Paired Associates Learning, the Shortfalls of Behaviorism, and the Rise of Cognitivism by Elizabeth J. Meinz Psychology Department Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Part I—Two Perspectives

In the study of human learning and memory, there have been two major perspectives: behaviorism and cognitive psychology.

Behaviorism is the view that it is not necessary to refer to knowledge or any other concept such as attention, perception, memory, or “thought” to understand behavior. Behaviorists focus on observable behavior instead of unobservable mental activity. They do not speculate about the nature of thought, but seek to explain observable behavior instead through concepts such as stimulus-response connections. This is a mechanistic view of behavior and posits that you can always predict the response if you know the stimulus.

Cognitive psychology, on the other hand, seeks to understand inner mental activity and thought. Contrary to behaviorists, cognitivists devise models and theories of memory and other cognitive activities even though these processes themselves are not viewable to the naked eye. Cognitivists seek to understand the “mind” whereas behaviorists believe it is not necessary to refer to an unseen “mind” to explain behavior.

Many psychologists of differing theoretical perspectives have been interested in human learning—in how humans acquire new information. In the demonstration we will do today, you are going to get a chance to participate in a learning experiment using lists of words.

Date Posted: 12/20/04 nas

Image: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov in his classical conditioning laboratory.

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