THEORIES OF

LEARNING
Angelica Anne S. Caballes
Presenter
Presented to:
Dr. Arnel Lupisan
What is Association Theories?
• Sociologist Edwin Sutherland first proposed differential
association theory in 1939 as a learning theory of
deviance.
• Differential association theory proposes that the values,
attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior
are learned through one’s interactions with others.
• Differential association theory remains important to the
field of criminology, although critics have objected to its
failure to take personality traits into account.
 Born January 11, 1842 in New York City
William
1869 - Received M.D. from Harvard
James 1875 - Began teaching psychology at Harvard
1890 - Published The Principles of Psychology
1897 - Published Will to Believe and Other Essays
1907 - Published Pragmatism and officially resigned from Harvard
Principles of Psychology
• Was recognized at once as both definitive and innovating in its
field, established the functional point of view in psychology.
• It assimilated mental science to the biological disciplines and
treated thinking and knowledge as instruments in the struggle
to live. At one and the same time it made the fullest use of
principles of psychophysics (the study of the effect of physical
processes upon the mental processes of an organism) and
defended, without embracing, free will.
Pragmatism
• Is a philosophical approach that measures the truth of an idea by
experimentation and by examining its practical outcome. Pragmatists
believe that truth can be modified; that human values are essential to
academic inquiry; that truth is not absolute; that meaning and action are
intimately connected; and that ideas are to be evaluated by whether they
promote consistency and predictability.
• One of the staunchest advocates of pragmatism was William
James (1842–1910), whose ability to translate difficult philosophical
principles for laypersons helped spread the tenets of pragmatism
during the 1890s and the first quarter of the twentieth century,
although James himself died in 1910.
Pragmatism
• One of James's most important contributions to the study of
pragmatism is his concern with religion. According to James,
truth should be evaluated based on its impact on human
behavior; therefore, one's religious faith can be justified if it
makes a positive difference in one's life.
• James’s writings on pragmatism is the dominant place given to
considerations of value, worth, and satisfaction—consequences
of his teleological (purposive) conception of mind (as in
his Principles of Psychology [1890]).
Functionalism
• The theory that mental states can be sufficiently defined by their cause, their effect on
other mental states, and their effect on behavior.
• James opposed the structuralist focus on introspection and breaking down mental events to the smallest elements. Instead, James focused on the wholeness of an
event, taking into the impact of the environment on behavior.

1. Oppose the search for the elements of consciousness as futile.

2. Believe that the mind has the function of helping us adapt to the environment. They want to understand the
function of the mind, the ways it helps us adapt.

3. Want psychology to be practical, not pure science.

4. Want psychology to be broadened to include research on animals, children, and atypical humans.

5. Believed the needs and motivations of the organism should be understood if one wanted to understand
behavior.

6. They are more interested in what makes people different from each other than in what makes them similar.

7. They are willing to use a wide variety of methods of study.

Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov abandoned his early theological schooling to study
science. As the Department of Physiology head at the Institute
of Experimental Medicine, his groundbreaking work on the
digestive systems of dogs earned him the Nobel Prize for
Physiology or Medicine in 1904. Pavlov remained an active
researcher until his death on February 27, 1936.
Behaviorism
• Is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of
humans and other animals.
• It combines elements of philosophy, methodology, and theory.
Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth
psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which
often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested
experimentally.
Behaviorism

• Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov discovered the concept of classical conditioning while studying the digestion in dogs. By doing so he
noticed how the dogs began to salivate as soon as one of his assistants entered the room. Throughout his
research Pavlov and his assistants would present food to the dogs and measured the saliva that was produced as
a result. Pavlov noted salivation was a reflexive process that occurs automatically under stimulus not under
consciousness. Meaning dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food, it’s a stimulus-response connection
that they don’t need to learn, an unconditioned reflex.
• Pavlov discovered that the salivary response was a learned response. Anything the dogs learned to associate with
food triggered the same response. For example, the assistants whom the animals learned usually walked in with
food they were the neutral stimulus. The salivary response to the presentation of food is an unconditioned reflex,
salivating to the expectation of food is a conditioned reflex. As a result, learning changed the behavior of the
animals.
Behaviorism

• After making that scientific discovery Pavlov dedicated himself to study that type of learning. In
a similar experiment Pavlov used a bell as a neutral stimulus and food as the unconditioned
stimulus once more. Every time he fed the dogs he rang a bell. After doing this same procedure
continuously when he rang the bell with no food present the dogs still salivated. Similar to the
last experiment the dogs learned to associate the bell ringing to getting fed, leading them to
believe every time the bell rings they will get fed. The bell had now become a conditioned
stimulus to the dogs. A new behavior was learned, a conditional response.
Edward Lee Thorndike
(born August 31, 1874, Williamsburg, Massachusetts, U.S.—died August 9, 1949, Montrose, New York),
American psychologist whose work on animal behaviour and the learning process led to the theory
of connectionism, which states that behavioral responses to specific stimuli are established through a
process of trial and error that affects neural connections between the stimuli and the most satisfying
responses.
Connectionism
• The learning theory of Thorndike represents the original S-R framework of behavioral psychology: Learning is
the result of associations forming between stimuli and responses. Such associations or “habits” become
strengthened or weakened by the nature and frequency of the S-R pairings. The paradigm for S-R theory was
trial and error learning in which certain responses come to dominate others due to rewards. The hallmark of
connectionism (like all behavioral theory) was that learning could be adequately explained without referring to
any unobservable internal states.

• Thorndike’s theory consists of three primary laws:

• Law of effect- responses to a situation which are followed by a rewarding state of affairs will be strengthened and become
habitual responses to that situation

• Law of readiness- a series of responses can be chained together to satisfy some goal which will result in
annoyance if blocked
• Law of exercise- connections become strengthened with practice and weakened when practice is discontinued. A corollary
of the law of effect was that responses that reduce the likelihood of achieving a rewarding state (i.e., punishments, failures) will
decrease in strength.
Connectionism
• Law of Effect
THANK YOU! ☺