CGSC170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Empiricism, Behaviorism
10 Jan 2017
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Lecture 1
Cognitive Science: An interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence.
History of Cognitive Sci
● Philosophy
Rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz): Knowledge can be gained by thought
and reasoning
Empiricism (Aristotle, Locke): Knowledge is learned from experience.
1910-1950 Behaviorists claims that psychology should not make reference to “mental
states” or internal information processing; it should, instead concern itself solely with
observable behaviors
Behaviorism
● Noninvasive: Technologies were not available for studying cognitive activity
directly, and existing indirect methods were methodologically problematic.
Behaviorism on Learning
● All learning takes place through conditioning and reinforcement alone
Conditioning: repeated pairing of stimulus and response.
Reinforcement: Reward is used to strengthen the association between stimulus
and response
Downfall of Behaviorism
● Difficult to tell what constitute an instance of a behavior.
● Not all behaviors can be explained with reference to stimulus response.
Tolman’s Rats
● Two behaviorists (Tolman and Honzik in 1930) were testing rats’ navigation of
mazes.
● There were 3 different groups of rats.
● Group 1 were rewarded each time they successfully navigated the maze
● Group 2 were never rewarded even if they succeeded or not.
● Group 3 were not rewarded for the first 10 days of the experiment, but rewarded
thereafter.
● The results from the experiment were that group 1 learned to navigate the maze.
Group 2 never did. Group 3 learned to navigate the maze once they were
rewarded, but they learned faster than group 1 after the 10 days.
● Based on the results Tolman and Honzik concluded that rats are capable of
latent learning
Latent Learning: The ability to store information for later use without a
process of reinforcement
Factors that Gave Rise to Cog Sci
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Cognitive science: an interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence. Rationalism (descartes, leibniz): knowledge can be gained by thought and reasoning. Empiricism (aristotle, locke): knowledge is learned from experience. 1910-1950 behaviorists claims that psychology should not make reference to mental states or internal information processing; it should, instead concern itself solely with observable behaviors. Noninvasive: technologies were not available for studying cognitive activity directly, and existing indirect methods were methodologically problematic. All learning takes place through conditioning and reinforcement alone. Reinforcement: reward is used to strengthen the association between stimulus and response. Difficult to tell what constitute an instance of a behavior. Not all behaviors can be explained with reference to stimulus response. Two behaviorists (tolman and honzik in 1930) were testing rats" navigation of. There were 3 different groups of rats. Group 1 were rewarded each time they successfully navigated the maze. Group 2 were never rewarded even if they succeeded or not.
