LATENT LEARNING

Latent learning is a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response. It occurs without obvious reinforcement to be applied later.
Latent learning is when an organism learns something in its life, but the knowledge is not immediately expressed. It remains dormant and may not be available to consciousness, until specific events or experiences might need this knowledge to be demonstrated. For instance, a child may observe a parent setting a table or tightening a screw, but does not act on this learning for a year, and then he finds he knows how to do these.

It was Tolman & Honzik (1950) who showed that rats learn about their environment in the absence of reinforcement. Tolman trained some rats to run through mazes for standard food goals. Other rats were permitted to explore the same mazes for several days without food goals or other rewards. After the unrewarded rats had been allowed to explore the mazes for 10 days, food rewards were placed in a box at the far end of the maze. The previously unrewarded explorers reached the food box as quickly as the rewarded rats after only one or two reinforced trials. Tolman concluded that rats learned about mazes in which they roamed even when they were unrewarded for doing so. He distinguished between learning and performance. Rats would acquire a cognitive map of a maze, and even though they would not be motivated to follow an efficient route to the far end, they would learn rapid routs from end to end just by roaming about within the maze. Yet this learning might remain hidden, or latent, until they were motivated to follow the rapid routes for food goals. Thus latent learning is learning that occurs but is not evident in behaviour until later, when conditions for its appearance are favourable.