LEARNING

MODULE - II
Basic
Psychological
Processes
• A human baby is born with simple reflexes .
• As an adult the individual becomes capable of performing many
simple and complex behaviours.
Simple behaviours: switching on the light, or picking up a book from the
table
Complex behaviours: driving a car or piloting a spaceship

• This happens because of learning.

 What is learning?

• The process of learning is continuous and goes on throughout life.

• Most of our behaviours are acquired through the process of learning.

 Importance of learning

• Without learning one is handicapped.

• All children are born with limited capacity of reflexes but it is only
through learning that people realize their potentials and become what
they dream.

• Learning empowers a person by making him/her what one is not and

wants to become.
• Learning may be defined as a relatively durable change in behaviour
due to experience.

• The key feature of learning is experience. To qualify as learning, a

change in behaviour must be relatively enduring.

• Any change in behaviour in the absence of practice or experience

does not qualify as learning.
• Thus, if the change in behaviour is temporary, or due to maturation, or due
to instinct, it is not learning.

• For example the maturational changes in the child, like crawling, standing
and walking at certain ages are not included in learning.

• Similarly, illness and drug induced temporary changes are not due to
learning.
• Learning is not directly observable. It is often inferred from changes in
the external behaviour.

• It is apparent in terms of improvement in the performance.

• Example:- learning alphabets.

In the beginning we make more errors. However, when we start
practicing the errors decrease and a time comes when the behaviour
becomes flawless. The decrement in the number of errors with
increase in practice clearly indicates that learning is taking place.
• Learning helps us adapt to the surrounding environment.

After living in a particular sociocultural environment for some time, we

learn the norms of the society and all that is expected of us and
become responsible citizen and members of family and work
organization.

How Do We Learn?
 How Do We Learn?
Psychologists, on the basis of studies on human beings and on animals, have tried
to explain the process of learning. They have identified some procedures that are
used in the acquisition of simple as well as complex responses.

The two basic types of learning:

• Classical conditioning
• Operant or instrumental conditioning.

Others:
Observational learning, Verbal learning, Concept learning, and Skill learning.
 (i) Classical Conditioning : Learning through Association

Classical conditioning:
Association between a stimulus and the response can be altered through
practise
It is also known as Pavolovian conditioning
Named after the discoverer, a Russian scientist Ivan P. Pavlov who was
interested in studying stimulus-response relationship.
• He worked with dogs. The animal was
harnessed and food was presented to
the dog by a laboratory assistant.
• Pavlov realized that the salivary
response had been learned by the dog.
He proceeded to study this type of
learning in detail.
• Secretion of saliva to food (biologically important stimulus) is a natural
response and, therefore, the salivation is called Unconditioned Response
(UR).
• Pavlov presented to the dog a series of trials in which a tone (buzzer) was
paired with food.
The learning trials consisted of
pairing the tone, (Conditioned
Stimulus or CS) with food
(Unconditioned Stimulus or
UCS).
The tone presented was rather
short (e.g., 10 secs) and the time
interval between the tone and
presentation of food, was
between 2 to 3 minutes.
• After some pairing trials of buzzer and food, the dog started salivation
at the ringing of buzzer alone.
• The buzzer is called
Conditioned Stimulus
(CS) because the dog
has been conditioned
to salivate at the
presentation of the
buzzer itself.
• The secretion of
saliva on the
presentation of
buzzer is called
Conditioned
Response (CR).
Elements of Classical Conditioning:
• Originally the sound of the buzzer (CS)
elicits only an orienting response
(alerting response).
• The buzzer elicits salivation when the
food is consistently presented in close
association with the buzzes.
• Immediately after the buzzer is rung, the
animal elicits salvation. This is called
acquisition.
It has been found that if the buzzer (CS) is
presented on each trial but the food (US) is not
presented, extinction will take place.
That is, the buzzer will no more elicit saliva (CR)
and if it is continued for some time extinction
will take place.

It has also been found that if a gap of some

duration occurs after extinction and if the
buzzer (CS) is again presented without food (US)
the dog will salivate (produce CR) for a few
trials. This recovery of CR after extinction is
called spontaneous recovery.
(ii) Operant Conditioning : Modification of
Behaviour through Reinforcement
• If a child completes the home work she is praised (rewarded) by the
parents and the child learns to perform the task.
• If the child breaks a plate, he/she is scolded (punished) and she will
learn not to repeat the behaviour.
• We humans learn to perform behaviours that produce positive
outcomes and avoid behaviours that yield negative outcomes. This is
called Operant Conditioning or instrumental conditioning.
• Operant conditioning is defined as a
process through which organisms
learn to repeat behaviours that
produce positive outcomes or avoid
or escape from the negative
outcomes.
• B.F. Skinner is considered as the
most influential psychologist
advocating the role of operant
conditioning in learning.
• He developed an experimental
chamber (called Skinner Box) to
study learning process in rats.
• The chamber included a lever attached to the front wall. Pressing the
lever is the response to be learned.
• The hungry rat is placed in the chamber and it starts doing random
activity in it.
• After some time, the rat accidentally presses the lever and a pellet of food
drops automatically in the plate and the rat eats it.
• After eating the pellet the rat again starts activity in the chamber.
• After some activity it again presses the lever and gets pellet (a reward).
• Gradually the random activity changes to more specific activity around the
lever.
• Finally, the rat learns that pressing the lever results in dropping of the food,
a satisfying outcome.
• In other words the pressing of lever by the rat is
instrumental in providing food (reinforcement).
• The response (pressing the lever) is reinforced and
the behaviour is acquired or learned.
• The pressing of lever by the rat is instrumental in
getting the food, a satisfying consequence (positive
reinforcement) and that is why this type of learning
is also called instrumental learning.
• It is also called operant conditioning because the
behaviour of rat or any organism is a kind of
operation on the environment.
REINFORCEMENT AND OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING:

• The role of reinforcement is very crucial in operant conditioning.

Reinforcement is any operation or action that increases the rate of

response.

• There are two types of reinforcement:

1. Positive reinforcement
2. Negative reinforcement
Positive Reinforcement :
• In Skinner’s experiment the rat responded by
pressing the lever and obtained food. This is called
positive reinforcement.
• So, a positive reinforcement or reward (e.g., food,
sexual pleasure, etc.) is the operation that increases
the strength of a specific behaviour.

• Positive reinforcement is any stimulus that

strengthens a response that precedes it (e.g., lever
pressing is reinforced by food).
Negative Reinforcement :
• Suppose that in the Skinner Box the rat
receives electric shock to the feet
every second. When the rat presses
the lever, the shock is removed for 10
secs. This increases the rate of
response.
• This procedure is called negative
reinforcement which involves
application of an aversive stimulus (e.g.
heat, electric shock, scudding etc.).
• The word “negative” refers to the
nature of the reinforcer (aversive
stimulus).
Negative reinforcement can result in following conditioning:

• “escape” learning; Eg:- rat can escape the shock if it presses the lever.

• “avoidance” learning; Eg:- rat can avoid the shock by pressing the lever.
In escape or avoidance learning the reinforcer is negative and the
organism learns to escape or avoid its presence.
How do we reinforce the correct responses?
• It could be by using continuous or partial reinforcement.

Continuous reinforcement, every correct response is reinforced. For example, when the rat
presses the lever every time it gets a food pellet (reinforcement).

Alternatively, the responses are reinforced partially or intermittently (some times only).

• The continuous reinforcement is useful for establishing or strengthening new behaviours.

• The partial reinforcement, on the other hand, is more powerful in maintaining the
acquired behaviours
 Observational Learning : Modelling
• Acquiring new skills by observing the behaviour of others is very common. It
is a part of everyday life.
• Observational learning depends on the existence of appropriate model in
one’s environment.
• That is, the child picks up behaviour while the appropriate model is
performing an activity.
For example, young people learn aggression through watching the
actions of others (models).
Television programmes and movies provide much of the learning to the
young people.
When children watch violence on TV they tend to learn such
behaviours.
However, observational learning is a complex process, far more complex than
mere imitation.
Children acquire information and learn skills through observational learning
but do not put it into immediate use.
Verbal Learning
• The process of learning language is called verbal
learning.
• As children we started with identifying alphabets,
then moved to words and finally sentences.
• When you learn a foreign language you use pairs of
words.
• Verbal skills are generally acquired through
memorizing, by repeating, recalling and recognizing
the material.
• Psychologists study how various procedures like free-
recall, serial learning and paired associates learning
are used.
Concept Learning:
• Concept learning is about developing
categories of objects and events.
• For example, the terms ‘boys’, ‘girls’,
‘fruits’ and ‘furniture’ refer to concepts.
• A concept involves a variety of objects
clubbed together.
• All concepts represent a set of features
connected with the help of some rule.
• Concept learning involves both
generalization and differentiation.
• The individual learns to respond to objects
in his or her environment in terms of their
different features like colour, shapes,
position, number and so on.
• He/she tries to find certain common
properties in a group of objects and
attaches some category names to them.
• For example, the child learns what is an
animal, later she differentiates between a
cow, a dog and a cat, etc.
 Concepts may be natural or artificial.

They may be as abstract (Love, freedom and democracy) and

concrete (Cow, table, boy, girl, orange and rose)
• Use of categories or class names helps us to communicate and
perform different activities.
• It is required to discriminate between things
• In fact all kinds of higher learning (most of the subjects which we
study) necessarily involves concept learning.
• Concepts help us to reduce the complexity of our world.
(in understanding the world and in solving problems)
Skill Learning
An important area of learning involves acquiring various types of skills

Eg: - riding a bicycle, writing, car driving, piloting an air craft, leading a
group and motivating others etc.
 3 stages of skill learning

• Once the skill is acquired one may over learn it. It may become automatic
and one is able to perform it with ease and comfort.
• As a result people perform tasks spontaneously and can perform more than
one task at a time (e.g. talking to a person and car driving).
Social Learning:
• As we grow our environment widens and we learn new habits, as well as
modify our perception of objects, events, and persons.
• Much of the learning of an individual involves change in one’s attitudes.
• An attitude is a learnt way to act towards an object, person, situation or
an idea.
• It determines favourable or unfavourable responses to the person,
situations, places or things.
• For example, one learns to respect and disrespect different persons in
his/her environment.
• Certain social responses are reinforced by the society if they are
acceptable as per the norms of the society.
• Others involve ‘imitation’ of the role models
TRANSFER OF TRAINING
Learning of one task does not remain confined to that specific task only. That
learning is used in other situations also.
Eg:- A person who has learnt to ride a bicycle finds it easy to learn to ride a
scooter.
It means that experience or performance on one task influences performance
on subsequent learning tasks.
Transfer of learning is the process of applying or carrying over the knowledge,
skills, habits, attitudes or other responses from one learning situation, in
which they were initially acquired, to a different learning situation.
• Transfer of training refers to the process of using earlier learning in a
new situation.
• A person’s ability to recognise objects, perceive relationships and
conceptualise the experiences of daily life are facilitated by transfer of
learning.
• The influence of transfer is found, in the domain of intellectual tasks,
complex motor skills, emotional reactions and attitudes of individuals.
• If transfer of learning does not take place, each task would have to be
learnt afresh and it would make life difficult.
• Transfer of training affects learning of a new task in three ways: positive,
negative and zero
(a) Positive Transfer
• When learning of the task makes the second task easier to learn,
positive transfer effect is seen.
• In positive transfer, the carry-over of knowledge or skill is beneficial to
future learning.
• For example:
Skill in riding a bicycle facilitates learning to ride a motor cycle.
Learning the rules of addition and subtraction makes it easier to count
one’s change and check the balance when one makes purchases from the
market.
Positive transfer occurs when the responses expected from two tasks or
learning situations are similar.
• However, the maximum amount of positive transfer is obtained, when
the stimulus and the response elements in the previous and the new
learning situations are similar.
• For example, learning of a stimulus-response relationship like that of
5 × 8 = 40 and 8 × 5 = 40.
• In this case, there is similarity between the elements in the stimulus
response relationship.
(b) Negative Transfer
• There are cases in which the previous learning interferes with
subsequent learning.
• As a result of negative transfer, performance on one task may block
performance on the subsequent task.
• For example, a child’s experience in learning the plural of ‘house’ may
inhibit his/her learning the plural of a word ‘mouse’.
• He/She may spell the plural of the world ‘mouse’ as ‘mouses’, instead
of ‘mice’.
• Negative transfer usually occurs when the stimuli in the previously
learnt task and the new task are the same or comparable, but the
responses are dissimilar.
(c) Zero Transfer
• There are instances, where the learning of one task, does not have any
effect on the ability of a person to perform another task.
• It happens when the tasks are dissimilar in stimuli as well as responses.
• Learning history may contribute to the understanding of one’s own
culture but it has hardly any effect on learning mathematics.
• Similarly, improving one’s skill in playing football will have no effect on
the improvement of one’s skill in writing an essay.
• Learning to typewrite, will not affect the learning of painting.
Positive transfer:
• It is positive if the first learning helps the second learning.
• Job performance improves.
Negative transfer:
• It can be negative if the first learning interferes with the second
learning.
• Performance goes down.
Zero transfer:
• It can be zero if the first learning neither helps nor interferes with the
second learning.
• No change in performance.
THANK YOU