Learning and Behavior

by Paul Chance

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR looks at learning as an evolutionary mechanism. Chance's book is stimulating, interactive, and peppered with high-interest queries and examples. Chance provides the depth of conceptual knowledge usually associated with books twice as dense and infinitely less interesting. Chance's engaging work has become a favorite of students because of his ability to illuminate how the psychology of learning can offer insight into their own behavior.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Textbooks, School, Reference, Dogs, Education

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Andrea Styrvold]

Synes det er lov å legge til pensumbøker altså, tenk så mye tid jeg hadde hatt til å lese bøker jeg faktisk ville hvis ikke

[Mike Worley]

Analysis of Behavior text, excellent

[Shalene]

Better written than a lot of textbooks and I actually enjoyed reading the majority of this

[Camilla]

An absolute MUST READ for anyone who teaches anyone.

[Hugo]

Great book, easy to read and understand, arranged logically, and thoroughly researched. Highly recommend!

[Catherine Garcia]

This was the digital text provided for my PSYC 387 Learning course. We read the whole book cover to cover, but we didn’t use the review questions or other review materials as my course provided its own review materials.
Textbook was well written using easy to follow language without being too wordy and used multiple examples to explain the concepts. I found I didn’t really need to go to outside sources for further explanation.
Definitely one of the better textbooks I’ve used.

[Selmoore Codfish]

I love the author's focus on the natural science method of psychology. It produces believable explanations for human behavior.

The questions within the text, and the end of the chapters, and in the workbook often don't have unique answers. It isn't always obvious what sort of answer that he's looking for. For someone like me that is just reading the book themselves, I not always 100% sure that I got the right answer.

Things that I look for in psych books is whether they are critical of God or belief. This book seems harmless. The author raises the question of God in a unchallenging way in chapter 1. He says that the methods of the text rely on looking for scientific explanations of behavior, not inspiration of higher power. Also, later he pokes fun at silly things Puritans believed. Seems safe unless there are still some Puritans around.

Another thing that I look for in any book is if it is making a political statement. The author does bring up implications of the theories an suggests that the reader compare them to political ideas. Some of the theories could be embraced by any group. As long as goal of using this information is improving others, whatever political tags it is associated with shouldn't matter. The only thing that I think is missing here is that I am curious what the author thinks about political implications.

The workbook included at the back was useful in reinforcing concepts. The first workbook chapter seemed to be an exact copy of the questions from chapter 1 of the text. I blew off the other workbook chapters until later because I didn't see value in it. Then I noticed that the other sections were different.

[Dre Battles]

It's a pretty good text book. The information is clear and written in laymen, so a pretty easy read for a textbook. I especially love the little quotes and opening stories at the beginning of every chapter. I do feel like some of the concepts and terminology could be expanded upon...but that's what outside studying is for...I guess :P.

[Melvin Marsh]

It's a decent textbook. I have seen a lot worse and have seen better. It is pretty easy to understand so I guess that is a good thing certainly better than some of the other texts from my grad school!

[Eddie]

This wasn't like reading a textbook at all. Clear, to the point, and unlike a lot of these textbooks, it doesn't sound like it was written by some malfuntioning psychology robot.

[Chloé]

Want to get familiar with the principle of behavioral psychology, here a nice text book for undergrads students.

[Denise Armstrong]

Exceptionally clear and easy to read sections breaking learning and behaviour into bite sized chinks - highly recommended for any ABA learners.

[Jamie]

Somewhat helpful