Page 196 - DMGT402_MANAGEMENT_PRACTICES_AND_ORGANIZATIONAL_BEHAVIOUR

Unit 9: Learning, Attitudes and Values

Factors Influencing Operant Conditioning Notes

Several factors affect response rate, resistance to extinction and how quickly a response is acquired.
1. The first factor is the magnitude of reinforcement. In general, as magnitude of
reinforcement increases, acquisition of a response is greater. For example, workers would
be motivated to work harder and faster, if they were paid a higher salary.
Research indicates that level of performance is also influenced by the relationship between
the amount of reinforcement expected and what is actually received. For example, your
job performance would undoubtedly be affected if your salary were suddenly cut by half.
Also, it might dramatically improve if your employer doubled your pay.
2. The second factor affecting operant conditioning is the immediacy of reinforcement.
Responses are conditioned more effectively when reinforcement is immediate. As a rule,
the longer the delay in reinforcement, the more slowly a response is acquired.
3. The third factor influencing conditioning is the level of motivation of the learner. If you
are highly motivated to learn to play football you will learn faster and practice more than
if you have no interest in the game. Skinner found that when food is the rein forcer, a
hungry animal would learn faster than an animal with a full stomach.

9.4.3 Cognitive Learning Theory

Behaviourists such as Skinner and Watson believed that learning through operant and classical
conditioning would be explained without reference to internal mental processes. Today, however,
a growing number of psychologists stress the role of mental processes. They choose to broaden
the study of learning to include such cognitive processes as thinking, knowing, problem solving,
remembering and forming mental representations. According to cognitive theorists, these
processes are critically important in a more complete, more comprehensive view of learning.
1. Wolfang Kohler (1887 - 1967): Learning by insight: - A German Psychologist studied
anthropoid apes and become convinced that they behave intelligently and were capable
of problem solving. In his book "The Mentality of Apes" (1925), Kohler describes
experiments he conducted on chimpanzees confined in caged areas.
In one experiment Kohler hung a bunch of bananas inside the caged area but overhead,
out of reach of the apes; boxes and sticks were left around the cage. Kohler observed the
chimp's unsuccessful attempts to reach the bananas by jumping or swinging sticks at
them. Eventually the chimps solved the problem by piling the boxes one on top of the
other until they could reach the bananas.

In another experiment, Sultan, the brightest of the chimps, was given one short stick;
beyond reach outside the cage were a longer stick and a bunch of bananas. After failing to
reach the bananas with the short stick, Sultan used it to drag the longer stick within reach.
Then, finding that the long stick did not reach the bananas, Sultan finally solved the
problem by fitting the two sticks together to form one long stick. With this stick, he
successfully retrieved the bananas.
Kohler observed that the chimps sometimes appeared to give up in their attempts to get
the bananas. However, after an interval they returned and came up with the solution to
the problem as if it had come to them in a flash of insight. Kohler insisted that insight,
rather than trial-and-error learning, accounted for the chimps successes because they could
easily repeat the solution and transfer this learning to similar problems.

Learning by insight occurs when there is a sudden realisation of the relationship between
elements in a problem situation so that a solution becomes apparent. Kohler's major

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