Learning and Memory

Professor Whitlow

Fall 2000

830:465, TuTh 4:30-5:50, Fine Arts 110

Learning and Memory is designed to understand the biological mechanisms and psychological principles that are involved when learning and memory occur. The particular perspective with which we will examine learning and memory is the perspective of general-process theories. General process theories seek to identify principles that apply to many different situations, rather than to specify how to remember a particular set of facts or learn a particular skill. These theories also are often concerned with learning and memory as they are expressed in nonhuman animals as well as in people. Although you might think such an approach would be too abstract to have much practical value, I believe it is actually very useful for evaluating many claims made about learning and memory. These claims range from product endorsements for drugs or techniques that promise to improve your memory or accelerate your learning to discussions about educational practices to speculations about genetic engineering.

We will examine a variety of facts about learning and memory in the context of modern theories about learning, such as the Rescorla-Wagner theory of classical conditioning, B.F. Skinner's "theory" of instrumental conditioning, optimal foraging theory, Shiffrin’s SAM theory of memory, McClelland & Rumelhart's parallel-distributed-processing (PDP) theory, and others. I will try to relate the theories we cover to historically important issues as well as to contemporary issues in the study of learning. The primary emphasis will be on theoretical issues rather than the practice of teaching, but it will be important for you to find ways to relate the theories to your own experiences.