Edward Tolman, a behaviorist, conducted an experiment with rats in 1938.

He placed
three groups of rats in a mae and observed how the! behaved over a two wee" period.
#roup 1 alwa!s received a food reward when the! reached the end of the mae in a
timel! manner and would not go down to the dead end portions of the mae. The rats in
#roup $ never received a food reward and seemed li"e the! followed no particular path,
as if the! were %ust wandering around. The rats in #roup 3, however, were a ver!
interesting group. &or the first ten da!s of the experiment, the! seemed to wander
around li"e the rats in #roup $ and found no food. However, on the eleventh da!,
Tolman placed food in the mae and it appeared that the! had learned to go to the end
of the mae without an! reinforcement but never desired to. 'n the twelfth da!, the rats
from #roup 3 were doing as well as the rats from #roup 1, which had been rewarded
with food from the ver! beginning of the test. (t appears that the rats from #roup 3 used
latent learning since the! did not immediatel! displa! the same performance as the rats
in #roup 1.
This idea that rats don)t %ust learn movements for onl! rewards but instead learn even
when there are no rewards suggests a latent learning theor!. *gain, b! using a rat to run
a mae, he could show how this latent learning was possible. The setup would be three
different groups with as a control that would start with food automaticall!. *nother
second experimental group would not get food until the +
th
da!. &inall!, another third
experimental group would not get the food until the 3
rd
da!. ,urprisingl!, in the two
experimental groups, once food was given at the goal point, the rats began to improve
their routes after the reward was introduced. *fter the! were fed, the rat began to run the
mae better on the next trial, showing that even though there was no reward the rat was
still ma"ing a cognitive map of the mae. This was evident when the reward was
introduced. Tolman coined this phenomenon, -latent learning. and said that this
experiment could be extended to humans and that we too use latent learning ever!da!.
1. How did the results of Tolman)s experiment differ from those of ,"inner and /avlov0
$. How would ,"inner and /avlov defend their theor!0
Cognitive Psychology
The term cognitive psychology came into use with the publication of the book Cognitive
Psychology by Ulric Neisser in 1967. Cognitive sychology revolves aroun! the notion
that if we want to know what makes people tick then the way to !o it is to figure out what
processes are actually going on in their min!s.
Cognition literally means "knowing#. $n other wor!s% psychologists from this approach
stu!y cognition which is &the mental act or process by which knowle!ge is ac'uire!.(
They focus on the way humans process information% looking at how we treat information
that comes in to the person )what behaviourists woul! call stimuli* an! how this
treatment lea!s to responses. $n other wor!s% they are intereste! in the variables that
me!iate between stimulus+input an! response+output. The main areas of stu!y in
cognitive psychology are, perception% attention% memory an! language.
-ehavioral vs . Cognitive .iews of /earning
Behaviorism )"learns to#*
1. /earning involves the formation of associations between specific actions an! specific events
)stimuli* in the environment. These stimuli may either prece!e or follow the action )antece!ents
vs. conse'uences*.
0. 1any behaviorists use intervening variables to e2plain behavior )e.g.% habit% !rive* but avoi!
references to mental states.
3. 456$C5/ BEHAVIORISM )operant con!itioning+behavior mo!ification+behavior analysis*,
avoi!s any intervening variables an! focuses on !escriptions of relationships between behavior
an! environment )"functional analysis#*.





-ehavioral vs. Cognitive .iews of /earning
Cognitivism )"learns that#*
1. /earning takes place in the min!% not in behavior. $t involves the formation of mental
representations of the elements of a task an! the !iscovery of how these elements are relate!.
0. -ehavior is use! to make inferences about mental states but is not of interest in itself
)"metho!ological behaviorism#*.
3. 7851/7, Tolman 9 :on;ik(s e2periment on latent learning. Tolman% % argue! that when
rats practice ma;es% they ac'uire a "cognitive map# of the layout<mental representations of the
lan!marks an! their spatial relationships.
3. =houl! Tolman be consi!ere! a cognitive psychologist or a behaviorist> 72plain