have the same characteristics The
principle of similarity states that things which share visual characteristics such as shape, size,
color, texture, value or orientation will be seen as belonging together.

Let’s make it a bit easier to perceive some similarity

 The law of contrast.

The Law of Contrast states that when two items are presented one after another, “If the 2nd item is
fairly different from the 1st, we tend to see it as more different than it actually is.” The principle
based on the assumption that individuals base their behavior on comparison of opposites not with
sameness. The phenomenon that when two different but related stimuli are presented close
together in space and/or time they are perceived as being more different than they really are.

On the other hand, seeing or recalling something may also trigger the recollection of something
completely opposite. If you think of the tallest person you know, you may suddenly recall the
shortest one as well. If you are thinking about birthdays, the one that was totally different from
all the rest is quite likely to come up;

Law of Proximity

Proximity occurs when elements are placed close together. They tend to be perceived as a group.
The principle of proximity or contiguity states that things which are closer together will be seen
asbelonging together.

Things that are close to one another are perceived to be more related than things that are
spaced farther apart. As this principle does not rely on any extraneous structure, it is among the
first principles to impact our perception and from which we derive understanding. All of us
intuitively understand that the simplest way to indicate relatedness is to manipulate proximity.
What we might not intuitively understand, however, is how powerful the principle of proximity
is.

Law of Uniform Connectedness

The principle of uniform connectedness is the strongest of the Gestalt Principles concerned
with relatedness. It refers to the fact that elements that are connected by uniform visual
properties are perceived as being more related than elements that are not connected. As with
the principle of proximity, uniform connectedness causes us to perceive groups or chunks
rather than unrelated, individual things.

In practice, uniform connectedness is quite simple: draw a box around a group of elements and
you’ve indicated that they’re related. Alternately, you can draw connecting lines (or arrows or
some other tangible connecting reference) from one element to the next for the same effect.

For instance: Here even though the spacing and colour is consistent with in this collection of
elements, those inside of the connecting lines are perceived to the more related than the rest.
Law of Figure and Ground

Our perception of the figure ground relationship allows us to organize what we see by how each
object relates to others. The short and sweet version is: it allows us to determine what we’re
supposed to look at and what we might safely ignore.

We do this instantly and without effort in most cases, as we’re often in familiar surroundings
and looking at familiar things.

Examples:

A simple example of figure and ground relationships

Balancing figure and ground can make the perceived image clearer. Using unusual
figure/ground relationships can add interest and subtlety to an image.

The Law of Closure

Related to principle of good continuation, there is a tendency to close simple figures,

independent of continuity or similarity. This results in a effect of filling in missing information
or organizing information which is present to make a whole.

The principle of closure is literally about drawing conclusions. We humans are very adept at
drawing conclusions from less-than-all the information. When presented with less than the full
picture, we attempt to employ the principle of closure to fill in missing information and form a
complete image or idea based on common or easily recognizable patterns from our past
experience and understanding.

The degree to which the principle of closure works is inversely proportional to the effort
required to make it work. So if it is easy to fill in the missing pieces to see a recognizable pattern
or form, closure occurs and we perceive the completed form. If too much of the form or pattern
is missing, requiring

that we work hard to make sense of it, closure is less likely to occur. So in order to utilize
closure as an effective design mechanism, you must make it easy for closure to occur.

Closure occurs when an object is incomplete or a space is not completely enclosed. If enough of
the shape is indicated, people perceive the whole by filling in the missing information In full, the
principle of closure is much grittier.

When looking at a complex arrangement of individual elements, humans tend to first look for a
single, recognizable pattern.

Although the panda below is not complete, enough is present for the eye to complete the shape.
When the viewer’s perception completes a shape, closure occurs.
Gestalt theory and the Typical Problems of Learning

1.Capacity-Because learning requires differentiation and restructuring of fields, the higher

forms of learning depend very much on natural capacities for reacting in these ways. Increasing
capacities for perceptual organisation the ability to understand problems leads to increases in
learning ability.

2.Practice- Our memories are traces of perceptions; association is a by-product of perceptual

organisation. The laws of perceptual grouping also determine coherence of elements in
memory. Repetition of an experience builds cumulatively on earlier experiences only if the
second event is recognized as a recurrence of the earlier one. Successive exposure to a learning
situation provides repeated opportunities for the learner to notice new relationships so as to
provide for restructuring the task.

3.Motivation- The law of effect was accepted differently by Gestalt. They believed that after-
effects did not act automatically and unconsciously to strengthen prior acts. Rather, the effect
had to be perceived as belonging to the prior act- position. Motivation was viewed as placing
the organism into a problem situation; reward and punishment acted to confirm or dis confirm
attempted solutions of problems.

4.Understanding- The perceiving of relationships awareness of the relationships between parts

and whole, of means to consequences, are emphasized by Gestalt. Problems are to be solved
sensibly, structurally, organically, rather than mechanically, stupidly, or by the running off of
prior habits. Insightful learning is thus more typical or appropriately presented learning tasks
than is trial and error.

5.Transfer-A pattern of dynamic relationships discovered in one situation may be applicable to

another. There is something in common between the earlier learning and the situation in which
transfer is found, but what exists in common is not identical piecemeal elements but common
pattern or relationship.

6.Forgetting- Forgetting is related to the course of changes in the trace. Traces may disappear
either through gradual decay, through destruction because of being part of a chaotic ill-
structured field, or through assimilation to new traces or processes. The last possibility is
familiar as a form of theory of retroactive inhibition. In addition to such forgetting, there are the
dynamic changes which take place in recall, so that what is reproduced is not earlier learning
with some parts missing, but a trace distorted in the direction of a ‘good gestalt’.

Educational Implications of Gestalt Theory

Problem Solving Approach: This theory emphasis that as the learner is able to slve problems by
his insight, meaningful learning, learning by understanding, reasoning, etc. must be encouraged
in the school.

From Whole to Part: The teacher should present the subject matter as a whole to facilitate
insight learning.
Integrated Approach: While planning curriculum, gestalt principles should be given due
consideration. A particular subject should not be treated as the mere collection of isolated facts.
It should be closely integrated into a whole

Importance of Motivation: the teacher should arouse the child’s curiosity, interest and
motivation. He should gain full attention of the whole class before teaching.

Goal Orientation: As learning is a purposeful and goal oriented task, the learner has to be well
acquainted with these objectives. He should be fully familiar with the goals and purposes of
every task.

Emphasis on Understanding: It has made learning an intelligent task requiring mental abilities
than a stimulus – response association. So the learner must be given opportunities for using his
mental abilities.

Checking of Previous Experiences: As insight depends upon the previous experiences of the
learner, the teacher must check the previous experiences of the child and relate them with the
new learning situation.

Gestalt theory was mostly criticized for being too descriptive instead of offering explanations
and models for described phenomena, investigating subjective experiences like perception ,lack
of precision in descriptions and just qualitative description ,denying the basic scientific
approach of understanding a whole as a set of its parts

PURPOSIVE BEHAVIORISM (EDWARD CHANCE TOLMAN – 1922)

Another contribution to cognitive learning theory, which somewhat smudged the line between
cognitive and behavioral learning theory, was the work of Edward Chance Tolman. Tolman was
a behaviorist, but he was a purposive behaviorist (McDougall, 1925a, p. 278).

Purpose is held to be essentially a mentalistic category…[but] it will be the thesis of the present
paper that a behaviorism (if it be of the proper sort) finds it just as easy and just as necessary to
include the descriptive phenomena of “purpose” as does a mentalism. (Tolman, 1925a, pp. 36-
37

For Tolman, a “proper sort” of behaviorism was “not a mere Muscle Twitchism of the Watsonian
variety” (1925a, p. 37), but was broad enough to cover “all that was valid in the results of the
older introspective psychology” (1922, p. 47). In his view, the Watsonian variety of behaviorism
was “an account in terms of muscle contraction and gland secretion” and “as such, would not be
behaviorism at all but a mere physiology” (p. 45).

In contrast to the limiting notions of physiological behaviorism, Tolman (1922) suggested a

new formula of behaviorism that would “allow for a more ready and adequate treatment of the
problems of motive, purpose, determining tendency, and the like” (p. 53). He defined purpose
quite simply as persistence in behavior:
Purpose, adequately conceived, it will be held, is itself but an objective aspect of behavior. When
an animal is learning a maze, or escaping from a puzzle-box, or merely going about his daily
business of eating, nest-building, sleeping, and the like, it will be noted that in all such
performances a certain persistence until character is to be found. Now it is just this persistence
until character which we will define as purpose. (1925a, p. 37)

Bandura - Social Learning Theory

By Saul McLeod, updated 2016

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:

Mediating processes occur between stimuli & responses.

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

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 encode their 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.

Unlike Skinner, Bandura (1977) believes that humans are active information processors and
think about the relationship between their behavior and its consequences. Observational
learning could not occur unless cognitive processes were at work. These mental factors mediate
(i.e., intervene) in the learning process to determine whether a new response is acquired.

Therefore, individuals do not automatically observe the behavior of a model and imitate it.
There is some thought prior to imitation, and this consideration is called mediational processes.
This occurs between observing the behavior (stimulus) and imitating it or not (response)