Cognitive Psychology - Essay Example

While the traditional behaviorists exclaimed that animals had a mental representation influencing their process of learning. Behaviorist, Edward Chace Tolman, challenged the assumptions of the traditional behaviorists and his experiments on rats explained that animals have a latent learning process that does not require any reinforcement for their mental representations to be created. According to him, environmental stimuli, psychological drive, heredity, previous training, and age are the main factors leading to different behaviors (Friedenberg and Silverman, 2006, p.88). Chomsky had also challenged the behaviorists stating that the accounts of language that behaviorists possessed were inadequate.

His poverty of stimulus argument stated that the complexities of children’s languages could not be realized from the language samples provided to them. He challenged that words could not be associated to form sentences, as suggested by traditional behaviorists. Thus the simple association of words to understand the mind of individuals was considered as inadequate by Chomsky (Carroll, 2008, p.12). The behavioral and physiological approaches can both be used for the cognitive understanding of the mind.

However, the two approaches are different in that the behavioral approach considers the relationship of stimuli and behavior such that understanding of a certain reaction to a stimulating action observed. An example of this is a reflection of light and the response of the individual to the presentation of the light.