Logan: Basic Principles of Learning ACTIVE PARTICIPATION Active participation by the organism, that is, overt or covert attention to the stimuli and rehearsal of the responses, facilitates learning and may even be necessary for learning to occur in some situations. The Principles of Learning are typically stated in such a way that the organism is viewed as being a passive, largely helpless victim of environmental influences. A principle states that, if you do thus and so to the organism, this or that will be the outcome. For example, the statement of the Principle of Classical Conditioning says that simply pairing an S with a US results in the learning of an anticipatory CR. The organism was assigned no role in the process when, in point of fact, active participation by the organism is important, if not necessary for conditioning to occur. Consider again the Pavlovian situation in which a metronome regularly precedes the delivery of either food or acid. Under close observation, we note that the sound of the metronome does not simply strike the dog's ears. Rather, the dog pricks up his ears, turns his head toward the source of the sound, and takes on what we might call an "inquisitive look". Pavlov called this unlearned reaction to a novel stimulus the INVESTIGATORY (or what-is-it?) REFLEX. The dog does not just hear the metronome, he listens and attends to it. It is already a very active organism even before the US appears. Furthermore, the US does more than evoke the observed response (salivation). If it is food, the dog chews it, swallows it, and licks his chops. If it is acid, the dog puckers up his mouth, curls his tongue, and tries to isolate the mild pain. In either case, the total UR is considerably larger than the sample chosen for observation. One way to show the importance of the investigatory (or ORIENTING) reflex is the LATENT INHIBITION paradigm. First, the to-be-antecedent-stimulus is presented alone a number of times. This results in HABITUATION of the investigatory reflex. (Habituation means that the unlearned orienting response to the stimulus gradually decreases in strength and finally disappears with repeated presentations of the timulus in isolation.) If after habituation the stimulus is paired with a US, conditioning is weak and unstable. It is called 'latent' inhibition because the weakening effects of stimulus preexposure only become apparent when one attempts to use the stimulus in a conditioning paradigm. The importance of the total UR to the US can also be demonstrated experimentally. To do this, an animal is prepared with a stimulation needle inserted into the motor cortex so that a response such as leg-flexion can be elicited by electrical stimulation of the brain without noticeable sensory effects. Pairing a stimulus with a response so elicited by brain stimulation does not result in conditioning. The Principle of Active Participation was not stated strongly because not all of the evidence favors the proposition that active participation is a necessary condition for learning. For example, a dog can be given conditioning trials while drugged with curare. This drug effectively prevents all striated muscular activity (indeed, the dog must be respirated because even breathing ceases). Yet after pairing a tone with a shock to the dog's paw under the drug condition, a conditioned flexion response is observed when the dog is later tested after the drug has worn off. Clearly, conditioning does not require active participation of any overt movements such as turning of the head to the tone stimulus, or leg-flexion to the shock US. The Principle of Active Participation is at the core of many controversies in the Psychology of Learning, especially the behavioristic-cognitive theorists who view the organism as actively attending, coding, rehearsing, analyzing, organizing, storing, and retrieving. In contrast, the principle was totally rejected by the early behaviorists who viewed the organism as living in a completely deterministic world, molded entirely by environmental influences. The early battle lines were clear and it is safe to conclude that the behaviorists lost. The evidence favoring the Principle of Active Participation is too compelling. But there emerged the neo-behaviorists who fully accepted the concept of an active organism provided these activities are themselves subject to deterministic rules. Return again to the Pavlovian conditioning situation. The dog really has no choice but to become conditioned. A novel stimulus reflexively elicits investigation; the experimenter arranged the situation so that the dog could not help but notice the occurrence of the metronome. Further, one of the setting operations was to make the dog hungry, thus insuring that vigorous consummatory activity would occur. In sum, whether or not the dog is "active" in the situation is up to the environment, and not to the dog. In contrast, the cognitive theorist reserves for the organism some degree of voluntary control over the occurrence of the mediating activities. Perhaps one can design an environment such as Pavlov's that is so barren that the organism is helpless, but in more natural settings involving a variety of complex stimuli and permitting a number of responses, the active decision-making role of the organism becomes important. This controversy raged for well over a half-century, with the neo-behaviorists dominating until the late 1960's when the cognitive influence became dominant. But as fundamental as the issue is from a scientific point of view, from a practical point of view, you would be well advised to accept the Principle of Active Participation without reservations as regards material you want to learn. Do not assume that mere exposure is enough. Become actively involved when you are reading a text, listening to a lecture, engaging in discussion, and practicing test-taking. Everyone agrees that you will do better as a result. TERMS: Habituation, latent inhibition, mediation, investigatory reflex, orienting reflex, conditioned response, consummatory response, setting operation, volition.