2 essays on practical issues in cognitive psychology and learning theories to extended response questions.
PEEL paragraphs and conclusion for evaluate question
Assess 2 ways that practical issues have affected the design and
implementation of research in L.T. (8)
1 way that practical issues have affected the design and implementation of
research in learning theories is by reducing the representativeness of the findings to
real life. Practical issues include ecological validity, meaning that the results are
representative of real life situations, reliability which is the consistency of results
over time. Bandura (1961) investigated social learning theory in 72 children aged 3-5
from Stanford university nursery school. The children exposed to aggressive role
models tended to display more aggressive acts, whereas those exposed to non-
aggressive role models displayed fewer aggressive acts. Bandura measured
children’s aggression through the number of aggressive acts they’ve displayed,
which included gun play, malley play, hitting the Bobo doll’s head and aggressive
phrases. This may not be representative of real life aggression as this does not
usually involve gunplay and mallet play. This means that the results lack mundane
realism, thus affecting the implementation of research. However, this research was
useful in showing how children learn aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour,
therefore findings could be extrapolated from laboratory settings to real life
situations where children may learn aggression in a similar way they did in the study.
Another way that practical issues have affected the design and
implementation of research in learning theories is by limiting the generalizability of
findings from animals to humans. Generalisability is the ability to apply results from
a study to other populations outside of the study. For example, Skinner (1950)
suggested that operant conditioning which he investigated in rats may also apply to
humans. To test positive reinforcement, the box supplied tha rat with food pellet
every time the rat pressed the lever. This positively reinforced the rat to repeat the
action of lever pressing as the rat is provided with a primary reinforcer of food.
However, animals have differences to humans in the way they learn despite having
genetic similarities. This is because humans may have more complicated motives
motivating them as strongly and conditioning them. For example, they may continue
smoking not because it produces pleasurable feelings, but because it may be driven
by peer pressure. This suggests that findings from animal experiments may not be
generalizable to humans., thus limiting the usefulness of animal research in learning
theories. However, animals and humans have similarities in their brain structure and
function and some animal studies did who similar results to those done on humans.
For instance, Olds and Milner (1956) found that the rats preferred receiving
pleasurable electrical stimulation by pressing the level at the expense of other
natural sources of pleasure such as food and mates. This is similar to humans who
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