THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING

MS JOYCE KOMESUOR

DEFINITION

• Learning refers to a relatively permanent change in behaviour due to experience.

• Learning does not include temporary changes due to disease, injury, maturation, injury or drugs since these do not qualify as learning.

Some First Principles• Learning is something all humans do – Fetuses learn– Infants learn– Children learn– Adults learn

• Learning is not uniquely human – all living things learn

• Learning evolved as an adaptation for promoting survival

Key Words in the Definition

• Relatively Permanent: it does not include temporal changes such as tiredness. It does not include very permanent changes that are associated with maturation.

• Change in Behavior: Learning can not be seen but can only be inferred from observable behavior.

Key Words in the Definition

• Experience: it means something that happen to you in your lifetime, usually involving interaction with your environment.

Learning is Not

• Reflex: A reflex is an inborn involuntary response to a specific kind of stimulus. (Sdorow, 1993)

• Instinct: It is an inborn complex Behaviour found in members of a species. (Sdorow, 1993). Eg net building in birds

Learning is Not

• Maturation: Changes resulting from maturation are permanent and are not due to experience, they do not qualify as learning.

- Maturation is defined as the sequential unfolding of inherited predisposition.eg Walking in humans

Factors Affecting Learning

• Maturation: Learning can only take place when the individual has attained both physical and psychological maturity to understand what is to be learned.

• Motivation: one is able to learn when he/she is motivated to do so.

• Intelligence: No effective learning can take place without intelligence

• Physical condition of the learner: It is very important to be in a good health conditions for an effect learning to take place. Eg eye sight,

• Mental health of the learner: it is very crucial in learning, research has shown that fears, worries feeling loneliness, lack of self-confidence etc can affect learning

• Good physical Learning condition: Condition under which learning takes place has a profound impact on learning

• Distributed learning: It is advisable to space learning because capacity decrease with time

• Practice: Practice also affect learning in a positive way. Someone who learns with practice or rehearses will be able to remember the things learned better.

• Feedback: A learner who is given feedback on his or her performance is likely to do better than one who receives no feedback

• Education and previous learning: Previous learning lays a strong foundation for learning to take place.

Types of Learning

• Habituation: it is one of the simple forms of learning, in which an organism after a period of exposure to a stimulus stops responding.

( A stimulus is any physical energy that affects a person and evokes a response)

• Sensitization: it is the process whereby an individual learns to response defensively to a wide range of stimuli due to exposure to a dangerous or painful situation.

Types of Learning

• Associative learning: it involves learning that two events occur together

• Association between stimuli: under this type of learning, an organism learns association between two stimulus e.g. through constant pairing of dark clouds and rain, humans have come to realize that dark clouds is normally followed by rain.

Types of Learning

• The process where by an organism learns association between stimuli is called classical conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov 1849-1936 Russian physician/

neurophysiologist Nobel Prize in 1904 studied digestive

secretions

Pavlov’s Classic Experiment

Before Conditioning

During Conditioning After Conditioning

UCS (foodin mouth)

Neutralstimulus(tone)

Nosalivation

UCR (salivation)

Neutralstimulus(tone)

UCS (foodin mouth)

UCR(salivation)

CS(tone)

CR (salivation)

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning organism comes to associate two stimuli a neutral stimulus that signals an

unconditioned stimulus begins to produce a response that anticipates and prepares for the unconditioned stimulus

• Association between a response and its consequences: it involves a situation in which an organism learns association between a response and its consequences. This process is called operant conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Operant Conditioning type of learning in which behavior is strengthened

if followed by reinforcement or diminished if followed by punishment

Law of Effect Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by

favorable consequences become more likely, and behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely

Operant Conditioning

• B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)– elaborated Thorndike’s

Law of Effect– developed behavioral

technology

Skinner Box

• Classical conditioning forms an association between two stimuli.

• Operant conditioning forms an association between a behaviour and a consequence.

• It is also called response-stimulus or RS conditioning because it forms an association between the person’s response [behavior] and the stimulus that follows [consequence]

Types Of Learning

• ALBERT BANDURA • Bandura believed that direct reinforcement

could not account for all types of learning. • He suggested that environment causes

behaviour, true; but behaviour causes environment as well.

Types of Learning

• Occurs when an observer’s behaviour changes after viewing the behaviour of a model.

• Observational learning is the process of learning to respond in a particular way by watching others, who are called models.

• An observer’s behaviour can be affected by the positive or negative consequences of a model’s behaviour.

Types of Learning

• COGNITIVE LEARNING• It refers to learning that involves thinking,

understanding, anticipating and understanding. It actually involves higher mental processes. It presents the view that not all forms of learning results from connection between stimuli and responses.

Cognitive Learning

• Kohler’s Insight Learning (Wolfgang Kohler 1925)

• Insight Learning: is the sudden discovery or understanding of the relationships in a problem that can be discovered. Some referred to it as the ‘Aha’ learning

Chimpanzee Experiment

• In one experiment, a Chimp called Sultan was placed in a cage with two short sticks and banana placed outside.

• The Chimp tried to pull the banana in but could not. Later, Sultan identified the sticks and fixed one into the other and used it to pull the banana and ate it.

Chimpanzee Experiment

• In another experiment, a group of Chimps were put in a room with some boxes around a banana hung at the ceiling.

• The Chimps tried to find a way to get it. Finally, they put the boxes one on top of the other and got the banana.