[1][2][3] Other approaches, such as neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence learning.
[1][3] Russia, or the Soviet Union at the time, provided a cultural-historical approach towards psychology that described learning in the context of one's environment.
Another significant theory was Jean Piaget's constructivism, which described how learners construct knowledge by expanding and changing their ideas based on the information they receive.
[3][7] Sigmund Freud's work on psychoanalysis and John Dewey's theories on schooling and learning were also major influences during this time.
[8][1] In addition, a humanistic view of psychology, led by psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, grew.
[13] Robert Kegan established a constructive-developmental approach that expands upon Piaget's stages of child development into a lifelong process that includes adulthood.
Socrates, in dialogue with Meno, taught this method by teaching a slave boy who knew nothing about Euclidean geometry the Pythagorean theorem.
With himself as his own experimental subject, he used meaningless syllables to form lists that he read several times until he could restate them with high accuracy.
[19] John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) also used this method of learning (e.g., he caused a young child, not previously afraid of furry animals, to become frightened of them) and argued that it was sufficient for the science of psychology, specifically behaviorism.
[21] John Watson may also be known as one of the biggest contributors to marketing and advertising, using his knowledge about behaviorism to predict and control responses from the consumers.
[22] Burrhus F. Skinner (1904-1990) developed operant conditioning, in which specific behaviors resulted from stimuli, which caused them to appear more or less frequently.
[4][23] By the 1920s, John B. Watson's ideas had become popular and influential in the world of psychology and classical conditioning was being explored by other behaviorists.
Skinner is referred to as the father of operant conditioning but his theory stems from the works presented by Edward Thorndike.
[24] Jean Piaget is known for his theory of cognitive development that describes how children create a mental model of the world around them.
The child tries to understand the instructions or actions provided and then stores the information so they can use it to guide their future performances.
[3][8] This central nervous system (CNS) is composed of the brain and spinal cord which are responsible for controlling behavior.
Within the CNS, there are neurons, which send messages within and from the brain to the rest of body through electrical and chemical signals.
Hence, learning, from a neuroscience perspective, focuses on how the organization of this neural network changes through the use and reception of information.
In fact, it brings out certain chemicals and opiates that give a natural high increasing a person's motivation.
Behaviorism exists in many current models for learning such as rewards and consequences in classrooms and other incentives like having content mastery goals.
[3][2] Many ideas surrounding social cognitive theory were proposed by Albert Bandura, a clinical psychologist.
[32][33] For instance, learning can occur purely through observation, where a person can gain knowledge of a concept or acquire an understanding of a rule, attitude, beliefs, without actually acting out any of these respective ideas.
With that in mind, constructivists argue that learning needs to be structured so that they challenge students to make sense of new knowledge.
[38][39] The sensorimotor stage, which occurs from birth to around age 2, is when children act spontaneously to make sense of their world.
The preoperational stage occurs between ages 2 to 7 and is categorized by children being able to reflect briefly on the past and imagine the future.
The concrete operational stage, which occurs between ages 7 to 11, is when children rapidly grow cognitively and drastically improve their basic skills and language.
This approach argues that the social environment facilitates learning through certain tools such objects, language, and organizations.
This is because performance goals may cause people to do more social comparison, such as comparing oneself to others, which may ineffectively raise motivation.
When people begin to perceive that their performance outcomes are not related to their own effort, this can severely limit motivation.
Research has shown that incentives which reward task engagement lowers intrinsic motivation as it is much like controlling behavior.