LEARNING

Topic: Submitted To: Submitted By: Roll No. 099 Section: Department: semester)

Learning Miss Misbah

10040920-

BBA (1st

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LEARNING

University of Gujrat (Hafiz Hayat Campus)

Contents
Topic: Learning......................................................................................................1 Miss Misbah......................................................................................1 Submitted To:

Submitted By:..............................................................................................................1 Roll No. 10040920-099..........................................................................................1

Section:....................................................................................................................... 1 Department: BBA (1st semester).............................................................................1

University of Gujrat (Hafiz Hayat Campus)..................................................................2 Contents...................................................................................................................... 2 Learning......................................................................................................................3 Definition: ................................................................................................................ 3 The process of learning:..............................................................................................4 Conditioning:.........................................................................................................5 Cognitive Learning:...............................................................................................8 Individual Factors:..................................................................................................... 11 Subjective factors:...............................................................................................11 Objective Factors of learning...............................................................................13

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Learning
Definition:
What is learning in your mind? When does it take place and how does it happen? Well youll get your answer in a moment. Just stay right here and read it all. Learning takes place from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep, most of what we do involves learning. When we get up in the morning we take a shower, dress up, eat breakfast, take a walk, talk and listen to different people and things. Learning itself is so important in everyday life because it would be difficult to find a situation that actually does not involve learning. Psychologists will usually define learning as the relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience. Well thats pretty much it; this definition has these important elements in it: (i) Learning is a change in behavior for better or for worse.

(ii)

It is a change that takes place through practice or experience, changes due to growth, maturation, fatigue, and disease or from effects of drugs are not considered to be a part of learning. 1

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(iii) The changes in behavior must last a fairly long time before it can be called learning, in contrast with temporary behavioral effects of such factors as alertness or fatigue

Learning is very important to our lives, through learning we not only acquire academic skills, such as reading and writing, we also acquire the knowledge we need to function in everyday life. Psychologists have devoted a great deal of time to study various difficulties in learning that people may experience and try to understand their causes. The reason for this attention to learning problem is that learning is very crucial to our lives as explained above.

Now you know what learning is and its time to move on to the next step. The process of learning, in this Ill explain to you how learning really happens, so the process has different types of forms which take place in learning pay really close attention to it as it might be a little tricky.

The process of learning:

Above we had discussed the meaning of learning and what learning is and now youll know how learning takes place and it different forms. Psychologists have conducted a number of experiments to discover various forms of learning. Each form of learning has its own principles. Our concern is primarily with the application of these principles in human learning. Experiments have been centered for the most part on the following types of learning. (i) Conditioning (Classical and Operant conditioning) (ii) Cognitive learning (Insight, latent and imitating) Let us discuss both of these ways of learning. These are also known as the processes of learning through which we learn different things.
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Conditioning:
Learning by conditioning is also called learning by association. Much of learning takes place by this process. It consists of associating one experience with another experience that is already familiar to us. It is simply the process of taking up some new stimulus for which we already have certain response. For example, our stopping at the sight of red traffic light. It involves forming association between the events in the environment (stimuli) and our behavior (responses). There are these two different kinds of conditioning. (a) Classical Conditioning (b)Operant Conditioning

Classical conditioning:
Ivan Pavlov a famous Russian psychologist performed a well know experiment in which he discovered the conditioned response while performing a series of experiments on digestion and salivation in dogs. During the experiment he observed a curious phenomenon, sometimes the stomach secretions and salivation would begin when no food had actually been eaten. The mere sights of a food bowl, or even the sound of the footsteps of the individual bringing the food was enough to produce a physiological response in the dogs. He saw that the dogs were responding not only on the basis of a biological need (hunger), but also as a result of learning, as it came to an organism learns a response to a neutral stimulus that normally does not bring about that response. To demonstrate and analyze classical conditioning, Pavlov conducted a series of experiments in one; he attached a tube to the salivary gland of a dog, allowing him to measure the amount of salivation that occurred. He the sounded a tuning fork and a few seconds later, present the dog with meat powder. This pairing carefully planned between the presentation of sound and the meat occurred repeatedly. At first the dog would salivate only when the meat powder itself was presented, but soon it began to salivate at the sound of tuning fork. In fact, when Pavlov stopped presenting the meet, the

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dog still salivated after hearing the sound. The dog had been classically conditioned to salivate to the tone. The sound in this case is called the neutral stimulus because it has no effect of the response of interest. We also have meat powder, which, because the biological make up of the dog, naturally leads to the salivation, the particular response that we are interested in conditioning. The meat powder is considered an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) because the food placed near the dogs mouth automatically causes salivation to occur. The response that the meat powder produces is called unconditioned response (UCR) a response not associated with previous learning. When conditioning is complete, the tuning fork has evolved from a neutral stimulus to what is now called a conditioned stimulus (CS). At this time, salivation as a response to the tuning fork is called a conditioned response (CR). The conditioned stimulus evokes the conditioned response. Events of Classical Conditioning:

1. Before conditioning

Food-------------------------Salivation (UCS) (UCR) Tuning fork (CS) Food------------------------ Salivation (UCS) (UCR)

2. During Conditioning

3. After Conditioning

Tuning Fork--------------- Salivation (CS) (UCR)

(A)

Operant Conditioning:

About the time Pavlov was experimenting with the conditioned reflexes in dogs, an American experimental psychologist E. L. Thorndike was observing trial and error learning in cats. His famous experiment is known as cat in a box. He put a hungry cat in a puzzle box, a box that would open only if the cat pulled a string, or stepped on a certain pedal, or worked whatever other

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device had been arrange to open the latch during the particular experiment. Then he put the food outside the box, in plain view of the hungry cat. From the very first, the cat would scratch, leap, try to squeeze through the bars of the box and generally engage in various vigorous responses, sometime during this time of activity, the cat would happen to work the particular escape device, the latch would open and the cat would be freed. The next time, the cat would take less time to step on the pedal to open the latch and escape. After a few trials, the cat would step on the pedal as soon as it was placed in a box. According to Thorndike, the cat would have learned that pressing the pedal was associated with the desirable consequence of getting food. He summarized the relationship by formulating the law of effect which states that responses are satisfying are more likely to be repeated, and those that are not satisfying are less likely to be repeated. Thorndike felt that the law of effect operated as automatically as leaves falling of a tree in autumn. It was not necessary for an organism to understand that there was a link between a response and reward; the organism would form a direct connection between the stimulus and the response, without any awareness that the connection existed. Thorndike called this form of learning instrumental conditioning stating that the individual is instrumental in emitting or producing a response. The person who probably did the most to shape the direction of the form of conditioning called the operant conditioning was the well know behaviorist, B. F. Skinner. He named the behavior that comes to be controlled by its consequences are effects, operant behavior because its function is to operate on the environment. He called the behavior respondent behavior because the reflexes are elicited responses to preceding stimuli. This behavior becomes learnt only when this is regularly followed by reinforcement. Operant conditioning describes learning in which people make responses as a result of positive or negative consequences that are dependent on their responses. The term operant emphasizes the point: The organism operates on its environment in order to produce some desirable result. For example, operant conditioning is at work when we learn that work diligently can bring about a raise, or that cleaning our room produces words of praise from out parents or that studying hard results in good grades. 1

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In operant conditioning its what comes afterward that counts. Much of our everyday behavior is based on its effects as Thorndike pointed out with his laws of effect; if we do something and get rewarded, we will do it again. Following are the principles of operant conditioning as described by Skinner: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) Acquisition Extinction Spontaneous Recovery Generalization Discrimination Shaping Reinforcement

Cognitive Learning:
It proposes that learner utilizes mental process and memory to make decisions about behavior. According to cognitive psychologists, both humans and animals tend to develop expectations that one event will follow by another. In other words, a person or animal learns new relationships and associations among events simply as a result of having experienced these events. Psychologists do not deny the importance of classical and operant conditioning; they have developed cognition learning in terms of through process or cognition that under lies it. Cognitive learning proposes that the learner utilizes mental structure and memory to make decision about behavior. Thus, cognitive learning theory is the study of thought processes that underlie learning. These are the kinds of cognitive learning. (i) (ii) (iii) Insight learning Latent Learning Observational learning 1

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(a)

Insight Learning

Kohler, a Gestalt psychologist, maintained that learning involves cognition, i.e. understanding/meaning. He believed that learning is fundamentally a process of perceptual reorganization and that it does not always occur on a trial-and-error basis. In one of his experiments, a chimpanzee was confined in a cage with a banana placed outside, some distance away. Inside the cage there were two sticks so fashioned that the end of one could be inserted into the end of another one to make one long stick. Neither stick by itself was of sufficient length to reach the banana, but when both were used together as a single, long stick, the banana could be pulled to the cage. Kohler observed that the animal at first tried to reach through the cats to the banana. Not succeeded at this, after some minutes, one of the sticks was employed but this too failed. Then a silent period followed. Suddenly, then animal seized the sticks, inserted one in the other and secured the banana (Kohler, 1925). He used the term insight to refer to the relationships involved, and most of us have experienced what appears to be insight
(b) Latent Learning:

The word latent means hidden and thus latent learning is learning that occurs but is not evident in behavior until later, when conditions for its appearance are favorable. Latent learning is said to occur without reinforcement for particular responses seems to involve changes in the ways in which information is processed. In one experiment, Tolman and Honzik (1930), three groups of rats were run through a complex maze on 17 consecutive days. One group received no food reinforcement upon reaching the end of the maze and performed poorly throughout the experiment. The second group always received reinforcement and continued to improve throughout the study. The third group did poorly for the first 10 days, but as soon as they began to receive reinforcement, they did as well as the second group that was always reinforced.

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Tolman argued that this third group had learned the maze but had not shown it until motivated. These rats showed latent learning Tolman concluded that the rats had developed cognitive or mental representation of the maze. People too, developed cognitive maps of their surroundings such as the directions we might give someone unfamiliar with an area: turn right at the stop sign, make a left at the bridge, and go to the hill. In this way we develop our cognitive maps through latent learning. Latent learning is basically a hidden learning in which a new behavior is acquired but not readily demonstrated until reinforcement is provided.

(c)

Observational Learning/ Modeling

Its the third type of cognitive learning. According to psychologist Albert Bandura and colleagues, a major part of human learning consists of observational learning, which they define as learning through observing the behavior of another person, a model. Bandura demonstrated rather dramatically the ability of models to stimulate learning. In what is now considered as a classic experiment, young children saw movie of an adult wildly hitting a tall inflatable pinching toy. Later the children were given the opportunity to play with the toy themselves and, sure enough, they displayed same kind of behavior almost identically. According to Bandura, the observational learning takes place in four steps. (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) Paying attention and perceiving the most critical features of another persons behavior Remembering the behavior Reproducing the action Being motivated to learn and carry out the behavior.

He suggested that many kinds of behaviors are learned through observation. For example, children often learn appropriate behavior through observation or imitation of their parents. Modern psychologists have come to view imitation and modeling as a result of an innate capacity possessed by certain animal species are said to have an
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innate ability to perceive the behavior of others and to reproduce that behavior.

Imitative behavior is a key to understanding such important human psychological phenomenon as language learning, attitude formation and personality development; it also plays a role in certain kinds of therapy for behavior problems. In short, observational learning is the learning through observation of others (modeling).

Individual Factors:
Now its time to discuss the individual factors that affect the process of learning. You can say that these are the hurdles that are in the way of learning. Psychologists have identified a number of factors which influenced the quantity and quality of learning some of these factors are. (a) Subjective factors/personal factors (b)Objective factors/ methods of learning

Subjective factors:
Individual factors affecting the course of learning are the intelligence, motivation, mental and physical health, emotional state, personality and maturational level of the learner. (i) Intelligence: As we know intelligence is the capacity to understand the world, think rationally and use resources effectively when faced with challenges. Knowledge of inherent capacities can help the learner to set realistic goals for his learning efforts. (ii) Motivation: Efficiency of learner usually improves as the strength of motivation increases. Reward and punishment also play important roles. Punishment is usually most effective when used in conjunction with reward. When we learn to do something simply because of the satisfaction we get in doing it, we are motivated by an intrinsic incentive. On the other hand when we learn some task because of an external reward, we are motivated extrinsic incentive. 1

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To illustrate, when we read a book because of an interest in the subject matter, we are motivated by intrinsic incentive. If we read the book because it is required in the course we are motivated by extrinsic incentive. Researchers show that the use intrinsic incentive is superior to learning through extrinsic incentives.

(iii)

Mental and Physical Health: Psychologists attach importance to physical and mental health of learners if a person is not physically and mentally healthy then he will not respond to learn.

(iv)

Emotion: There is little doubt that intellectual efficiency is affected by emotions. The child who is insecure and anxious because of an unpleasant and disturbing situation at home, For example, often has difficulty in school situation, both in learning and in recall. Anxiety or apprehension about a test may be so great that even if the student knows the material well, his ability to recall it may be impaired.

(v) Personality: Personality of learner has its own place in learning. Some persons have high level of arousal while others have low levels of arousal. This may also be an important factor. (vi) Maturation: There is evidence suggesting that the acquisition of certain verbal skills in younger children is also dependent upon maturation. Educators have given considerable attention to learning according to age and grade. Development of children is important in order to maximize learning.

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Objective Factors of learning

Important factors affecting the efficiency of learning are the following (i) Distributed practice vs. massed practice Ebbinghaus found that thirty eight repetitions distributed over three days were just as affected as 68 made on one day. Studies made since have confirmed his conclusion that distributed practice is more effective then massed practice. Two twenty minute arithmetic drill is superior to one forty minute drill. The principle of distributive practice explains why cramming is so poor a method of study. Most students will learn more is the large amount of time devoted to last minute studies were distributed throughout the term. (ii) Whole learning vs. part learning: If one has to memorize a poem, speech, or a part in a play, two methods of learning are possible. One, known as the whole method, is to read the material through from beginning from end at each repetition, the other part method separates the material in to a number of divisions and masters each division before going on to the next. Experimental comparisons show that most people learn fastest when using the whole method. The minority who learn more effectively with the part method seem to be those who divide the material into logical divisions (iii) Meaningful vs. meaningless material: Ebbinghaus used stanzas to determine whether meaningful material was memorized more easily then meaningless material. He found that 80 syllables in an average stanza required 8 or 9 repetitions. The same number of non-sense syllables in a series required 70 to 80 repetitions. In other words, meaningful material is nine times as easy to learn as meaningless material. (iv) Value of reciting: Experiments have shown that if a student tries to recite a lesson to him after have read it through it several times, hell save time in fixing the lesson durably in his memory. One investigator who was 1

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practicing a series of non-sense syllables tried out of 12 different combinations of reading and reciting, prompting him whenever he got stuck, and found that in his case at least the most economical method seemed to be the combination of 6 readings with 15 recitations. (v) Conceptualization: Mentally picturing the performance of task or conceptualization plays an important role in acquiring motor skills (vi) Knowledge of results: Experimental evidence indicates that a person who has knowledge of his progress will teach more rapidly an equally motivated subject of comparable ability who has kept in the dark. (vii) Guidance: A special form of guidance in learning which both teaches new material and gives the student a continuing opportunity to check his learning is called programmed instruction whether presented in machine via printed page, programmed material breaks the subject matter into small steps called frames presented one at a time. It appears to be most helpful in subject matter having a logical progression of ideas. (viii) Association and rhythm: According to Ebbinghaus, association and rhythm considerably aid the learning process. He has rightly emphasized that poetry is learnt better that prose because of association of words and rhythm. (ix) Observation and review: To maintain a high level of mastery it is important to review as soon as possible after learning and again from time to time, emphasizing the most important and most difficult parts of the material. The activity that follows learning that can either help remembering of hinder it. Sleeping after learning results in the least forgetting; engaging in the activity closely similar to the original learning causes the most interference. Meaningfully organized material is not forgotten as readily as non-sense material.

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(x) Zeigarnik effect: Tasks interrupted before completions are more likely to be remembered than completed task-- The Zeigarnik effect-- except under stress, when the reverse is true. In general, unpleasant ones and both are better retained than neutral ones.

Reference: Sheher Bano, she publishers, psychology,

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