You Didn’t Teach Me ‘That’
“Sit”, I said, but instead he looked at me quizzically, his head tipping side to side, ears flopping gracefully. Fido was obviously considering my request – formulating a judgment. “Should I sit, why would I want to, what are the consequences of sitting, of not sitting, what is her intent and why now, why me, what are her motives and what would be the worst that would happen should I decide not to sit?”
- Category: Critical Thinking
- Posted By: admin
- Posted On: 07 July,2025
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If you have a training program that looks only at performance and skills, you may be using a learning theory called behaviorism. Behaviorism is a theory of animal and human learning that only focuses on objectively observable behaviors and discounts mental activities.
Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior. It is true that learning is supposed to result in a change of behavior BUT not only behavior. So, what does this have to do console training?
Do you ever wonder why a trainee can perform perfectly for you but when they get out there on his or her own they either freeze or fall apart. Possibly they forget what they just demonstrated for you a week ago? Makes you wonder what is happening.
Pavlov’s Dog Conditioning. What is happening is that often when we evaluate someone on a ‘skill’ we are looking at their performance under a certain set of circumstances. We are teaching the trainee to react to a given set of commands. When those set of circumstances and commands are not present, the trainee must ‘think’ through what to do in this particular situation. How well they think may be based upon how much experience they have had with thinking through similar situations.
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