Learning. Learning outcomes. Types of learning
This chapter is an introduction to the topic of learning. The various theories and types of learning are discussed futher in other subjects in the curriculum, namely developmental theories about cognition and learning (Piaget, Vygotsky) in a Developmental psychology, social learning (Bandura) in a Social psychology, and an Educational psychology will expand on all those and apply them into teaching practice.
Definition
- Learning = the acquisition of novel information, behaviors, or abilities after practice, observation, or other experiences, as evidenced by change in behavior, knowledge, or brain function. Learning involves consciously or unconsciously attending to relevant aspects of incoming information, mentally organizing the information into a coherent cognitive representation, and integrating it with relevant existing knowledge activated from long-term memory. (APA)
Learning is the opposite of "innate" and we can find various types of learning in subhuman species.
Learning is an active process which results in adaptation to an environment (social environment included).
Learning and the brain - neurons that fire together, wire together.
Learning and the brain - neurons that fire together, wire together.
Learning is a process that involves changes in neural activity, brain structure and brain functions due to neural plasticity. The neural plasticity is the ability of the neural system to change in response to experience. An impulse is transmitted from one neuron to another by the axon of the sending neuron.
Because the axons are separated by the synaptic gap, the sender’s axon secretes a neurotransmitter, which diffuses across the synaptic gap and stimulates the receiving neuron. The key ideas regarding learning are:
a) that a change in the synapse is the neural basis of learning
b) that the effect of this change is to make the synapse more (or less) efficient.
The effective transfer of signals and thus processing speed is ensured by a myelin sheath (lipid layer around axons) which serves as an insulation. When we are born, we have very little of myelin and we acquire it in the process of maturation and learning. The myelination is essential for normal motor function, sensory function and cognition. It seems that myelination in early childhood is also a nutrition dependent (e.g. length of breastfeeding).
Learning outcomes
Learning is also a process of acquiring modifications in existing knowledge, abilities, skills, habits, attitudes through experience, practice, or exercise.
Knowledge - acquired information, ideas, and notions
- perceptual/sensory skills- discerning sounds, smells, tastes
- motor skills - better coordination of movements (e.g. writing)
- intellectual skills - language skills, computing skills
- social skills - communication, orientation in social relations, asertivity
Attitudes - relatively enduring and general evaluations of an object, person, group, or issue. Attitudes have three components:
- cognitive - thoughts, ideas, evaluations about the object ("Spanking kids make them tougher. I was spanked too as a kid and except for my drinking habit, I am doing great.")
- emotional - positive or negative feelings towards the object ("I feel I am right about spanking...it works...for me.")
- behavioral - tendency to act upon the object ("Spanking the kid")
Learning theories
We will consider two perspectives about learning (in more detail - voluntary reading here):
1) behaviorism = learning as changes in overt behavior; the learner is essentially passive, responding to environmental stimuli; the mind is a "black box" and unlike behavior it is inaccessible by scientific observation.
Contribution to understanding two learning types:
- classical (or respondent) conditioning (Ivan P. Pavlov, John B. Watson) - learning through association (subject links certain events, behaviors, or stimuli together in the process of conditioning)
- operant conditioning ( Edward Thorndike, Burrhus F. Skinner) - learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcement or diminished if followed by a punishment (consequence is a change in voluntary behavior)
2) constructivism = learning as changes in thinking; constructivism's central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning.
Constructivism can be further divided into:
- psychological constructivism (Jean P. Piaget) - changes in thinking resulting from individual experiences
- social constructivism (Jerome S. Bruner) or sometimes socio-cultural theory (Lev Vygotsky) - changes in thinking due to assistance from others
Behaviorism has been the dominant paradigm in psychology since the beginning of the 20th century. The increasing criticism of simplistic learning models towards the end of the 1950s contributed to cognitivist turn in psychology and humanities. Psychologists and educators have begun to focus more on complex cognitive processes such as thinking, problem solving, language, concept formation and information processing. Historically cognitivism developed from gestalt psychology (beginning of the 20th century) and later on was heavily influenced by the works of Jean Piaget (cognitive development theory). Cognitive theories focus on the conceptualization of students’ learning processes and address the issues of how information is received, organized, stored, and retrieved by the mind.
Even though constructivism is a branch of cognitivism (both conceive of learning as a mental activity), it distinguishes itself from traditional cognitive theories. Most cognitive psychologists think of the mind as a reference tool for the real world, but constructivists propose, that learners build their personal interpretations (and meanings) of the knowledge and thus "reality". (further voluntary reading)
Types of learning
There are four basic kinds of learning:
a) non-associative learning - an organism learns to ignore a familiar and inconsequential stimulus, or modifies its response to stimulus
b) classical (respondent) conditioning - an organism learns that one stimulus follows another (stimuli are associated)
(c) operant (instrumental) conditioning - an organism learns that a particular response leads to a particular consequence (behavior and response are associated)
(d) complex learning - learning involves more than the formation of associations.
a) Non-associative learning
Habituation - diminished effectiveness of a stimulus in eliciting a response, following repeated exposure to the stimulus (e.g. we read a book in a room with loud ticking noise of a clock, soon we stop perceiving the ticking sound).
Sensitisation - repeated exposure to a stimulus results in the progressive amplification of a response. The reversed process is desensitization - a process that diminishes responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated exposure to it. Desensitisation can be used in immunology (repeated exposure to allergens can diminish allergic reaction) or psychotherapy in treatment of phobias. The desensitization plays a role in decreasing human sensitivity to violence (or sexual stimuli) through repeated exposure to portrayals of violence (sex) in media.
Imprinting - possibly instinctual learning process that occurs during a critical period in the life of some animals. For example, newly hatched chicks tend to follow the first moving object, human or animal, that caught their attention. The term was introduced by zoologist Konrad Lorenz who imprinted geese.
b) classical (respondent) conditioning (Ivan P. Pavlov, John B. Watson)
In 1897 Russian physiologist I. P. Pavlov had, accidentally, during the study on dog's stomachs, described the ground-breaking process of associative learning and it had an enormous impact on psychology and education. Among others Pavlov´s discovery contributed to the foundation of behavioristic school, that contributed strongly to the theories of learning.
= learning through association (subject links certain events, behaviors, or stimuli together in the process of conditioning). In simple terms, two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or an animal.
This concept tells us that the reaction ("response") to an object or event ("stimulus") by a person or animal can be modified by 'learning', or conditioning. That means that it is an adaptive form of learning, that helps a person or animal to survive and change its behavior to better suit the environment.
Key terms:
Unconditioned response - the reflex response triggered by a stimulus without any learning required
Conditioned Stimulus - a previously neutral stimulus that, through conditioning now causes a classically conditioned response
Conditioned Response - a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus that has been associated with the stimulus through repeated pairings
Stimulus generalization - the occurrence of a learned response not only to the original stimuli, but also to other similar stimuli
Stimulus discrimination - the occurrence of a learned response to a specific stimulus, but not to other similar stimuli
Extinction - a behavior is extinct when the response rate decreases, or the person or animal no longer responds to the stimuli
Spontaneous recovery - the reappearance of a previously extinguished behavior after a period without exposure to the conditioned stimulus
but who also responds cautiously or at least neutrally in any new situation. Suppose further that the “new, friendly
person” in question is you, his teacher. Initially the child’s response to you is like an unconditioned stimulus: you
smile (the unconditioned stimulus) and in response he perks up, breathes easier, and smiles (the unconditioned
response). Suppose you smile at him while standing in your classroom, a “new situation” and therefore one to which
he normally responds cautiously. Now respondent learning can occur. The initially neutral stimulus (your
classroom) becomes associated repeatedly with the original unconditioned stimulus (your smile) and the child’s
unconditioned response (his smile). Eventually, if all goes well, the classroom becomes a conditioned stimulus in its
own right: it can elicit the child’s smiles and other “happy behaviors” even without your immediate presence or
stimulus. When the change in behavior happens, you might say that the child has “learned” to like being in your classroom. (Seifert, Sutton, 2009, p. 26)
c) operant (instrumental) conditioning (John Watson, Edward Thorndike, Burrhus F. Skinner)
= type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher (consequences lead to change in voluntary behavior). Thus, learning is based on the consequences following a behavior.
John B. Watson
Watson´s dissertation thesis was concerned with myelination and learning ability in rats. In the thesis he showed that the degree of myelinization was largely related to learning ability. His further interest in learning and psychology led him to establish a new branch of psychology behaviorism in 1913 in an article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It". To be a behaviorist meant he would not be concerned with introspection, psyche or anything else except for observable, measurable and modifiable behavior of his "objects of study".
In his early twenties Skinner worked in bookstore as a clerk. There he stumbled upon the works of Pavlov and Watson. Inspired by these works, he entered the psychology graduate program at Harvard University.
He found out that behavior did not depend on the preceding stimulus, but rather on what happens after the response. Skinner called this operant behavior.
Reinforcement - any action or event that increases the probability that a response will be repeated (e.g. money, food, attention, praise, stickers)
Punishment - any action or event that decreases the likelihood that a response will be repeated (e.g. physical punishment, reprimands, loss of privilege)
shaping - procedure that involves reinforcing behaviors that are closer to the target behavior, also known as successive approximations. (During the Second world war Skinner wanted to train pigeons for military purposes in "The project Pigeon". Although the project was closed, the pigeons acquired new skills)
Shaping is an operant conditioning method that can be used in training and in teaching of nonverbal pupils. (voluntary video - shaping in children with autism spectrum disorders)
The teacher starts by identifying the desired final (or "target") behavior. Next, the teacher chooses a behavior that the student already emits with some probability. This behavior is then gradually changed across successive trials by reinforcing behaviors that approximate the target behavior more and more closely.
• A kindergarten child raises her hand in response to the teacher’s question about a story (the operant). The teacher calls on her and she makes her comment (the reinforcement).
• Another kindergarten child blurts out her comment without being called on (the operant). The teacher frowns, ignores this behavior, but before the teacher calls on a different student, classmates are listening attentively (the reinforcement) to the student even though he did not raise his hand as he should have.
• A twelfth-grade student—a member of the track team—runs one mile during practice (the operant). He notes the time it takes him as well as his increase in speed since joining the team (the reinforcement).
• A child who is usually very restless sits for five minutes doing an assignment (the operant). The teaching assistant compliments him for working hard (the reinforcement).
• A sixth-grader takes home a book from the classroom library to read overnight (the operant). When she returns the book the next morning, her teacher puts a gold star by her name on a chart posted in the room (the reinforcement).
d) Complex learning
= learning involves more than the formation of associations. Complex learning involves the activation of multiple elements and forms of learning to comprehend rules and principles, understand relationships among various entities and solve problems. Thus complex learning is interested in the role of cognition in learning.
According to the cognitive perspective, the crux of learning is an organism’s ability to represent aspects of the world mentally and then operate on these mental representations rather than on the world itself. In complex learning, the mental representations depict more than associations, and the mental operations may constitute a strategy (Atkinson, 2000).
Latent learning (Edward Tolman)
= learning that is acquired without conscious effort, awareness, intention, or reinforcement and is not manifested as a change in performance until a specific need for it arises.
It was first described by Edward C. Tolman in 1930´in his "rat in the maze" experiments: rat allowed to explore a maze without reward will later learn to find the goal more rapidly than a rat without prior exposure to the maze does. The rats clearly developed cognitive maps of their environment and used them when it was necessary.
Observational learning, imitation (Albert Bandura)
= learning through imitation and observation happens as a result of vicarious reinforcement: by observing a model’s behavior, the imitator expects to be reinforced just like the model was. Humans learn many complex and social behaviors through observational learning. Some imitation is the result of simple conditioning (e.g. mother’s fear of insects develop fear in her children).
The models of behavior can be:
- real life - children learn how to behave and respond to others by observing how their parents, relatives and teachers interact with each other and with other people (ideally modelling prosocial behaviors)
- symbolic - presented in text or pictures (fairy tales, stories)
- representational - audiovisual (TV, PC games)
These observed activities are copied and perpetuated because they were rewarded or were pain-avoiding in their consequence. The mechanisms of observational learning were studied and described by Albert Bandura and they were extremely important for understanding learned aggression in children and adults. Theories about learned aggression challenged dominant views about cathartic properties of observing violence (e.g. in films).