THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING
MS JOYCE KOMESUOR
DEFINITION
• Learning refers to a relatively permanent
change in behaviour due to experience.
• Learning does not include temporary changes
due to disease, injury, maturation, injury or
drugs since these do not qualify as learning.
Some First Principles
• Learning is something all humans do
–
–
–
–
Fetuses learn
Infants learn
Children learn
Adults learn
• Learning is not uniquely human – all living things learn
• Learning evolved as an adaptation for promoting
survival
Key Words in the Definition
• Relatively Permanent: it does not include
temporal changes such as tiredness. It does
not include very permanent changes that are
associated with maturation.
• Change in Behavior: Learning can not be seen
but can only be inferred from observable
behavior.
Key Words in the Definition
• Experience: it means something that happen
to you in your lifetime, usually involving
interaction with your environment.
Learning is Not
• Reflex: A reflex is an inborn involuntary
response to a specific kind of stimulus.
(Sdorow, 1993)
• Instinct: It is an inborn complex Behaviour
found in members of a species. (Sdorow,
1993). Eg net building in birds
Learning is Not
• Maturation: Changes resulting from
maturation are permanent and are not due to
experience, they do not qualify as learning.
- Maturation is defined as the sequential
unfolding of inherited predisposition.eg
Walking in humans
Factors Affecting Learning
• Maturation: Learning can only take place
when the individual has attained both physical
and psychological maturity to understand
what is to be learned.
• Motivation: one is able to learn when he/she
is motivated to do so.
• Intelligence: No effective learning can take
place without intelligence
• Physical condition of the learner: It is very
important to be in a good health conditions
for an effect learning to take place. Eg eye
sight,
• Mental health of the learner: it is very crucial
in learning, research has shown that fears,
worries feeling loneliness, lack of selfconfidence etc can affect learning
• Good physical Learning condition: Condition
under which learning takes place has a
profound impact on learning
• Distributed learning: It is advisable to space
learning because capacity decrease with time
• Practice: Practice also affect learning in a
positive way. Someone who learns with
practice or rehearses will be able to
remember the things learned better.
• Feedback: A learner who is given feedback on
his or her performance is likely to do better
than one who receives no feedback
• Education and previous learning: Previous
learning lays a strong foundation for learning
to take place.
Types of Learning
• Habituation: it is one of the simple forms of
learning, in which an organism after a period
of exposure to a stimulus stops responding.
( A stimulus is any physical energy that affects a
person and evokes a response)
• Sensitization: it is the process whereby an
individual learns to response defensively to a
wide range of stimuli due to exposure to a
dangerous or painful situation.
Types of Learning
• Associative learning: it involves learning that
two events occur together
• Association between stimuli: under this type
of learning, an organism learns association
between two stimulus e.g. through constant
pairing of dark clouds and rain, humans have
come to realize that dark clouds is normally
followed by rain.
Types of Learning
• The process where by an organism learns
association between stimuli is called classical
conditioning
Classical Conditioning
 Ivan Pavlov
 1849-1936
 Russian physician/
neurophysiologist
 Nobel Prize in 1904
 studied digestive
secretions
Pavlov’s Classic Experiment
Before Conditioning
UCS (food
in mouth)
UCR
(salivation)
During Conditioning
Neutral
stimulus
(tone)
No
salivation
After Conditioning
UCS (food
in mouth)
Neutral
stimulus
(tone)
UCR
(salivation)
CS
(tone)
CR (salivation)
Classical Conditioning
 Classical Conditioning
 organism comes to associate two stimuli
 a neutral stimulus that signals an
unconditioned stimulus begins to produce a
response that anticipates and prepares for
the unconditioned stimulus
• Association between a response and its
consequences: it involves a situation in which
an organism learns association between a
response and its consequences. This process is
called operant conditioning
Operant Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning
 type of learning in which behavior is strengthened
if followed by reinforcement or diminished if
followed by punishment
 Law of Effect
 Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by
favorable consequences become more likely, and
behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences
become less likely
Operant Conditioning
• B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
– elaborated Thorndike’s
Law of Effect
– developed behavioral
technology
Skinner Box
• Classical conditioning forms an association
between two stimuli.
• Operant conditioning forms an association
between a behaviour and a consequence.
• It is also called response-stimulus or RS
conditioning because it forms an association
between the person’s response [behavior] and
the stimulus that follows [consequence]
Types Of Learning
• ALBERT BANDURA
• Bandura believed that direct reinforcement
could not account for all types of learning.
• He suggested that environment causes
behaviour, true; but behaviour causes
environment as well.
Types of Learning
•
•
•
Occurs when an observer’s behaviour
changes after viewing the behaviour of a
model.
Observational learning is the process of
learning to respond in a particular way by
watching others, who are called models.
An observer’s behaviour can be affected by
the positive or negative consequences of a
model’s behaviour.
Types of Learning
• COGNITIVE LEARNING
• It refers to learning that involves thinking,
understanding, anticipating and
understanding. It actually involves higher
mental processes. It presents the view that
not all forms of learning results from
connection between stimuli and responses.
Cognitive Learning
• Kohler’s Insight Learning (Wolfgang Kohler
1925)
• Insight Learning: is the sudden discovery or
understanding of the relationships in a
problem that can be discovered. Some
referred to it as the ‘Aha’ learning
Chimpanzee Experiment
• In one experiment, a Chimp called Sultan was
placed in a cage with two short sticks and
banana placed outside.
• The Chimp tried to pull the banana in but
could not. Later, Sultan identified the sticks
and fixed one into the other and used it to pull
the banana and ate it.
Chimpanzee Experiment
• In another experiment, a group of Chimps
were put in a room with some boxes around a
banana hung at the ceiling.
• The Chimps tried to find a way to get it.
Finally, they put the boxes one on top of the
other and got the banana.