The term stimulus has many meanings; very generally, it is any occurrence (be it an external event, or anything perceived or thought) that causes a detectable response. Stimulus is often used with qualifying terms to further specify its meaning, for example, conditioned stimulus and neutral stimulus. Various fields of study use the term stimulus in different ways. In psychology, it is most often used to describe energy forms that reach sense organs and cause a response. For example, the visual sense using the eyes responds to photic radiation or light. Because human sense organs respond to a limited number of energy forms, and even then to only limited amounts of that energy, some energy reaching the sense organs is not detected and does not cause a response. The energy reaching the sense organs but not causing a response may be deemed a stimulus to a physiologist, but for psychologists it would not be considered a stimulus unless it had been responded to or detected by the organism. A stimulus may also be an internal mental event that causes a response. Stimulus is the primary term in stimulus-response theory, which refers to a number of learning theories that are theoretically based on conditioned bonds or associations between a stimulus and response. The associative bonds are formed through the repeated pairing of certain stimuli and certain responses. Most of these theories are also behavioristic in that they focus on behaviors and do not look at mental processes, and they see the environment as the most important determinant of human behavior. Indeed, these theories view the bond between stimulus and response as the basis of behavior and believe that psychology's primary goal should be to discover rules governing how stimuli and responses interact. The two dominant stimulus-response theories are classical and operant conditioning theories. BooksAtkinson, R.L., R.C. Atkinson, E.E. Smith, and D.J. Bem. Introduction to Psychology. 10th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. Masin, S.C., ed. Foundations of Perceptual Theory. New York: Elvesier Science, 1993.
Thorndike’s Stimulus-Response Theory | Wandofknowledge Theories of learningTo download the whole content in pdf form kindly click in the links provided below: Some psychologist have studied the process of learning very minutely. The inferences that they have drawn from their experiments and Organization of thought that they have presented about the process of learning, are called the theories of learning. Different psychologists have propounded different theories of learning. We shall discuss some of the important theories. In the discussion of these theories we shall first describe those experiments on the basis of which particular psychologist has propounded particular theory, and then we shall discuss its merits and demerits and will discuss its utility in the field of education. Thorndike’s Stimulus-Response TheoryThe American psychologist, Edward L. Thorndikeconducted several experiments on the process of learning dogs, cats and monkeys, in order to understand the form of the process of learning of human beings. In this connection one of his experiments conducted on a cat is very important. He got made a cage for a cat. He used such a latch in the cage which opened the door if it was pressed. This cage is called the puzzle box. Thorndike put a hungry cat in it. After shutting it, he placed a fish in a plate outside the cage. As soon as the cat saw the fish, it started to attempt to come out. It made many types of efforts, it jumped and hit its paws here and there. In this effort, its paw pressed the latch. As a result, the door opened and the cat came out of the puzzle box and ate up the fish to satiate its hunger. Thorndike repeated this experiment on the cat several time and observed that the cat committed less number of mistakes for arriving at position of pressing the latch, and finally a situation was reached in which it pressed the latch without having committed any mistake at all. In other words, it learnt how to open the box. Thorndike inferred the following from this experiment: (1) The first need for learning is objective as food in the above experiment. (2) There is a drive or motive behind the objective, as hunger in the above experiment. (3) It is necessary for a stimulus to exist for the attainment of the objective, as the fish (food) in the above experiment. (4) A response is needed for the attainment of the objective, as the effort by the cat to come out of the box in the above experiment. (5) The responses which are helpful in the realization of the objective, the learner adopts them, and he gives up meaningless activities, as was done by the cat in the above experiment. (6) On realization of the objective, the nervous system of the learner establishes powerful relationship between the stimulus and the response which is helpful in its realization. Whenever that stimulus is presented before the learner in the future, he performs the similar response towards it. In the view of Thorndike, learning is the establishment of this powerful bond between the stimulus and response. Thorndike has propounded these facts in the form of Stimulus-Response theory. In brief, it is also called S-R Theory. According to this theory, the first need is that of the stimulus. The second need is that of the response, and the third need is that of the intense bond between the stimulus and the response. We are aware that when there is a correct response towards a stimulus, the learner gets satisfaction and he selects that response. This is the situation when a bond between a stimulus and a response is established. On the basis of this relationship, this theory is also called the Bond Theory. Because the learner arrives at the correct response by trial and error, so it is also called the Trial and Error Theory, and the learning of this type is called learning by trial and error. Characteristics of S-R TheoryThe factors that this theory reveals about the process of learning are its characteristics.
Shortcomings of S-R Theory
Utility of S-R Theory in Education
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