Q.Using Kohler's insight-learning experiment with chimpanzees, explain how insight learning differs from ordinary trial-and-error learning.

Insight learning differs from trial-and-error learning in both HOW the solution emerges and in how completely and immediately it transfers once found. …

Kohler's insight-learning experiments with chimpanzees provide a clear contrast with ordinary trial-and-error learning, of the kind demonstrated in Skinner's Skinner Box studies with rats. In trial-and-error (operant) learning, an organism's correct response is arrived at gradually: a hungry rat in a Skinner box explores and paws at its surroundings somewhat randomly, accidentally presses a lever, and is rewarded with food; over many repeated trials, the time it takes to press the lever after being placed in the chamber grows progressively shorter, showing a smooth, incremental improvement in performance as the correct response is gradually strengthened through repeated reinforcement.

Kohler's chimpanzees, placed in an enclosed area with food kept out of reach and tools such as poles and boxes available, showed a completely different pattern. There was no gradual, trial-by-trial improvement in their attempts to reach the food. Instead, the chimpanzees would roam the enclosure for a period showing no apparent progress toward solving the problem at all, and then would suddenly stand on a box, grab a pole, and successfully strike or reach the food — the correct, complete solution appearing all at once, seemingly out of nowhere, rather than being built up piece by piece across many partially successful attempts. Kohler called this sudden emergence of a solution insight learning. …