PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Classical Conditioning, Tabula Rasa, Empiricism

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jordan Poppenk

Document Summary

Learning: a more-or-less permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential that results from experience (operational definition). Affects your potential ability to perform behaviours after learning. Change in cognition: resulting from experience: distinguish learning from changes that happen for other reasons. Nativists (nature): ren descartes (1596-1650) proposed that almost all behaviour was reflexive or due to inborn ideas. He and the other nativists suggested that we are born the way we are and our life experiences play little or no role in shaping our behaviour. Empiricists: early empiricists like thomas hobbes (1588-1679) and john locke (1632-1704) proposed that humans are born with no ideas or knowledge of behaviour; they learn through experience. Locke famously likened the infant"s mind to a "tabula rasa", or blank slate. He emphasized the belief that no knowledge is inborn; external sensations and human reason combine to produce knowledge. Empiricist philosophers believed that learning results from repeated experience.