Chapter 3: Learning
A dog hears the front door open and bolts to it. A toddler touches a hot stove once and never does it again. A rat learns to press a lever for food pellets and keeps pressing even after the food stops. All three are learning. Different kinds of learning, but the same general architecture: experience reshapes future behavior.
This chapter covers the four main learning mechanisms the MCAT cares about: non-associative learning (getting used to a stimulus), classical conditioning (Pavlov’s dogs), operant conditioning (Skinner’s rats), and observational learning (Bandura’s kids and the Bobo doll). Each has its own vocabulary - and the MCAT is a vocabulary test as much as a content test - so memorize the terms and match them to examples.
Learning Is Not the Same as Performance
A running theme of the chapter: you can learn something without showing it. A kid who sees a bully punch someone at school has learned the move, even if they never use it. The distinction between learning (change in long-term knowledge) and performance (what you actually do) matters for almost every theory in the chapter and shows up explicitly in Bandura’s work.