LEARNING THEORIES

Learning Theories



The Behavioral Theory

The behavioral theory is developed mainly from the first half of the twentieth century and remains until mid-century after which cognitive theory arise.

The behavioral theory, from its origins, focuses on observable behavior trying to make a fully empirical study of it and wanting to control and predict behavior. According to this theory, the goal of an individual is to get a certain behavior, for which discusses how to get it.

This theory also proposed two alternatives. One was classical conditioning while the other is operant conditioning also known as instrumental conditioning. The first describes an association between stimulus and response closest towards it so that if we put the right incentives, we get the desired response. This variant explains only basic behaviors.

The second variant, the instrumental or the operant conditioning pursues the consolidation of the response as the stimulus is looking to reinforce the required implementation for this relationship along the individual.

For behavioral theories, learning what counts is the change in observable behavior of a subject, how it acts with a particular situation. Consciousness, that is not seen, is considered "black box." In the apprenticeship subject - object; focus attention on the experience as an object, and in instances as purely psychological perception, association and habit as generating responses of the subject. They are not particularly interested in the internal processes of the subject because they postulate the "objectivity" in the sense that it is only possible to study the observable.

Example of Behavioral Theory

Applications in education are observed for a long time and are still used in some cases with serious objections. Behavioral approaches are present in educational computer programs that offer learning situations in which students must find an answer because one or more stimuli presented on the screen. Following selection of the response associated sound reinforcement, text, symbols, etc. telling the student whether the answer was right or wrong. This chain of events is the essential partner of behavioral learning theory.

The Cognitive Theory

Cognitive psychology is concerned with the study of processes such as language, perception, memory, reasoning and problem solving. She conceived the subject as an active processor of stimuli. It is this process, and not directly stimuli, what determines our behavior. The behavioral theory did not take into account internal processes to understand behavior and intended only predict and control it. The new goal of the theory is to analyze internal processes such as compression, acquisition of new information through perception, attention, memory, reasoning, language, etc.

This theory means that if the learning process involves the storage of information in memory, it is not necessary to study the stimulus-response procedures but serve restraints and retrieval, to the mental structures that will host this information and updating these forms. Mental structures have difference between static components of the system to remain stable over time and processes described system activity. The goal of the educator, according to this theory, is to create or modify the student's mental structures to introduce in ...