PSİKOLOJİ - Deneme Sınavı - 9

Cognitive Readiness: Unlike intelligence, this factor points out that an individual is ready to pick up certain types of stimuli. An individual should focus her/his attention onto the subject matter to achieve learning. Stimulus has to be the focal point of attention. The correct answer is A.

Neurons – on the other hand – are the smallest building blocks of the central nervous system and are the individual cells of the brain (see Photo 5.1). The correct answer is B.

Albert Bandura is the theorist of the Social Learning Theory. The correct answer is C.

Basically, there are two components of behavior – stimulus and response. Stimulus is either an external or internal change in state that induces a response from the organism. Feeling hungry and rapid heartbeat rate can be noted as examples of internal changes while others that relate to changes in lightning, heat, or sound are classified as external changes. Response, on the contrary, is the behavior that an organism displays based on a stimulus. For example, turning our head towards the sound of a plane is a response for the sound stimulus.

Species-Specific Readiness: This refers to being biologically equipped in line with species-specific layout so that the organism can display the desired behavior. For example, many animals cannot learn to talk because they biologically lack speciesspecific speaking equipment.

Transfer: An organism needs to have completed some earlier learning, in other words some kind of prior information, in order to achieve learning. Positive or negative transfer is observed respectively if previous learning facilitates or debilitates current learning. Learning how to play tennis after you know how to play ping-pong is an example of positive transfer but learning to type on an F keyboard layout after learning to type on a Q keyboard is an example of negative transfer.

Motivation: Motivation helps an individual to move, to be open and eager for learning, and to feel the need for learning. Motivation consists of three cyclical components: (1) feeling the need, (2) acting to satisfy the need, and (3) satisfaction and relief.

Maturation: An organism has to be mature enough in terms of both age and mental processes in order for effective learning to be achieved. Influential over learning, maturing generally refers to two concepts: age and intelligence. For instance, humans have the species-specific tools to talk, but they cannot talk until they reach a certain age. In addition, they cannot solve survival problems before they attain a certain mental level.

Physical Fit: Bearing certain physical characteristics may either hinder or ease certain types of learning. For instance, people with a certain set of muscle type are advantageous in terms of learning how to swim as opposed to others who do not have the same muscle layout. Likewise, it will turn out to be a nightmare to learn how to walk rhythmically for an individual with coordination problems.

Arousal: Levels of arousal can vary across different organisms. Arousal indicates the capacity and skills an organism has to process external stimuli. If the level of external stimuli is low or high, the level of arousal will also be low or high, respectively. For example, little or no external stimuli is registered during sleep because the level of arousal is low. At the other extreme, arousal level is maximal during fear or panic. The ideal level of arousal for effective learning is “midline”, which is called optimal arousal level. The same applies to anxiety as well. Both low and high levels of anxiety negatively influence learning, and the optimal anxiety level is best for learning

Factors Influential over Learning

Reinforcement is anything that immediately follows a desired behavior and increases the possibility of future repetitions of that specific behavior. Stimuli serving to this end are called reinforcers. There are two kinds of reinforcement: positive reinforcement can be considered rewarding. The existence of a pleasant stimulus in the learning environment raises the odds for the recurrence of the same behavior in the future. In negative reinforcement, the withdrawal of an aversive stimulus from the learning environment amplifies the possibility of recurrence for a desired behavior in the future. In both types of reinforcement, the only constant is the boost in the frequency of a desired behavior

Classical Conditioning, so-called Pavlovian conditioning, was discovered and developed by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) almost as a result of coincidence. A physiologist, Pavlov was carrying out experiments on the digestive system of dogs together with his assistant.

The story of operant conditioning stems from Thorndike’s trial and error experiments.

Albert was a 9-month-old baby. In the first step of the experiment, the child was shown several animals including a monkey, a white rat, and a dog within the lab setting. Doing his best to play with these animals (NS), the child displayed no signs of fear. In the second step, researchers hit a metal rod to a surface as hard as possible to produce disturbing noise when a white rat was presented to Albert. (UCS). Naturally, Albert was scared of those sounds (UCR). In the third step, the child started showing his fear (CR) through crying upon seeing a white rat (CS). The correct answer is D.

Learning is a change in behavior. This change is relatively permanent and long lasting.

The most common current treatment approach for phobias is systematic desensitization. The correct answer is A.

Maturation: An organism has to be mature enough in terms of both age and mental processes in order for effective learning to be achieved. Influential over learning, maturing generally refers to two concepts: age and intelligence. For instance, humans have the species-specific tools to talk, but they cannot talk until they reach a certain age. In addition, they cannot solve survival problems before they attain a certain mental level.

Table 5.1 on page 98

NS = Neutral Stimulus

UCS = Unconditioned Stimulus

UCR = Unconditioned Response

CS = Conditioned Stimulus

CR = Conditioned Response