Learning in Psychology

Learning in Psychology

Introduction

Learning is a fairly enduring alteration in any organism's conduct or general and specific behavior due to different experiences (Coon, 2004). Learning basically means gaining new knowledge, behavior, values, skills and or preferences, or even a modification in them indicates learning. Humans and animals share the ability to learn, and is thought of as a contextual process. Learning can therefore result due to education, training or personal development and is often aided by motivation. The study of learning falls under the category of neuropsychology and educational psychology (Coon, 2004). There are different types of learning, associative, observational, latent, by which we can observe the human evolution of behaviorism. Study of these learning processes has enabled us to greatly treat many mental disorders. In associative learning, two main stimuli are connected to a response, in observational learning, behavioral observation by an observer of a model is used as a learning tool and in latent learning, hidden knowledge is said to re-surface with positive reinforcement (Kirsch et al, 2004).

Discussion

Associative Learning

Associative learning can be defined as a type of behavior variation linking the connection of two or more events, such as linking two stimuli, or involving a stimulus and a response. In associative learning, an animal can be trained to do something original or improved (Abramson, 1994). Associative learning can be divided into two general categories, classical conditioning and operant conditioning (Goodwin, 1995).

Classical conditioning is a term which refers towards the modification of such behavior which links two stimuli; conditioned stimulus which when paired with a second stimulus brings forth a specific response which is called unconditioned stimulus, and was discovered by the famous theorist Ivan Pavlov (Kirsch et al, 2004). This response is known as the unconditioned response. Both the stimuli, conditioned and unconditioned have to be present to coax a 'conditioning,' and if the conditioned stimuli transpires after the unconditioned stimuli, no 'conditioning' occurs. If any organism is exposed to repetitive pairing of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, it will react to the original and neutral stimulus as it has to the unconditioned stimulus (Abramson, 1994). Therefore, for associative learning to occur, the conditioned stimulus needs to come before the unconditioned stimulus, that is, be “predictive of it.” The conditioned stimulus is thus used to predict the unconditioned stimuli (Goodwin, 1995).

Operant or Instrumental conditiones are branches of associative learning by which the behavior of animals is restricted due to the consequences of the relative actions. On the other hand, classical conditioning outlines how animals can make connections between each stimuli, whereas, operant and instrumental conditioning illustrates how the animals link such stimuli with motor actions, therefore, animals can learn behavior to attain some stimuli and also to avoid stimuli (Abramson, 1994).

For example, if a dog repeatedly gets his food when his owner goes into the kitchen, opens the can with a pop and pours the dog food in his reserved bowl, the dog eventually starts relating the owner going into the kitchen and the sound of the ...