CONCEPT OF LEARNING

Learning is often defined as a relatively lasting change in behavior that is the result of experience. Learning became a major focus of study in psychology during the early part of the twentieth century as behaviorism rose to become a major school of thought. Today, learning remains an important concept in numerous areas of psychology, including cognitive, educational, social, and developmental psychology.

Learning is acquiring new, or modifying existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves. Learning is not compulsory; it is contextual. It does not happen all at once, but builds upon and is shaped by what we already know. To that end, learning may be viewed as a process, rather than a collection of factual and procedural knowledge. Learning is based on experience. Learning produces changes in the organism and the changes produced are relatively permanent.

Human learning may occur as part of education, personal development, schooling, or training. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy. Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. Learning that an aversive event can't be avoided nor escaped is called learned helplessness. There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.  

Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning. Children experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact through play. Lev Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they make meaning of their environment through play. The context of conversation based on moral reasoning offers some proper observations on the responsibilities of parents.\

DOMAINS OF LEARNING

Benjamin Bloom has suggested three domains of learning:

1. Cognitive – To recall, calculate, discuss, analyze, problem solve, etc.
2. Psychomotor – To dance, swim, ski, dive, drive a car, ride a bike, etc.
3. Affective – To like something or someone, love, appreciate, fear, hate, worship, etc.

These domains are not mutually exclusive. For example, in learning to play chess, the person will have to learn the rules of the game (cognitive domain); but he also has to learn how to set up the chess pieces on the chessboard and also how to properly hold and move a chess piece (psychomotor). Furthermore, later in the game the person may even learn to love the game itself, value its applications in life, and appreciate its history (affective domain).

REFERENCES

1.      Sandman, Wadhwa, Hetrick, Porto & Peeke. (1997). Human fetal heart rate dishabituation between thirty and thirty-two weeks gestation. Child Development, 68, 1031–1040.

2.      Wood, D.C. (1988). Habituation in Stentor produced by mechanoreceptor channel modification. Journal of Neuroscience, 2254 (8).

3.      Bitterman et al. 1983. Classical Conditioning of Proboscis Extension in Honeybees (Apis mellifera). J. Comp. Psych. 97: 107-119.

4.      Tsakanikos, E. (2006). Associative learning and perceptual style: are associated events perceived analytically or as a whole? Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 579-586. [2]

5.      Lillemyr, O.F. (2009). Taking play seriously. Children and play in early childhood education – an exciting challenge. Charlott, NC: Information Age Publishing.

6.      Whitebread, D., Coltman, P., Jameson, H., Lander, R. (2009). Play, cognition and self-regulation: What exactly are children learning when they learn through play? Educational & Child Psychology 26(2) 40-52.

7.      Grusec, Joan E.; Hastings, Paul D. "Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research", 2007, Guilford Press; ISBN 1-59385-332-7, ISBN 978-1-59385-332-7; at page 547.

8.      Terry, W. S. (2006). Learning and Memory: Basic principles, processes, and procedures. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

9.      Baars, B. J. & Gage, N. M. (2007). Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to cognitive neuroscience. London: Elsevier Ltd.

10.  Augmented Learning, Augmented Learning: Context-Aware Mobile Augmented Reality Architecture for Learning

11.  J. Scott Armstrong (1979). "The Natural Learning Project". Journal of Experiential Learning and Simulation 1: 5–12. http://qbox.wharton.upenn.edu/documents/mktg/research/Naturallearning.pdf.

12.  J. Scott Armstrong (1983). "Learner Responsibility in Management Education, or Ventures into Forbidden Research (with Comments)". Academy of Management Review 13: 26–38.