0.1 Behavioral view of learning  (Page 4/10)

The changes described in these two examples are important because they can affect students’ attitude about school, and therefore also their motivation to learn. In the positive case, the child becomes more inclined to please the teacher and to attend to what he or she has to offer; in the negative case, the opposite occurs. Since the changes in attitude happen “inside” the child, they are best thought of as one way that a child can acquire i intrinsic motivation , meaning a desire or tendency to direct attention and energy in a particular way that originates from the child himself or herself. Intrinsic motivation is sometimes contrasted to extrinsic motivation , a tendency to direct attention and energy that originates from outside of the child. As we will see, classical conditioning can influence students’ intrinsic motivation in directions that are either positive or negative. As you might suspect, there are other ways to influence motivation as well. Many of these will be described when we discuss the topic of student motivation later in the course. First, though, let us look at three other features of classical conditioning that complicate the picture a bit, but also render conditioning a bit more accurate, an appropriate description of students’ learning.

Three key ideas about classical conditioning

Extinction: This term does not refer to the fate of dinosaurs, but to the disappearance of a link between the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response. Imagine a third variation on the conditioning “story” described above. Suppose, as I suggested above, that the child begins by associating your happy behaviors—your smiles—to his being present in the classroom, so that the classroom itself becomes enough to elicit his own smiles. But now suppose there is a sad turn of events: you become sick and must therefore leave the classroom in the middle of the school year. A substitute is called in who is not Mr Horrible, but simply someone who is not very expressive, someone we can call Ms Neutral. At first the child continues to feel good (that is, to smile) whenever present in the classroom. But because the link between the classroom and your particular smile is no longer repeated or associated, the child’s response gradually extinguishes , or fades until it has disappeared entirely. In a sense the child’s initial learning is “unlearned”.

Extinction can also happen with negative examples of classical conditioning. If Mr Horrible leaves mid-year (perhaps because no one could stand working with him any longer!), then the child’s negative responses (cringing, eyes widening, heart beat racing, and so on) will also extinguish eventually. Note, though, that whether the conditioned stimulus is positive or negative, extinction does not happen suddenly or immediately, but unfolds over time. This fact can sometimes obscure the process if you are a busy teacher attending to many students.