Cognitive Factors of Learning

is often more complex than association and reinforcement; it involves searching for information, weighing evidence, and making decisions. Cognitive Psychologists study mental structures, schemas, templates, and information processing to prove that learning can occur without conditioning.

• Learning

• Latent Learning

like a cognitive map of a maze—may not be revealed without motivation. Learning that is hidden or concealed.

• Latent learning

• Contigency theory

Contingency theory suggests that learning occurs when a conditioned stimulus provides information about the unconditioned stimulus.

• True

• False

_makes it possible to acquire skills and knowledge by watching others rather than through direct experience.

• observational learning

• contigency theory

Concepts about Cognitive Factors of Learning

• Cognitive map

• AKA modelling or social learning

Shaping: a procedure for teaching complex behaviors that at first reinforces approximations of the target behavior.

• Shaping

• Cognitive map

behaviors that are progressively closer to a target behavior.

• Successive approximations

• Shaping

a mental representation of the layout of one’s environment.

• Cognitive map

• AKA modeling