Expression of Learning

The modification of behavior as a consequence of prior experience is the central concern of learning theory. Yet, as the name itself suggests, learning theory has historically emphasized the acquisition of information, to the relative neglect of the postacquisition processes that translate acquired knowledge into behavior. ¹ The working assumption of most students of learning was that what a subject did was an accurate reflection of what the subject had learned. This assumption was successfully challenged by Tolman (e.g., 1932) and his colleagues who demonstrated that a well trained animal would not manifest its acquired knowledge unless there was concordance between the available reinforcer and the animal's motivational state. Although these observations served as the basis for proposing a distinction between learning variables and performance variables, in practice the only widely accepted examples of performance variables were the very same internal and external motivational factors which first gave rise to the learning-performance distinction. Currently, the working assumption in the research laboratory is still that behavior is an accurate reflection of learning, only now with the proviso that the subject is appropriately motivated at the time of testing.