What evidence did Tolman provide for his contention that reinforcement influences performance but not learning?
According to Tolman’s theory, an organism has the ability to learn constantly as it happens in the environment. An organism uses their special learning power skills that are solely determined by the organism’s motivational state. Thus, according to Tolman’s context, motivation influences learning rather than reinforcement that was not essential for learning to occur.
Tolman studied a case study about a rat that feeds on food and does not leave the box of a maze by learning the experience of obtaining food. Thus, he suggested that reinforcement has the characteristic feature of nurturing performance but not learning. He defined performance as the transformation of learning into behavior that leads to the influence of Woodworth’s dynamic psychology.
Thus, the process of learning is frequently results due to the sequence of behavior that modifies the complexity of learning as well as the viability of other explanations.