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What is learning in psychology?
In psychology, learning is the alteration of behavior as a result of individual experience. Learning theory explains changes in behavior produced by practice. Types of learning include:
- Discrimination learning
- Habituation
- Concept formation
- Problem-solving
- Perceptual learning
- Psychomotor learning
Associative learning connects a previously irrelevant stimulus with a particular response, mainly through conditioning, in which reinforcement crystallizes new behavior patterns. Operant conditioning is a mechanism of learning where humans and animals perform or avoid certain behaviors based on environmental stimuli. Observational learning consists of observing and modeling another individual’s behavior, attitudes, or emotional expressions.
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How do psychologists study the process of learning?
Psychologists study learning through diverse research methods to understand verbal, nonverbal behavior, and mental processes. These methods include questionnaires, interviews, observation, and behavior sampling.
To study learning, psychologists use experimental methods, manipulating variables to discover laws describing these relationships. Animal studies, like Thorndike's puzzle box experiments, explore trial and error, conditioning, and observational learning. Modern approaches also investigate spatial relationships and cognitive maps. Contemporary theories consider association, reinforcement, motivation, and cognitive processes, acknowledging that a single universal theory may not represent all learning.
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What is classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning, also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning, is a learning process where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a biologically potent stimulus, eventually eliciting a similar response.
In classical conditioning, a stimulus (or signal) becomes increasingly effective in evoking a response. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov demonstrated this by training a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, which was initially paired with food. Over time, the bell alone triggered salivation, showcasing how the dog learned to associate the bell with food. Thus, conditioning creates a change in an animal’s behaviour and that the change results in learning.
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How does operant conditioning differ from classical conditioning?
Operant and classical conditioning are distinct forms of learning. In classical conditioning, a subject involuntarily responds to a neutral stimulus that becomes associated with a biological stimulus, such as a dog salivating at the sound of a bell after it's paired with food. Conversely, operant conditioning involves learning to change behavior to achieve a specific outcome, like a dog offering a paw for a treat. The primary difference lies in the type of response: classical conditioning involves involuntary reactions, while operant conditioning involves voluntary behavior changes to gain a reward or avoid punishment. Operant conditioning uses behavior enhancers to encourage desired actions and behavior suppressors to discourage undesired actions.
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What role does reinforcement play in learning?
Reinforcement is crucial to learning, conditioning behavior by increasing the likelihood of a response in a given environment. It can be positive, introducing a reward for desired actions, or negative, removing aversive stimuli when a desired action occurs.
Theorists suggest that reinforcement involves stimuli that facilitate learning, such as praise or rewards. Relevant feedback is essential for skill acquisition, and improvements occur with such feedback. Without it, skills aren't acquired. Intermittent reinforcement schedules, where only some responses are reinforced, create more robust learning patterns compared to continuous reinforcement.
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How does observational learning work, and why is it important in psychology?
Observational learning, a key part of social learning theory, involves learning by watching and copying others' actions, attitudes, or emotions. Albert Bandura highlighted that just learning from behavior, not just copying it, is what matters.
Four things are needed for this type of learning:
* Paying attention
* Remembering what was seen
* Being able to do what was seen
* Having a reason to do itThis type of learning is used in treating phobias and has influenced how kids' TV shows are made, highlighting how important it is. It can lead to both good and bad behaviors, depending on what is being watched.
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learning, the alteration of behaviour as a result of individual experience. When an organism can perceive and change its behaviour, it is said to learn.
Types of learning
The array of learned behaviour includes discrimination learning (where a subject learns to respond to a limited range of sensory characteristics, such as a particular shade of coloration), habituation (the cessation of responses to repeated stimulation), concept formation (the process of sorting experiences according to related features), problem solving, perceptual learning (the effects of past experience on sensory perceptions), and psychomotor learning (the development of neuromuscular patterns in response to sensory signals). Association, conditioning, imitation, insight, and imprinting represent other types of learning.
Learning theorists from the 17th through the mid-20th century attempted to develop a scientific proof of certain principles that governed all processes of learning. Rigorous, “objective” methodology was attempted so that the behaviour of all organisms could be comprehended under a unified system of laws modeled on those posited in the physical sciences. By the 1970s, however, flaws and gaps in these comprehensive theories led many psychologists to conclude that learning could not be represented by a single universal theory.
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The last attempts to integrate all knowledge of psychology into one grand theory occurred in the 1930s. These were represented in the works of Edwin R. Guthrie, Clark L. Hull, and Edward C. Tolman. Guthrie reasoned that responses (not perceptions or mental states) were the central building blocks of learning. Hull argued that “habit strength,” a result of practiced stimulus-response (S-R) activities promoted by reward, was the essential aspect of learning, which he viewed as a gradual process. Tolman portrayed learning as a process that derives from behaviour. Many of these themes remain vital to contemporary research.
Association is one such theme. Its essence lies in the observation that a subject perceives something in the environment (sensations) and the result is an awareness of what is out there (ideas). Associations leading to ideas were said to include closeness of objects or events in space or time, similarity, frequency, salience, and attractiveness. Associative learning, the ability of an animal to connect a previously irrelevant stimulus with a particular response, occurs mainly through the process of conditioning, in which reinforcement crystallizes new behaviour patterns. The earliest well-known conditioning experiment was performed by 19th-century Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, who conditioned dogs to salivate to the sound of bells.
S-R theories failed to account for many learned phenomena, however, and seemed overly reductive because they ignored a subject’s inner activities. Tolman headed another, less “objective” camp that held that associations involved a stimulus and a subjective sensory impression (S-S).
Another current theme is that of reinforcement, which accounts for the finding that a subject’s performance will improve when his or her activities are rewarded. The theoretical mechanisms of such reinforcement are controversial.
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Many psychologists discount any universal applicability of association theory, saying that other considerations are of greater importance to learning. Gestalt psychologists, for instance, believe that the key learning processes involve a restructuring of relationships in the environment, not simply an associative experience with them. Psycholinguists (those who study the psychological aspects of language ability) argue that language learning involves too many words and combinations to be satisfactorily explained by association theory. Instead, they argue that some basic organizing structure underlies language learning, perhaps an inherited native “grammar.”
Other major issues of contemporary theories of learning include the role of motivation in performance; the transfer of training between a task already learned and one yet to be learned; learning stages; and the processes and nature of recall, forgetting, and information retrieval or memory. Other scientists are exploring nonquantifiable concepts such as image, cognition, awareness, and volition.
Physiological basis 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. New studies using positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans may illuminate the physiological basis of learning.
Akin to the problem of learning are the relatively complex activities of reasoning, problem solving, and intelligent and linguistic behaviour. See also attention; developmental psychology; intelligence; motivation; and thought.