Nature of learning

Learning is it change that takes place as a result of ones experience. Learning may be defined as
“any relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by experience”.

Features of learning

1. First feature is that learning always involves some kinds of experience. Any learning takes
place with respect to events occurring in a sequence and its consequences. single or multiple
experiences both can lead to learning. For example a child strikes a match sticks on the side
of a matchbox, and gets his of fingers burnt. Such an experience makes a child learn to be
careful in handling the matchbox in future
2. Behavioral changes that occur due to learning are relatively permanent.
3. Learning is an inferred process and is different from performance.

Classical Conditioning

Food is thus an Unconditioned Stimulus (US) and salivation which follows it, an
Unconditioned Response (UR). After conditioning, salivation started to occur in
the presence of the sound of the bell. The bell becomes a Conditioned Stimulus
(CS) and saliva secretion a Conditioned Response (CR). This kind of conditioning
is called classical conditioning. The procedure is illustrated in Table 6.1. It is
obvious that the learning situation in classical conditioning is one of S–S learning in
which one stimulus (e.g., sound of bell) becomes a signal of another stimulus (e.g.,
food). Here one stimulus signifies the possible occurrence of another stimulus.
Determinants of Classical Conditioning:

1. Time relations between Stimuli: The classical conditioning procedures, discussed

below, are basically of four types based on the time relations between the
onset of conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US).
a) When the CS and US are presented together, it is called simultaneous
conditioning.
b) In delayed conditioning, the onset of CS precedes the onset of US. The
CS ends before the end of the US.
c) In trace conditioning, the onset and end of the CS precedes the onset of
US with some time gap between the two.
d) In backward conditioning, the US precedes the onset of CS.

2. Type of Unconditioned Stimuli

a) Appetitive unconditioned stimuli automatically elicits approach responses,
such as eating, drinking caressing, etc. These responses give satisfaction
and pleasure.
b) On the other hand, aversive US, such as noise, bitter taste, electric shock,
painful injections, etc. are painful, and escape responses.
c) It has been found that appetitive classical conditioning is slower and
requires greater number of acquisition trials, but aversive classical
conditioning is established in one, two or three trials depending on the
intensity of the aversive US.

3. Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli

a) This influences the course of both appetitive and aversive classical
conditioning. More intense conditioned stimuli are more effective in
accelerating the acquisition of conditioned responses.
b) It means that the more intense the conditioned stimulus, the fewer are the
number of acquisition trials needed for conditioning.

Operant Conditioning:
Operants are those behaviours or responses, which are emitted by animals and
human beings voluntarily and are under their control. The term operant is used
because the organism operates on the environment. Conditioning of operant
behaviour is called operant conditioning.

Operant conditioning is also known as Instrumental Conditioning.

Examples of instrumental conditioning abound in our everyday life. Children who
want to have some sweets in the absence of their mother learn to locate the jar in
which mother hides the sweets for safekeeping and eat it.

Determinants of Classical Conditioning:

1. Reinforcers: A reinforcer is defined as any stimulus or event, which increases

the probability of the occurrence of a (desired) response. A reinforcer has
numerous features, which affect the course and strength of a response.
2. Types of reinforcement:
Positive reinforcement –
 involves stimuli that have pleasant consequences They strengthen and
maintain the responses that have caused them to occur.
 Positive reinforcers satisfy needs, which include food, water, medals,
praise, money, status, information, etc.
 Negative reinforcement –
 Responses that lead organisms to get rid of painful stimuli or avoid and
escape from them provide negative reinforcement.
 For instance, one learns to put on woollen clothes, burn firewood or use
electric heaters to avoid the unpleasant cold weather. It may be noted
that negative reinforcement is not punishment.

Punishment –
 Use of punishment reduces or suppresses the response while a
negative reinforcer increases the probability of avoidance or escape
response.
 For instance, drivers and co-drivers wear their seat belts to avoid
getting injured in case of an accident or to avoid being fined by the
traffic police.
 No punishment suppresses a response permanently. Mild and delayed
punishment has no effect.

3. Number of Reinforcement and other Features:

 It refers to the number of trials on which an organism has been
reinforced or rewarded.
 Amount of reinforcement means how much of reinforcing stimulus
(food or water or intensity of pain causing agent) one receives on each
trial.
 Quality of reinforcement refers to the kind of reinforcer

4. Schedules of Reinforcement:
 A reinforcement schedule is the arrangement of the delivery of
reinforcement during conditioning trials.
 When a desired response is reinforced every time it occurs we call it
continuous reinforcement.
 In contrast in intermittent schedules responses are sometimes
reinforced, sometimes not. It is known as partial reinforcement.
 Partial reinforcement show greater resistance to extinction – than it
is found in continuous reinforcement.
 Delayed reinforcement The effectiveness of reinforcement is
dramatically altered by delay in the occurrence of reinforcement. It is
found that delay in the delivery of reinforcement leads to poorer level
of performance. Smaller rewards immediately after doing the chore will
be preferred rather than a big one after a long gap.

Key learning processes:

1. Reinforcement
 Reinforcement is the operation of administering a reinforcer by the
experimenter. Reinforcers are stimuli that increase the rate or
probability of the response that precedes.
 A positive reinforcer increases the rate of response that precedes its
presentation.
 Negative reinforcers increase the rate of the response that precedes
their removal or termination.
  A primary reinforcer is biologically important since it determines the
organism’s survival (e.g., food for a hungry organism).
 A secondary reinforcer is one which has acquired characteristics of the
reinforcer because of the organism’s experience with the environment.
We frequently use money, praise, and grades as reinforcers.

2. Extinction
 Extinction means disappearance of a learned response due to removal
of reinforcement from the situation in which the response used to
occur.
 Learning shows resistance to extinction. It means that even though
the learned response is now not reinforced, it would continue to occur
for some time.
 As the no of trials without reinforcement increases, the strength of the
learned response diminishes and ultimately it stops occurring.

3. Generalisation and Discrimination

 When a learned response occurs or is elicited by a new stimulus, it is
called generalisation.
 For eg: Even when the child’s mother is not around, the child finds the
jar and obtains the sweets. This is a learned operant. Now the sweets
are kept in another jar of a different size and shape and at a different
location in the kitchen. In the absence of the mother the child locates
the jar and obtains the sweets. This is also an example of
generalisation.
 Discrimination is defined as the ability to respond differentially to
different stimuli.
 For example, suppose a child is conditioned to be afraid of a person
with a long moustache and wearing black clothes.

4. Spontaneous Recovery
 It occurs after a learned response is extinguished.
 it refers to the re-emergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response
after a delay.
 The longer the duration of time lapsed, the greater is the recovery of
learned response.
Observational Learning:
 In this kind of learning, human beings learn social behaviours, therefore, it is
sometimes called social learning. They observe others and emulate their
behaviour. This form of learning is called modelling.
 Examples of observational learning abound in our social life. Fashion
designers employ tall, pretty, and gracious young girls and tall, smart, and
well-built young boys for popularising clothes of different designs and fabrics.
 in observational learning observers acquire knowledge by observing the
model’s behaviour, but performance is influenced by model’s behaviour being
rewarded and punished.

Skill learning:
A skill is defined as the ability to perform some complex task smoothly and
efficiently. A skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor responses or as a sequence
of S-R associations.

Phases of Skill Acquisition

According to Fitts skill learning passes through three phases, viz. cognitive,
associative and autonomous.
1. In the cognitive phase of skill learning, the learner has to understand and
memorise the instructions, and also understand how the task has to be
performed. In this phase, every outside cue, instructional demand, and one’s
response outcome must be kept alive in consciousness.
2. The second phase is associative. In this phase, different sensory inputs or
stimuli are linked with appropriate responses. As the practice increases,
errors decrease, performance improves and time taken is also reduced.
3. Then the third phase, i.e. autonomous phase, begins. In this phase, two
important changes take place in performance: the attentional demands of
the associative phase decrease, and interference created by external factors
reduces. Finally, skilled performance attains automaticity with minimal
demands on conscious effort.
Factors facilitating learning:

1. Continuous vs Partial Reinforcement –

 In continuous reinforcement the participant is given reinforcement after each
target response. This kind of schedule of reinforcement produces a high rate
of responding. However, once the reinforcement is withheld, response rates
decrease very quickly, and the responses acquired under this schedule tend
to extinguish. Since organism is getting reinforcement on each trial, the
effectiveness of that reinforcer is reduced.
 In such schedules where reinforcement is not continuous, some responses are
not reinforced. Hence, they are called partial or intermittent reinforcement.
 It has been found that partial reinforcement schedules often produce very
high rates of responding, particularly when responses are reinforced
according to ratio.
 It has been found that extinction of a response is more difficult following
partial reinforcement than following continuous reinforcement. The fact that
the responses acquired under partial reinforcement are highly resistant to
extinction is called partial reinforcement effect.

2. Motivation –
 Motivation is a mental as well as a physiological state, which arouses an
organism to act for fulfilling the current need. motivation energises an
organism to act vigorously for attaining some goal. Motivation is a
prerequisite for learning.
 The more motivated you are, the more hard work you do for learning. Your
motivation for learning something arises from two sources. You learn many
things because you enjoy them (intrinsic motivation) or they provide you the
means for attaining some other goal (extrinsic motivation).

3. Preparedness for learning –

The concept of preparedness may be best understood as a continuum or
dimension, on
one end of which are those learning tasks or associations which are easy for
the members
of some species, and on the other end are those learning tasks for which
those members are
not prepared at all and cannot learn them. In the middle of the continuum fall
those tasks and associations for which the members are neither prepared nor
unprepared. They can learn such tasks, but only with great difficulty and
persistence.

DO LEARNING DISABILITY SYMPTOMS DIRECTLY FROM THE BOOK