The causes of variation in learning and behavior: why individual differences matter

Abstract

In a seminal paper written five decades ago, Cronbach discussed the two highly distinct approaches to scientific psychology: experimental and correlational. Today, although these two approaches are fruitfully implemented and embraced across some fields of psychology, this synergy is largely absent from other areas, such as in the study of learning and behavior. Both Tolman and Hull, in a rare case of agreement, stated that the correlational approach held little promise for the understanding of behavior. Interestingly, this dismissal of the study of individual differences was absent in the biologically oriented branches of behavior analysis, namely, behavioral genetics and ethology. Here we propose that the distinction between “causation” and “causes of variation” (with its origins in the field of genetics) reveals the potential value of the correlational approach in understanding the full complexity of learning and behavior. Although the experimental approach can illuminate the causal variables that modulate learning, the analysis of individual differences can elucidate how much and in which way variables interact to support variations in learning in complex natural environments. For example, understanding that a past experience with a stimulus influences its “associability” provides little insight into how individual predispositions interact to modulate this influence on associability. In this “new” light, we discuss examples from studies of individual differences in animals’ performance in the Morris water maze and from our own work on individual differences in general intelligence in mice. These studies illustrate that, opposed to what Underwood famously suggested, studies of individual differences can do much more to psychology than merely providing preliminary indications of cause-effect relationships.

The redundancy effect is related to a lack of conditioned inhibition: Evidence from a task in which excitation and inhibition are symmetrical

“…Even though it has been argued that an approach incorporating individual differences in learning may be needed to understand the full complexity of learning and behaviour (e.g. Byrom, 2013;Sauce & Matzel, 2013), to our knowledge, variation in the extent to which participants utilise processes consistent with single and summed error has not been considered in published work to date.…”

Universal Design for Learning to Support Access to the General Education Curriculum for Students with Intellectual Disabilities

“…The students have different interests and strengths, which they try to utilise to learn things. The variation in learning can arise due to several factors including level of intelligence; the level of congruence between teacher; student, and curriculum; background; variation in learning experiences of past; and intellectual disability (Sauce & Matzel, 2013). Ensuring that all the intellectually disabled children or the students have access to classroom, curriculum, and basic education is difficult because the students have diverse educational needs depending on their ability to learn.…”

The external–internal loop of interference: Two types of attention and their influence on the learning abilities of mice

“…While the experimental approach can easily reveal the causes underlying a simple trait, the correlational approach is better suited to identify causes of variation behind complex traits – determining how much a set of variables contribute to observed differences between individuals (for the importance of using the correlation approach in Psychology, see Cronbach, 1957; Kline, 2011. For its importance in studies on learning and behavior, see Sauce & Matzel, 2013). First, we conducted exploratory factor analyses to examine the patterns of the mice's performances in the four distinct tests of attention.…”