How Psychologists Define Learning: A Comprehensive Overview
Learning is a fundamental aspect of life, enabling organisms to adapt to their environment and thrive. From the moment we are born until our last breath, we are constantly learning, acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. But what exactly is learning, and how do psychologists define it? This article delves into the various facets of learning, exploring its definition, types, and underlying processes.
Defining Learning: A Relatively Permanent Change
Psychologists define learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience. This definition highlights several key aspects:
- Change: Learning involves a transformation in an organism's behavior or understanding. This change can be an acquisition of a new skill, a modification of an existing behavior, or a shift in knowledge or beliefs.
- Relatively Permanent: The change resulting from learning is not fleeting or temporary. It is a lasting alteration that persists over time. This distinguishes learning from short-term changes due to fatigue, motivation, or sensory adaptation.
- Experience: Learning arises from interactions with the environment. These experiences can be direct, such as practicing a skill, or indirect, such as observing others.
Unlearned Behaviors: Instincts and Reflexes
Before delving deeper into learning, it is essential to distinguish it from unlearned behaviors, namely instincts and reflexes. These innate behaviors are present at birth and do not require experience to develop.
- Reflexes: Reflexes are motor or neural reactions to specific stimuli in the environment. They are simple, automatic responses that involve specific body parts and systems. Examples include the knee-jerk reflex and the contraction of the pupil in bright light.
- Instincts: Instincts are innate behaviors triggered by a broader range of events, such as maturation and changes in seasons. They are more complex than reflexes and involve a sequence of behaviors. Examples include birds building nests and salmon swimming upstream to spawn.
Unlike instincts and reflexes, learning involves acquiring knowledge and skills through experience. Learning to surf, as well as any complex learning process (e.g., learning about the discipline of psychology), involves a complex interaction of conscious and unconscious processes.
Types of Learning: Associative and Non-Associative
Learning can be broadly categorized into associative and non-associative learning.
Read also: Becoming a Psychologist in Alberta
Associative Learning: Connecting Stimuli and Events
Associative learning occurs when an organism makes connections between stimuli or events that occur together in the environment. This type of learning is central to three basic learning processes: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
- Classical Conditioning: In classical conditioning, also known as Pavlovian conditioning, organisms learn to associate events-or stimuli-that repeatedly happen together. This process often involves unconscious processes. For example, a flash of lightning might be associated with the sound of thunder, leading to a jump in response to the lightning.
- Pavlov's Experiments: Ivan Pavlov's experiments with dogs provide a classic example of classical conditioning. Pavlov observed that dogs salivated not only at the taste of food but also at the sight of food, the sight of an empty food bowl, and even the sound of the laboratory assistants' footsteps. Through controlled experiments, Pavlov trained dogs to salivate in response to stimuli that had nothing to do with food, such as the sound of a bell.
- Components of Classical Conditioning:
- Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism (e.g., meat powder in Pavlov's experiments).
- Unconditioned Response (UCR): A natural (unlearned) reaction to a given stimulus (e.g., salivation in response to meat powder).
- Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that does not naturally elicit a response (e.g., the sound of a bell before conditioning).
- Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g., the sound of a bell after conditioning).
- Conditioned Response (CR): The behavior caused by the conditioned stimulus (e.g., salivation in response to the bell).
- Real-World Examples: Classical conditioning applies to various real-world scenarios. For instance, a person undergoing chemotherapy might develop nausea at the sight of the doctor's office due to its association with the treatment.
- Higher-Order Conditioning: Higher-order conditioning occurs when a conditioned stimulus serves to condition another stimulus. For example, if a cat learns to associate the sound of an electric can opener with food, it might also learn to associate the squeak of the cabinet where the food is stored with food.
- Acquisition: In classical conditioning, the initial period of learning is known as acquisition, when an organism learns to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.
- Operant Conditioning: In operant conditioning, organisms learn to associate events-a behavior and its consequence (reinforcement or punishment). This process often involves conscious processes. A pleasant consequence encourages more of that behavior in the future, whereas a punishment deters the behavior.
- Reinforcement and Punishment: Reinforcement increases the likelihood of a behavior, while punishment decreases it. Reinforcement can be positive (adding something desirable) or negative (removing something undesirable). Punishment can also be positive (adding something undesirable) or negative (removing something desirable).
- Observational Learning: Observational learning is the process of watching others and then imitating what they do. This type of learning adds social and cognitive layers to the basic associative processes, both conscious and unconscious.
- Learning by Imitation: By observing others, individuals can learn new behaviors, skills, and strategies. For example, a child might learn to play a sport by watching their parents or other children play.
Non-Associative Learning: Habituation and Sensitization
Non-associative learning involves changes in the response to a single stimulus, rather than associations between multiple stimuli. Two common types of non-associative learning are habituation and sensitization.
- Habituation: Habituation is the cessation of responses to repeated stimulation. It occurs when an organism becomes accustomed to a stimulus and reduces its response over time. For example, a person living near a train track might initially be disturbed by the noise but eventually habituate to it and no longer notice it.
- Sensitization: Sensitization is the progressive amplification of a response following repeated administrations of a stimulus. It occurs when an organism becomes more sensitive to a stimulus after exposure to a different harmful or threatening stimulus. For example, a person who has been through a traumatic experience might become more easily startled by loud noises.
Other Types of Learning
Besides the basic types of learning discussed above, there are various other forms of learning that have been identified:
- Active Learning: Active learning occurs when a person takes control of their learning experience.
- Rote Learning: Rote learning is memorizing information so that it can be recalled by the learner exactly the way it was read or heard.
- Meaningful Learning: Meaningful learning is the concept that learned knowledge is fully understood to the extent that it relates to other knowledge.
- Evidence-Based Learning: Evidence-based learning is the use of evidence from well-designed scientific studies to accelerate learning.
- Formal Learning: Formal learning is a deliberate way of attaining knowledge, which takes place within a teacher-student environment, such as in a school system or work environment.
- Non-Formal Learning: Non-formal learning is organized learning outside the formal learning system.
- Informal Learning: Informal learning is less structured than "non-formal learning" and may occur through the experience of day-to-day situations.
- Episodic learning: Episodic learning is a change in behavior that occurs as a result of an event.
- Electronic learning: Electronic learning or e-learning is computer-enhanced learning.
Theoretical Perspectives on Learning
The study of learning has been approached from various theoretical perspectives, each offering a unique understanding of the underlying processes.
- Behaviorism: Behaviorism is a school of thought that emphasizes the role of environmental factors in shaping behavior. Behaviorists focus on observable behaviors and reject the study of internal mental states. Classical and operant conditioning are central to the behaviorist perspective.
- Cognitive Psychology: Cognitive psychology focuses on the mental processes involved in learning, such as attention, memory, and problem-solving. Cognitive psychologists believe that learning involves the acquisition of knowledge and the development of cognitive strategies.
- Gestalt Psychology: Gestalt psychologists believe that the key learning processes involve a restructuring of relationships in the environment, not simply an associative experience with them.
The Neurobiology of Learning
The mechanisms of learning and remembering seem to depend on relatively enduring changes in the nervous system. Apparently the effects of learning are first retained in the brain by some reversible process, after which a more permanent neural change takes place. Two types of neurological processes have therefore been suggested. The short-term function of memory, temporary and reversible, may be achieved through a physiological mechanism (e.g., synaptic electrical or chemical change) that keeps the memory trace alive over a limited period of time. The ensuing, more permanent (long-term) storage may depend on changes in the physical or chemical structure of neurons; synaptic changes seem to be particularly important.
Read also: Key Learnings in Psychology
Read also: Comprehensive Guide to Subsidized Student Loans
tags: #how #psychologists #define #learning
