Learning and Behavior

✍ Scribed by Paul Chance

• Publisher: Cengage Learning
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 467
• Edition: 7th
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR, Seventh Edition, looks at learning as an evolutionary mechanism. Based on the theme that learning is a biological mechanism that aids survival, the book embraces a scientific approach to behavior, but is written in clear and engaging language. Chance's book is also filled with high-interest queries and examples that support student's learning and understanding. Students love this book--and actually read it.

Features and Benefits:
Chance makes the points that learning is a biological mechanism (evolved modifiability) by which individuals cope with change, that changes in behavior are the products of biological and environmental events, and that the natural science approach is the best way to study behavior.
Discussion on the Rescorla-Wagner model is among the clearest available today.
The text emphasizes the "nature via (not versus) nurture" view and the co-dependency of ontogeny and phylogeny.
A practice quiz and review questions (without answers) appear at the end of each chapter. The absence of answers prompts students to think about and discuss the questions, which may result in interesting class discussions.

✦ Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Learning to Change.
2. The Study of Learning and Behavior.
3. Pavlovian Conditioning.
4. Pavlovian Applications.
5. Operant Learning: Reinforcement.
6. Reinforcement: Beyond Habit.
7. Schedules of Reinforcement.
8. Operant Learning: Punishment.
9. Operant Applications.
10. Observational Learning.
11. Generalization, Discrimination, and Stimulus Control.
12. Forgetting.
13. The Limits of Learning.