Cognitive Learning

EMAAN RANGOONWALA SSC 101

 Cognitive Psychology
 The field dedicated to examining how and why people think the way that they do.
 Thinking and thought processes are examined via studying:
 memory
 emotion,
 creativity,
 language,
 problem solving
 Intellect
 and other cognitive processes, as well as their interaction with each other.
 Within this, psychologists try to determine and measure different types of intelligence, why some people are
better at problem solving than others, and how emotional intelligence affects success in the workplace, how we
organize thoughts and information gathered from the environment etc.
 Cognitions & Learning
 1) Sensory information
 2) Brain processes this information and uses the relevant pieces to create
thoughts,
 3) the thoughts can then be expressed through language or stored in memory
for future use.

To make this process more complex, the brain does not gather information from
external environments only. When thoughts are formed, the brain also pulls
information from emotions and memories. Emotion and memory are powerful
influences on both our thoughts and behaviors
So much information!
HOW DOES OUR BRAIN DEAL WITH IT?
 Organizing Information

 To organize all this information (which is a lot), our brain has developed a
file-cabinet of sorts.
 A scheme is like one of the files from the filing cabinet in our brain. It’s
essentially a cognitive structure. We have multiple schemes or schematas in
our mind, all are organized according to different groups and categories.
When a schema is activated, the brain makes immediate assumptions about
the situation, event, person, or object.
 Your perception of something --- linked to your scheme of that thing
 Organizing Information

 Egyou may have a scheme of “delicious cold/frozen desserts” –

aka, your mind has this general idea (organized file) about what
delicious cold/frozen desserts are, eg ice-cream, ice-cream cake,
frozen yoghurt, lassi, cold coffee. So when you see or hear
someone mention they have ice-cream, that “delicious
cold/frozen desserts scheme” is activated, and you make an
immediate assumption that the ice-cream will be…...
 Schemes
 We have these schemes for literally everything.
 Role
schemes (mental structure of how individuals in certain roles would
behave)
 Food (different types of food too, eg hot foods, or desi food, or fast food)
 Career or job fields
 People (based on race, religion, gender, age, country of origin etc)

 This is where biases, stereotypes, and prejudices come from.

What is Cognitive Learning?

 Learning with regards to our cognitions (thoughts/organization of

thoughts)
 According to the cognitive perspective, learning develops from bits of
knowledge and cognitions about the environment, and how the organism
understands and organizes that information.
Cognitive Maps
Tolman’sresearch dealt with rats learning their way through
complex mazes
In his view, a rat running through a complex maze was not
learning a sequence of right-and-left running responses but
rather was developing a cognitive map –
A mental representation of the layout of the maze
Maze Learning in Rats

 Tolman would run rats through mazes

A was the starting point for the rats.
B was the goal at which he wanted them to reach.
 He ran several experiments in which one would have
the rats start at A and learn to run to B to get the food.
 Indoing so, they would have to turn right to get the
food.
 Once the rats learned, this he tried a different
method.
 He would start them at point C; if the rat
turned right and went to section D, then they
were not using cognitive maps, but instead he
found they turned left and went to section B
proving the use of cognitive maps.
 This idea that rats don’t just learn movements
for only rewards but instead learn even when
there are no rewards suggests a latent learning
theory
 Insight Learning

 Kohler’s theory suggested that learning could occur by

sudden comprehension as opposed to gradual
understanding.
 This could occur without reinforcement, and once it
occurs, no review, training, or investigation are
necessary. 
 He said that insight learning is a type of learning or
problem solving that happens all-of-a-sudden through
understanding the relationship between various parts of a
problem rather than through trial and error
 Kohler’s groundbreaking experiment involved one of his
chimpanzees, Sultan.
 Sultan learned to use a “stick” to rake in bananas outside of his
cage.
 Kohler placed the banana outside of the reach of just one stick and
gave Sultan two sticks that could be fitted together to make a single
pole that was long enough to reach the banana.
 After fiddling with the sticks for an hour or so, Sultan happened to
align the sticks and in a flash of sudden inspiration, fitted the two
sticks together and pulled in the banana.
 Kohler also demonstrated insightful learning in the 'box' problem.
 A banana was hung from the ceiling of a cage, which the chimpanzee could not
reach ordinarily.
 There were several boxes inside the cage. After some initial period the animal
stacked several boxes, and stood on the top box to fetch the banana.
 Insight learning - Video