Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Contemporary Views of Operant Conditioning213Contemporary Views of Operant ConditioningKey Theme• In contrast to Skinner, today’s psychologists acknowledge the importanceof both cognitive and evolutionary factors in operant conditioning.Key Questions• How did Tolman’s research demonstrate the involvement of cognitiveprocesses in learning?• What are cognitive maps, latent learning, and learned helplessness?• How do an animal’s natural behavior patterns affect the conditioning ofoperant behaviors?In our discussion of classical conditioning, we noted that contemporary psychologistsacknowledge the important roles played by cognitive factors and biologicalpredispositions in classical conditioning. The situation is much the same with operantconditioning. The basic principles of operant conditioning have been confirmed inthousands of studies. However, our understanding of operant conditioning hasbeen broadened by the consideration of cognitive factors and the recognition of theimportance of natural behavior patterns.Cognitive Aspects of Operant ConditioningRats! I Thought You Had the Map!In Skinner’s view, operant conditioning did not need to invoke cognitive factors toexplain the acquisition of operant behaviors. Words such as expect, prefer, choose, anddecide could not be used to explain how behaviors were acquired, maintained, orextinguished. Similarly, Thorndike and other early behaviorists believed that complex,active behaviors were no more than a chain of stimulus–response connectionsthat had been “stamped in” by their effects.However, not all learning researchers agreed with Skinner and Thorndike.Edward C. Tolman firmly believed that cognitive processes played an importantrole in the learning of complex behaviors—even in the lowly laboratory rat. Accordingto Tolman, although such cognitive processes could not be observed directly,they could still be experimentally verified and inferred by careful observation of outwardbehavior (Tolman, 1932).Much of Tolman’s research involved rats in mazes. When Tolman began hisresearch in the 1920s, many studies of rats in mazes had been done. In a typicalexperiment, a rat would be placed in the “start” box. A food reward would be putin the “goal” box at the end of the maze. The rat would initially make many mistakesin running the maze. After several trials, it would eventually learn to run themaze quickly and with very few errors.But what had the rats learned? According to traditional behaviorists, the rats hadlearned a sequence of responses, such as “first corner—turn left; second corner—turnleft; third corner—turn right,” and so on. Each response was associated with the“stimulus” of the rat’s position in the maze. And the entire sequence of responseswas “stamped in” by the food reward at the end of the maze.Tolman (1948) disagreed with that view. He noted that several investigators hadreported as incidental findings that their maze-running rats had occasionally takentheir own shortcuts to the food box. In one case, an enterprising rat had knockedthe cover off the maze, climbed over the maze wall and out of the maze, and scampereddirectly to the food box (Lashley, 1929; Tolman & others, 1946). To Tolman,such reports indicated that the rats had learned more than simply the sequenceEdward Chace Tolman (1898–1956)Although he looks rather solemn in thisphoto, Tolman was known for his opennessto new ideas, energetic teachingstyle, and playful sense of humor. Duringan important speech, he showed a film ofa rat in a maze with a short clip from aMickey Mouse cartoon spliced in at theend (Gleitman, 1991). Tolman’s researchdemonstrated that cognitive processes arean important part of learning, even inthe rat.