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Learning and Memory
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LEARNING
AND MEMORY
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| The discussion as to whether nature or nurture were
the driving force shaping our cognitive abilities, was for a long time
considered interminable. In the 18th century, Locke
and the english empiricists claimed that individuals were born with a tabula
rasa and only experience could establish mind, consciousness and the self.
On the continent, Leibniz
envisaged the self as a monad carrying with it some knowledge of a basic
understanding of the world. Until the 1960s, this dispute was still very
vivid in the behavioral sciences: B. F. Skinner's
school of behaviorism
in
the USA postulated (as reflexology
did
earlier) general rules for all types of learning, neglecting innate differences
or predispositions. K. Lorenz
was one of the protagonists of ethology in Europe, focusing on the inherited
aspects of behavior. It was Lorenz who ended the antagonistic view of behavior
in showing that there indeed are innate differences and predispositions
in behavior where only little learning occurs. Today, it is largely agreed
upon that nature and nurture are intimately cooperating to bring about
adaptive behaviors. Probably only in very few cases ontogenetic programs
are not subjected to behavioral plasticity at all. Conversely, the possibility
to aquire behavioral traits has to be genetically coded for.
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