Learning: Understanding Acquired Behavior 83if it is typical, will quickly learn to run the maze with very few errors. Its learn-
ing curve is highly accelerated compared to that of a rat that has not had an ear-
lier opportunity to explore the maze. This is because the first rat was actually
learning while it was exploring. The function of reinforcement in this case is to
act as an incentive,a stimulus that elicits and brings forth whatever learning the
organism has acquired.
Note that the learning was actually acquired when the rat was exploring.
Therefore learning was taking place without reinforcement. Such learning is called
latent learning,meaning learning that is dormant and waiting to be activated.
Let’s say that Keith is an adolescent male. For years his mother has forced him,
with no particular reinforcement, to make his bed and hang up his clothes neatly.
But Keith has, from his mother’s point of view, been a slow learner. He does both
tasks poorly. He enlists in the army shortly after his eighteenth birthday. In basic
training he makes his bed and hangs up his clothes neatly. He has been told that
he will obtain his first weekend pass only if he performs various tasks properly.
The fact that Keith shows a very rapid learning curve under these conditions pro-
vides an example of latent learning. He was learning under his mother’s influence,
but he wasn’t motivated to bring the learning forth.
The process of latent learning calls attention to the learning-performance
distinction.Learning is an underlying process. In the case of latent learning it is
temporarily hidden. Performance is the way in which learning is displayed in
action. Only performance can actually be observed and directly measured.(a) is learning that is dormant and waiting to be activated.(b) is the way in which learning is displayed in action.
Answers: (a) Latent learning; (b) Performance.Insight learningis a third kind of learning in which consciousness appears to
play a major role. Groundbreaking research on insight learning was conducted by
Wolfgang Köhler, one of the principal Gestalt psychologists. One of Köhler’s
principal subjects was an ape named Sultan. Sultan was presented with two short
handles that could be assembled to make one long tool, a kind of rake. An orange
was placed outside of Sultan’s cage and it was beyond the reach of either handle.
Sultan spent quite a bit of time using the handles in useless ways. He seemed to be
making no progress on the problem.
Then one day Sultan seemed to have a burst of understanding. He clicked
together the handles and raked in the orange. Köhler called this burst of under-
standing an insight,and defined it as a sudden reorganization of a perceptual
field. Originally, Sultan’s perceptual field contained two useless handles. With
insight, Sultan’s perceptual field contained a long rake. The conscious mental
process that brings a subject to an insight is called insight learning.