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In
1690, John Locke wrote " Let us then suppose the
mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters,
without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? ...
To this I answer, in one word, from Experience."
Locke's claim
stakes out a central role for learning and memory in
explaining human capacities. Following Locke, this course
assumes that learning and memory are fundamental psychological
processes that affect all aspects of human thought and
behavior. To help you understand these
processes, the course will critically examine a number
of modern theories about learning and memory. These
include the Rescorla-Wagner theory of classical conditioning,
B.F. Skinner's "theory" of instrumental conditioning,
optimal foraging theory, the Shiffrin's SAM theory of
memory, McClelland & Rumelhart's parallel-distributed-processing
theory, procedural learning theory, and Estes' array
model of memory. The theories will
be examined in relation to historically important issues
as well as to contemporary issues in the study of learning
and memory. We will be concerned with learning
and memory as they are expressed in people and other
animals. We will also be concerned with using
these theories to understand claims made about human
capacities.
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