HUMAN LEARNING
Learning and training
You must have a comprehensive knowledge of the entry behavior of a person, of objectives you
wish to reach, of possible methods that follow from your understanding of the first two factors,
and of an evaluation procedure.
Learning is acquiring or getting knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or
instruction, or a relatively permanent change in a behavioral tendency…the result of reinforced
practice.
Pavlov’s classical behaviorism
A classical behaviorist is the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov. For Pavlov the learning process
consisted of the formation of associations between stimuli and reflexive responses.
Skinner’s operant conditioning
Skinner called Pavlovian conditioning respondent conditioning since it was concerned with
respondent behavior, that is, behavior that is elicited by a preceding stimulus.
Operant behavior is behavior in which one operates on the environment; within this model the
importance of stimuli is de-emphasized.
According to Skinner, the events or stimuli- the reinforcers- that follow a response and that tend
to strengthen behavior or increase the probability of a recurrence of that response constitute a
powerful force in the control of human behavior. Reinforcers are far stronger aspects of learning
than is mere association of a prior stimulus with a following response, as in the classical
conditioning model. We are governed by the consequences of our behavior, to study the effect of
those consequences. And if we wish to control behavior, to teach someone something, we ought
to attend carefully to reinforcers.
Operants are sets of responses that are emmited and governed by the consequences they
produce. Respondents are sets of responses that are elicited by identifiable stimuli. The absence of
reinforcers will extinguish the behavior.
Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory
David Ausubel believes that learning takes place in the human organism through a meaningful
process of relating new events or items to already existing cognitive concepts or propositions.
Rote learning is the process of acquiring material as discrete and relatively isolated entities that
are relatable to cognitive structure not permitting the establishment of meaningful relationships.
Rote learning involves the mental storage of items having little or no association with existing
cognitive structure.
Meaningful learning may be described as a process of relating and anchoring new material to
relevant established entities in cognitive structure. As new material enters the cognitive field, it
interacts with, and is appropriately subsumed under, a more inclusive conceptual system. If we
think of cognitive structure as a system of building blocks, then rote learning is the process of
acquiring isolated blocks with no particular function in the building of a structure and no
relationship to other blocks. Meaningful learning is the process whereby blocks become an
integral part of already established categories of systematic clusters of blocks.
Systematic Forgetting
In a meaningful process like second language learning, mindless repetition, imitation, and other
rote practices in the language classroom have no place. The Audiolingual Method relied heavily on
rote learning.
Rogers’s humanistic psychology
Roger’s humanistic psychology has more of an affective focus than a cognitive one.
Rogers studied the whole person as a physical and cognitive, but primarily emotional being.
The focus is away from teaching and toward learning. The goal of education is the facilitation of
change and learning. Learning how to learn is more important than being taught something from
the superior vantage point of a teacher who unilaterally decides what shall be taught.
Teachers should become facilitators of learning through the establishment of interpersonal
relationships with learners.
If the context for learning is properly created, then human beings will learn everything they need
to.
Types of learning
Types of learning vary according to the context and subject matter to be learned.
Transfer, interference and overgeneralization
Human beings approach any new problem with an existing set of cognitive structures and, through
insight, logical thinking, and various forms of hypothesis testing, call upon whatever prior
experiences they have had and whatever cognitive structures they possess to attempt a solution.
Transfer is a general term describing the carryover of previous performance or knowledge to
subsequent learning. Positive transfer occurs when the prior knowledge benefits the learning task-
that is, when a previous item is correctly applied to present subject matter. Negative transfer
occurs when previous performance disrupts the performance of a second task. Interference is
when previously learned material interferes with subsequent material- a previous item is
incorrectly transferred or incorrectly associated with an item to be learned.