A cognitive map of the Learning Land: from Behaviourism to Cognitivism through Gestalt Theory

The dramatic shift from behaviorism to cognitivism occurred mainly due to the contributions of Gestalt Theory. After years of almost exclusively behaviorist research, psychologists and educators became discontent with the limitations of behaviorism. Gestalt psychologists initiated the study of more complex problem solving and perceptual problems.

The origin of cognitivism can be traced back to the early part of twentieth century when the Gestalt psychologists from Germany, Edward Chase Tolman from the United States, and Jean Piaget from Switzerland had a tremendous influence on psychology from behaviourist theories. Behaviourists argued that mental events were impossible to observe and measure and could not therefore be studied objectively. Consequently behaviourists could not explain the ways learners attempt to make sense of what they learn. Cognitivists proposed that through empirical research and observation inferences could, indeed, be drawn about the internal, cognitive processes that produce responses.

In the 1920s, Piaget began a research program in Geneva that focused on epistemology, the origins of knowledge. Piaget began his career with the study of snails, and he extended the use of careful behavioural observations and descriptions to his studies on human cognitive development. Central to Piaget is the idea that children are able to solve certain problems only at certain ages and that these problems can be organised into a developmental sequence that defines discrete stages of cognitive development. Piaget proposed several stages of cognitive development in children: sensorimotor (using sensory and motor capabilities), pre-operational (using symbols and responding to objects and events based on how they appear to us), concrete operations (thinking logically), and formal operations (thinking about thinking). He proposed that children grow and develop through each of these stages until they can reason logically (Piaget, 1936, 1937). Piaget elaborated many tests for diagnostics of children’s capacities in correspondence with the stages of cognitive development. Since 80-s, these tests are widely applied for studying cognitive abilities in different species of mammals and birds. This method currently brings exciting results which are consequently changing ideas of mental skills in animals (see details in Part V).

Piaget, Tolman, and Gestalt psychologists all share the notion that human knowledge is structured and organised. Tolman was initially trained in electrochemistry. He changed the course of his career after reading the works of William James. After his first year as a graduate student, he went to Giessen in Germany to study for his PhD examination in German and there was introduced to Gestalt psychology through the teachings and readings of Koffka (see Kimble et al, 1991; Hothersall, 1995). In 1918, Tolman went to the University of California at Berkeley, where he began to study maze learning in rats-a research program that made the department of psychology at Berkeley world-famous. To study learning, he conducted several classical rat experiments. He examined the role that reinforcement plays in the way that rats learn their way through complex mazes. These experiments eventually led to the theory of latent learning which describes learning that occurs in the absence of an obvious reward (see Chapter 17).

The most important contribution to the learning theory was Tolman’s concept of cognitive map based on his ideas of purposive (or goal directed) behaviour. A cognitive map is a spatial schema or representation. In learning a coordinated set of spatial relations, an organism is sometimes said to be developing a cognitive map. The term is most likely to be invoked when the organism orients toward locations that it cannot see or otherwise respond to directly. Tolman and his co-authors used different mazes that were so designed as to test alternative hypothesis: whether an animal had learned the response, say, “turning right”, or had developed a “cognitive map” of the maze. The main idea of Tolman’s approach is that he took a “ molar ” rather than a “molecular” view to studying behaviour. “Molar” refers to an approach that studies extensive patterns of behaviour that appear directed toward some goal, while “molecular” refers to approaches that emphasises specific stimulus-response (S-R) relationships only (see Part IV).

Tolman identified himself as a behaviorist and eschewed the type of introspection that was practised by Wundt and Titchener. However, he was also opposed to the behaviourism dominating the field that time and expressed this in his “A new formula for behaviourism” (1922). Like the behaviourists, Tolman valued the importance of objective research; however, being influenced by Gestalt theories, he included mental phenomena in his perspective of how learning occurs. Tolman’s view of learning was more holistic rather than behaviourist’s. In his 1932 Book “Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men”, Tolman clarified behaviour as largely reaction and effect oriented. It is purposive in that it is designed and executed to attain or avoid something, exemplified by " persistence and the tendency to use the shortest route." Tolman is classified now as a cognitive behaviourist and the originator of the cognitive theory of learning.