Unit-6

Learning
NATURE OF LEARNING

 Learning is a key process in human behaviour.

 It refers to a spectrum of changes that take place as a result of one’s experience.

 Learning defined as “any relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by

experience”.

 One must remember that some behavioural changes occur due to the use of drugs, or fatigue these

changes are temporary and They are not considered learning.

 Changes due to practice and experience, which are relatively permanent, are illustrative of learning.

Features of Learning

 The process of learning has certain distinctive characteristics.

 The first feature is that learning always involves some kinds of experience.

 We experience an event occurring in a certain sequence on a number of occasions.

 If an event happens then it may be followed by certain other events.

 They must be distinguished from the behavioural changes that are neither permanent nor learned.

 The change due to continuous exposure to stimuli is called habituation and It is not due to learning

 Learning involves a sequence of psychological events.

 learning is an inferred process and is different from performance.

 Performance is a person’s observed behaviour or response or action

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

 This type of learning was first investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov.

 He was primarily interested in the physiology of digestion.

 It is obvious that the learning situation in classical conditioning is one of S–S learning in which one

stimulus becomes a signal of another stimulus

 Here one stimulus signifies the possible occurrence of another stimulus.

 This happens because of contiguous presentation of balloon as a conditioned stimulus (CS) and loud

noise as an unconditioned stimulus (US).

Determinants of Classical Conditioning

Time Relations between Stimuli

 When the CS and US are presented together, it is called simultaneous conditioning.

 In delayed conditioning, the onset of CS precedes the onset of US. The CS ends before the end of the US.

 In trace conditioning, the onset and end of the CS precedes the onset of US with some time gap between

the two.

 In backward conditioning, the US precedes the onset of CS.

 It is now well established that delayed conditioning procedure is the most effective way of acquiring a

CR.

 Simultaneous and trace conditioning procedures do lead to acquisition of a CR, but they require greater

number of acquisition trials in comparison to the delayed conditioning procedure.

 It may be noted that the acquisition of response under backward conditioning procedure is very rare.

Type of Unconditioned Stimuli

 The unconditioned stimuli used in studies of classical conditioning are basically of two types, i.e.

appetitive and aversive. Appetitive unconditioned stimuli automatically elicit approach responses, such as

eating, drinking, caressing, etc.

 These responses give satisfaction and pleasure.

 Aversive US are painful, harmful, and elicit avoidance and escape responses.
 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.

Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli

 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.

 It means that the more intense the conditioned stimulus, the fewer are the number of acquisition trials

needed for conditioning

OPERANT/INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING

 This type of conditioning was first investigated by B.F. Skinner. Skinner studied occurrence of voluntary

responses when an organism operates on the environment.

 Operant 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.

 Skinner conducted his studies on rats and pigeons in specially made boxes, called the Skinner Box

 The response is instrumental in getting the food. That is why, this type of learning is also called

instrumental conditioning.

Determinants of Operant Conditioning

You have noted that operant or instrumental conditioning is a form of learning in which behaviour is

learned, maintained or changed through its consequences. Such consequences are called 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. They include its types – positive or negative, number or frequency, quality – superior or
inferior, and schedule – continuous or intermittent (partial). All these features influence the course of

operant conditioning.

Another factor that influences this type of learning is the nature of the response or behaviour that is to

be conditioned. The interval or length of time that lapses between occurrence of response and

reinforcement also influences operant learning. Let us examine some of these factors in detail.

Types of Reinforcement

Reinforcement may be positive or negative. 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 reinforcers involve unpleasant and painful stimuli. Responses that lead organisms to get rid of

painful stimuli or avoid and escape from them provide negative reinforcement. Thus, negative

reinforcement leads to learning of avoidance and escape responses. For instance, one learns to put on

woollen clothes, burn firewood or use electric heaters to avoid the unpleasant cold weather. One learns

to move away from dangerous stimuli because they provide negative reinforcement. It may be noted that

negative reinforcement is not 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. It should be understood that no punishment suppresses a response permanently. Mild

and delayed punishment has no effect. The stronger the punishment, the more lasting is the suppression

effect but it is not permanent.

Sometimes punishment has no effect irrespective of its intensity. On the contrary, the punished person

may develop dislike and hatred for the punishing agent or the person who administers the punishment.

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.

Chickpeas or pieces of bread are of inferior quality as compared with raisins or pieces of cake as

reinforcer. The course of operant conditioning is usually accelerated to an extent as the number, amount,
and quality of reinforcement increases.

Schedules of Reinforcement

A reinforcement schedule is the arrangement of the delivery of reinforcement during conditioning trials.

Each schedule of reinforcement influences the course of conditioning in its own way; and thus,

conditioned responses occur with differential characteristics. The organism being subjected to operant

conditioning may be given reinforcement in every acquisition trial or in some trials it is given and in

others it is omitted. Thus, the reinforcement may be continuous or intermittent. 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 and

has been found to produce greater resistance to extinction – than is found with 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. It can be

easily shown by asking children which reward they will prefer for doing some chore. Smaller rewards

immediately after doing the chore will be preferred rather than a big one after a long gap.

Key Learning Processes

When learning takes place, be it classical or operant conditioning, it involves the occurrence of certain

processes. These include reinforcement, extinction or non-occurrence of learned response,

generalisation of learning to other stimuli under some specifiable conditions, discrimination between

reinforcing and non-reinforcing stimuli, and spontaneous recovery.

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is the operation of administering a reinforcer by the experimenter. Reinforcers are

stimuli that increase the rate or probability of the responses that precede. We have noted that reinforced

responses increase in rate, while non-reinforced responses decrease in rate. 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. The reinforcers may be primary or secondary. 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. They are called secondary reinforcers. Systematic use of reinforcers can lead to

the desired response. Such a response is shaped by reinforcing successive approximations to the desired

response.

Extinction

Extinction means disappearance of a learned response due to removal of reinforcement from the

situation in which the response used to occur. If the occurrence of CS-CR is not followed by the US in

classical conditioning, or lever pressing is no more followed by food pellets in the Skinner box, the

learned behaviour will gradually be weakened and ultimately disappear. 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. However, with increasing number of trials without reinforcement, the response strength

gradually diminishes and ultimately it stops occurring. How long a learned response shows resistance to

extinction depends on a number of factors. It has been found that with increasing number of reinforced

trials resistance to extinction increases and learned response reaches its highest level. At this level

performance gets stabilised. After that the number of trials does not make a difference in the response

strength. Resistance to extinction increases with increasing number of reinforcements during acquisition

trials, beyond that any increase in number of reinforcements reduces the resistance to extinction. Studies

have also indicated that as the amount of reinforcement (number of food pellets) increases during

acquisition trials, resistance to extinction decreases.

If reinforcement is delayed during acquisition trials, the resistance to extinction increases.

Reinforcement in every acquisition trial makes the learned response to be less resistant to extinction. In

contrast, intermittent or partial reinforcement during acquisition trials makes a learned response more

resistant to extinction.

Generalisation and Discrimination

The processes of generalisation and discrimination occur in all kinds of learning. However, they have
been extensively investigated in the context of conditioning. Suppose an organism is conditioned to

elicit a CR (saliva secretion or any other reflexive response) on presentation of a CS (light or sound of

bell). After conditioning is established, and another stimulus similar to the CS (e.g., ringing of

telephone) is presented, the organism makes the conditioned response to it. This phenomenon of

responding similarly to similar stimuli is known as generalisation. Again, suppose a child has learned

the location of a jar of a certain size and shape in which sweets are kept. 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. When a learned response occurs or is elicited by a new stimulus, it is called

generalisation.

Another process, which is complimentary to generalisation, is called discrimination. Generalisation is

due to similarity while discrimination is a response due to difference. For example, suppose a child is

conditioned to be afraid of a person with a long moustache and wearing black clothes. In subsequent

situation, when s/he meets another person dressed in black clothes with a beard, the child shows signs of

fear. The child’s fear is generalised. S/he meets another stranger who is wearing grey clothes and is

clean-shaven. The child shows no fear. This is an example of discrimination. Occurrence of

generalisation means failure of discrimination. Discriminative response depends on the discrimination

capacity or discrimination learning of the organism.

Spontaneous Recovery

Spontaneous recovery occurs after a learned response is extinguished. Suppose an organism has learned

to make a response for getting reinforcement, then the response is extinguished and sometime lapses. A

question now may be asked, whether the response is completely extinguished, and will not occur if the

CS is presented. It has been demonstrated that after lapse of considerable time, the learned or CR

recovers and occurs to the CS. The amount of spontaneous recovery depends on the duration of the time

lapsed after the extinction session. The longer the duration of time lapsed, the greater is the recovery of

learned response. Such recovery occurs spontaneously. Fig.6.3 shows the phenomenon of spontaneous

recovery.
 OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

The next form of learning takes place by observing others. Earlier this form of learning was called

imitation. Bandura and his colleagues in a series of experimental studies investigated observational

learning in detail. In this kind of learning, human beings learn social behaviours, therefore, it is

sometimes called social learning. In many situations’ individuals do not know how to behave. 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. People observe them on televised fashion shows and advertisements in magazines and

newspapers. They imitate these models. Observing superiors and likeable persons and then emulating

their behaviour in a novel social situation is a common experience.

In order to understand the nature of observational learning we may refer to the studies conducted by

Bandura. In one of his well-known experimental study, Bandura showed a film of five minutes duration

to children. The film shows that in a large room there are numerous toys including a large sized ‘Bobo’

doll. Now a grown-up boy enters the room and looks around. The boy starts showing aggressive

behaviour towards the toys in general and the bobo doll in particular. He hits the doll, throws it on the

floor, kicking it and sitting on it. This film has three versions. In one version a group of children see the

boy (model) being rewarded and praised by an adult for being aggressive to the doll. In the second

version another group of children see the boy being punished for his aggressive behaviour. In the third

version the third group of children are not shown the boy being either rewarded or punished. After

viewing a specific version of the film all the three groups of children were placed in an experimental

room in which similar toys were placed around. The children were allowed to play with the toys.

These groups were secretly observed and their behaviours noted. It was found that those children who

saw aggressive behaviour being rewarded were most aggressive; children who had seen the aggressive

model being punished were least aggressive. Thus, in observational learning observers acquire

knowledge by observing the model’s behaviour, but performance is influenced by model’s behaviour

being rewarded or punished.

You must have noticed that children observe adults’ behaviours, at home and during social ceremonies

and functions. They enact adults in their plays and games. For instance, young children play games of

marriage ceremonies, birthday parties, thief and policeman, housekeeping, etc. Actually, they enact in

their games what they observe in society, on television, and read in books.

Children learn most of the social behaviours by observing and emulating adults. The way to put on

clothes, dress one’s hair, and conduct oneself in society are learned through observing others. It has also

been shown that children learn and develop various personality characteristics through observational

learning. Aggressiveness, prosocial behaviour, courtesy, politeness, diligence, and indolence are

acquired by this method of learning.

COGNITIVE LEARNING

Some psychologists view learning in terms of cognitive processes that underlie it. They have developed

approaches that focus on such processes that occur during learning rather than concentrating solely on

S-R and S-S connections, as we have seen in the case of classical and operant conditioning. Thus, in

cognitive learning, there is a change in what the learner knows rather than what s/he does. This form of

learning shows up in insight learning and latent learning. Insight Learning Kohler demonstrated a model

of learning which could not be readily explained by conditioning. He performed a series of experiments

with chimpanzees that involved solving complex problems. Kohler placed chimpanzees in an enclosed

play area where food was kept out of their reach. Tools such as poles and boxes were placed in the

enclosure. The chimpanzees rapidly learned how to use a box to stand on or a pole to move the food in

their direction. In this experiment, learning did not occur as a result of trial and error and reinforcement,

but came about in sudden flashes of insight. The chimpanzees would roam about the enclosure for some

time and then suddenly would stand on a box, grab a pole and strike a banana, which was out of normal

reach above the enclosure. The chimpanzee exhibited what Kohler called insight learning – the process

by which the solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear.

In a normal experiment on insight learning, a problem is presented, followed by a period of time when

no apparent progress is made and finally a solution suddenly emerges. In insight learning, sudden

solution is the rule. Once the solution has appeared, it can be repeated immediately the next time the
problem is confronted. Thus, it is clear that what is learned is not a specific set of conditioned

associations between stimuli and responses but a cognitive relationship between a means and an end. As

a result, insight learning can be generalised to other similar problem situations.

Latent Learning

Another type of cognitive learning is known as latent learning. In latent learning, a new behaviour is

learned but not demonstrated until reinforcement is provided for displaying it. Tolman made an early

contribution to the concept of latent learning. To have an idea of latent learning, we may briefly

understand his experiment. Tolman put two groups of rats in a maze and gave them an opportunity to

explore. In one group, rats found food at the end of the maze and soon learned to make their way rapidly

through the maze. On the other hand, rats in the second group were not rewarded and showed no

apparent signs of learning. But later, when these rats were reinforced, they ran through the maze as

efficiently as the rewarded group.

Tolman contended that the unrewarded rats had learned the layout of the maze early in their

explorations. They just never displayed their latent learning until the reinforcement was provided.

Instead, the rats developed a cognitive map of the maze, i.e. a mental representation of the spatial

locations and directions, which they needed to reach their goal.

VERBAL LEARNING

Verbal learning is different from conditioning and is limited to human beings. Human beings, as you

must have observed, acquire knowledge about objects, events, and their features largely in terms of

words. Words then come to be associated with one another. Psychologists have developed a number of

methods to study this kind of learning in a laboratory setting. Each method is used to investigate specific

questions about learning of some kind of verbal material. In the study of verbal learning, psychologists

use a variety of materials including nonsense syllables, familiar words, unfamiliar words, sentences, and

paragraphs.

Methods used in Studying Verbal Learning

1. Paired-Associates Learning: This method is similar to S-S conditioning and S-R learning. It is used
in learning some foreign language equivalents of mother tongue words. First, a list of paired-associates

is prepared. The first word of the pair is used as the stimulus, and the second word as the response.

Members of each pair may be from the same language or two different languages.

The first members of the pairs (stimulus term) are nonsense syllables (consonant vowel-consonant), and

the second are English nouns (response term). The learner is first shown both the stimulus-response

pairs together, and is instructed to remember and recall the response after the presentation of each

stimulus term. After that a learning trial begins. One by one the stimulus words are presented and the

participant tries to give the correct response term. In case of failure, s/he is shown the response word. In

one trial all the stimulus terms are shown. Trials continue until the participant gives all the response

words without a single error. The total number of trials taken to reach the criterion becomes the measure

of paired-associates learning.

2. Serial Learning: This method of verbal learning is used to find out how participants learn the lists of

verbal items, and what processes are involved in it. First, lists of verbal items, i.e. nonsense syllables,

most familiar or least familiar words, interrelated words, etc. are prepared. The participant is presented

the entire list and is required to produce the items in the same serial order as in the list. In the first trial,

the first item of the list is shown, and the participant has to produce the second item. If s/he fails to do so

within the prescribed time, the experimenter presents the second item. Now this item becomes the

stimulus and the participant has to produce the third item that is the response word. If s/he fails, the

experimenter gives the correct item, which becomes the stimulus item for the fourth word. This

procedure is called serial anticipation method. Learning trials continue until the participant correctly

anticipates all the items in the given order.

3. Free Recall: In this method, participants are presented a list of words, which they read and speak out.

Each word is shown at a fixed rate of exposure duration. Immediately after the presentation of the list,

the participants are required to recall the words in any order they can. Words in the list may be

interrelated or unrelated. More than ten words are included in the list. The presentation order of words

varies from trial to trial. This method is used to study how participants organise words for storage in

memory. Studies indicate that the items placed in the beginning or end of the lists are easier to recall

than those placed in the middle, which are more difficult to recall.
 Determinants of Verbal Learning

Verbal learning has been subjected to the most extensive experimental investigations. These studies

have indicated that the course of verbal learning is influenced by a number of factors. The most

important determinants are the different features of the verbal material to be learned. They include

length of the list to be learned and meaningfulness of the material. Meaningfulness of material is

measured in several ways. The number of associations elicited in a fixed time, familiarity of the material

and frequency of usage, relations among the words in the list, and sequential dependence of each word

of the list on the preceding words, are used for assessing meaningfulness. Lists of nonsense syllables are

available with different levels of associations. The nonsense syllables should be selected from a list

containing the same association value. On the basis of research findings, the following generalisations

have been made.

Learning time increases with increase in length of the list, occurrence of words with low association

values or lack of relations among the items in the list. The more time it takes to learn the list, stronger

will be the learning. In this respect psychologists have found that the total time principle operates. This

principle states that a fixed amount of time is necessary to learn a fixed amount of material, regardless

of the number of trials into which that time is divided. The more time it takes to learn, the stronger

becomes the learning. If participants are not restricted to the serial learning method and are allowed to

give free recall, verbal learning becomes organisational. It implies that in free recall participants recall

the words not in their order of presentation, but in a new order or sequence. Bousfield first demonstrated

this experimentally. He made a list of 60 words that consisted of 15 words drawn from each of the four

semantic categories, i.e. names, animals, professions, and vegetables. These words were presented to

participants one by one in random order. The participants were required to make free recall of the

words. However, they recalled the words of each category together. He called it category clustering. It is

worth noting that, though, the words were presented randomly the participants organised them category-

wise in recall. Here category clustering occurred because of the nature of the list. It has also been

demonstrated that free recall is always organised subjectively. Subjective organisation shows that the

participants organise words or items in their individual ways and recall accordingly.

Verbal learning is usually intentional but a person may learn some features of the words unintentionally
or incidentally. In this kind of learning, participants notice features such as whether two or more words

rhyme, start with identical letters, have same vowels, etc. Thus, verbal learning is both intentional as

well as incidental.

CONCEPT LEARNING

The world, in which we live, consists of innumerable objects, events and living beings. These objects

and events are different in their structures and functions. One of the many things human beings have to

do is to organise the objects, events, animals, etc., into categories so that within the category, objects are

treated as equivalent even though they are different in their features. Such categorisations involve

concept learning.

What is a Concept?

A concept is a category that is used to refer to a number of objects and events. Animal, fruit, building,

and crowd are examples of concepts or categories. It may be noted that the terms, concept and category,

are interchangeably used. A concept is defined as ‘a set of features or attributes connected by some

rule’. Instances of a concept are those objects or events or behaviours, which have common features. A

feature is any characteristic or aspect of an object or event or living organism that is observed in them,

and can be considered equivalent to some features observed or discriminated in other objects. Features

are of innumerable kinds and their discriminability depends upon the degree of the observer’s perceptual

sensitivity. Properties like colour, size, number, shape, smoothness, roughness, softness, and hardness

are called features. Rules that are used to connect the features to form a concept may be very simple or

complex. A rule is an instruction to do something. Keeping in view the rules that are used in defining

concepts, psychologists have studied two types of concepts: artificial concepts and natural concepts or

categories.

Artificial concepts are those that are well-defined and rules connecting the features are precise and rigid.

In a well-defined concept the features that represent the concept are both singly necessary and jointly

sufficient. Every object must have all the features in order to become an instance of the concept. On the

other hand, natural concepts or categories are usually ill-defined. Numerous features are found in the

instances of a natural category. Such concepts include biological objects, real world products, and
human artefacts such as tools, clothes, houses, etc.

Let us take the example of the concept of a square. It is a well-defined concept. It must have four

attributes, i.e. closed figure, four sides, each side of equal length, and equal angles. Thus, a square

consists of four features

connected by a conjunctive rule.

SKILL LEARNING

Nature of Skills

A skill is defined as the ability to perform some complex task smoothly and efficiently. Car driving,

airplane piloting, ship navigating shorthand writing, and writing and reading are examples of skills.

Such skills are learned by practice and exercise. A skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor

responses or as a sequence of S-R associations.

Phases of Skill Acquisition Skill learning passes through several qualitatively different phases. With

each successive attempt at learning a skill, one’s performance becomes smoother and less effort

demanding. In other words, it becomes more spontaneous or automatic. It has also been shown that in

each phase the performance

improves. In transition from one phase to the next, when the level of performance stands still, it is called

performance plateau. Once the next phase begins, performance starts improving and its level starts

going up.

One of the most influential accounts of the phases of skill acquisition is presented by Fitts. According to

him, skill learning passes through three phases, viz. cognitive, associative and autonomous. Each phase

or stage of skill learning involves different types of mental processes. 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 have to be kept alive

in consciousness.

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. With continued practice, errorless performance begins, though, the learner has to be

attentive to all the sensory inputs and maintain concentration on the task. 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.

Transitions from one phase to the other clearly show that practice is the only means of skill learning.

One has to keep on exercising and practicing. As the practice increases, improvement rate gradually

increases; and automaticity of errorless performance becomes the hallmark of skill. That is why it is said

that ‘practice makes a man perfect’.

TRANSFER OF LEARNING

The term transfer of learning is often called transfer of training or transfer effect. It refers to the effects of

prior learning on new learning. Transfer is considered to be positive if the earlier learning facilitates

current learning. It is considered to be negative transfer if new learning is retarded. Absence of facilitative

or retarding effect means zero transfer.

Psychologists use specific experimental designs in the study of transfer effects. Suppose you want to

know whether learning of English language affects learning of French. To study this you select a large

sample of participants. Now you randomly divide the sample into two groups, one to be used in the

experimental condition and the other as control group. The experimental group of participants learns

English language for a year and is tested to find out their achievement in English. In the second year, they

study French. In the end this group is tested to find out its achievement scores in French. The control

group in the first phase does not learn English language and just does its routine work for one year. In the

second year, these participants learn French for a year and their achievement scores are obtained.

The achievement scores in French of the two groups are then compared. If the achievement score of the

experimental group is higher than that of the control group, it implies that positive transfer has taken

place. If the score is lower than the control group, it means negative transfer has taken place. If the two

groups perform equally well, then it shows that transfer effect is zero.
It must be noted that in the study of transfer effect, a distinction is made between general transfer and

specific transfer. It is now a well-known fact that prior learning always leads to positive general transfer.

It is only in specific transfer that transfer effects are positive or negative, and in some conditions, there is

zero effect, though in reality, due to general transfer, zero transfer is theoretically untenable. Let us try to

understand the nature of general transfer and specific transfer.

General (Generic) Transfer

General transfer is not clearly conceptualised and defined in its details. However, prior learning

predisposes one to learn another task in a better manner. The learning of one task warms-up the learner to

learn the next task more conveniently. You must have seen a cricketer going to the pitch to take her/his

position near the wicket. The cricketer walks by jumping on one foot then on the other. S/he moves

her/his two hands holding the bat sideways to loosen up. When you write answers while appearing at the

examination, your writing is slow and sitting position awkward for efficient writing. However, you get

warmed up after having written two or three pages. Your speed increases and your body get well-adjusted

to the writing task. This continues until the writing of the last answer is over. After some time, warm-up

effect disappears. Warm-up effect lasts over one session of learning. Only in that session one can learn

two or more tasks.

Specific Transfer

Whenever an organism learns something, it consists of a series of stimulus-response associations. Any

task can be understood as a chain of discriminable stimuli, each of which has to be associated with a

specific response.

Specific transfer means the effect of learning of task A on learning of task B. The learning of task A may

make the learning of task B easier or more difficult or have no such effect. Such transfers depend on

similarity-dissimilarity between the initial learning task and the second task.

On the basis of a long series of experimental studies, the following conclusions have been drawn about

specific transfer.

1. In the first instance, the initial and transfer tasks are very different both in stimuli as well as in

responses. Hence no specific transfer is expected. However, due to the mechanism of general transfer
some degree of positive transfer may occur.

2. In the second case, the stimuli of the two tasks are the same and responses are highly similar.

Therefore, maximum transfer may occur. It has been regularly shown that in this condition positive

transfer takes place.

3. In the third case, the stimuli are same but responses are different. In such conditions also some

positive transfer occurs.

4. In the fourth case, the stimuli are different, but responses are the same. Therefore, new associations

with responses are to be learned. In this case positive transfer is obtained.

5. In the fifth case, stimuli and responses are the same, but associations are altered. Because of this,

alteration negative transfer occurs in the learning of the second task. It is so because the associations

learned in the initial task interfere in the learning of new associations.

FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING

In the preceding section we examined the specific determinants of learning, such as contiguous

presentation of CS and US in classical conditioning; number, amount, and delay of reinforcement in

operant conditioning; status and attractiveness of models in observational learning; procedure in verbal

learning; and the nature of rules and perceptual features of objects and events in concept learning. Now,

we shall discuss some general determinants of learning. This discussion is not exhaustive. Rather it

deals with some salient factors only which are found very important.

Continuous vs Partial Reinforcement

In experiments on learning the experimenter can arrange to deliver reinforcement according to a specific

schedule. In the context of learning, two kinds of schedules namely continuous and partial have been

found very important. 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. There

are several ways in which one might reinforce responses according to an intermittent schedule. It has

been found that partial reinforcement schedules often produce very high rates of responding, particularly

when responses are reinforced according to ratio. In this kind of schedule, an organism often makes

several responses that are not reinforced. Therefore, it becomes difficult to tell when a

reinforcement has been discontinued completely and when it has merely been delayed. When

reinforcement is continuous it is easier to tell when it has been discontinued. This kind of difference has

been found crucial for extinction. 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.

Motivation

All living organisms have survival needs and human beings, in addition, have growth needs. Motivation

is a mental as well as a physiological state, which arouses an organism to act for fulfilling the current

need. In other words, motivation energises an organism to act vigorously for attaining some goal. Such

acts persist until the goal is attained and the need is satisfied. Motivation is a prerequisite for learning.

Why does a child forage in the kitchen when the mother is not in the house? S/he does so because s/he

needs sweets to eat for which s/he is trying to locate the jar in which sweets are kept. During the course

of foraging the child learns the location of the jar. A hungry rat is placed in a box. The animal forages in

the box for food.

Incidentally it presses a lever and food drops in the box. With repeated experience of such activity, the

animal learns to press the lever immediately after the animal is placed there. Have you ever asked

yourself why you are studying psychology and other subjects in Class XI? You are doing so to pass with

good marks or grades in your final examination. The more motivated you are, the harder 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).

Preparedness for Learning

The members of different species are very different from one another in their sensory capacities and

response abilities. The mechanisms necessary for establishing associations, such as S-S or S-R, also

vary from species to species. It can be said that species have biological constraints on their learning

capacities. The kinds of S-S or S-R learning an organism can easily acquire depends on the associative

mechanism it is genetically endowed with or prepared for. A particular kind of associative learning is

easy for apes or human beings but may be extremely difficult and sometimes impossible for cats and

rats. It implies that one can learn only those associations for which one is genetically prepared.

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.

THE LEARNER: LEARNING STYLES

You may have observed that some children, sometimes from the same family, perform well in school

whereas others do not. There has been a great deal of research on learning styles over the last several

decades. It demonstrates the differences in the way people learn within the same class, culture,

community or socioeconomic group and those belonging to different groups.

Learning style may be defined as ‘a learner’s consistent way of responding to and using stimuli in the

context of learning’. In other words, it is ‘the way in which each learner begins to concentrate,

processes, and retains new and complex information’. It may be noted that this interaction occurs

differently for everyone. For example, you may have noticed that children in your class are unique in

their personalities, cultural experiences, and values. Different students prefer different learning

environments, learning modalities and they all have unique strengths, talents, and weaknesses.

Therefore, it is necessary to examine each individual’s personal characteristics to determine what is

most likely to trigger each learner’s concentration, maintain it, respond to her or his natural processing

style and facilitate long-term memory. There are various instruments which are used to determine a

student’s learning style.

Learning styles are mainly derived from Perceptual Modality, Information Processing, and Personality

Patterns. A brief description of these approaches is given below:

1. Perceptual Modality are biologically-based reactions to the physical environment. It refers to the

preferences of persons through which they take in information such as auditory, visual, smell,

kinesthetics, and tactile.

2. Information Processing distinguishes between the way we are structured to think, solve problems, and

remember information. This may be thought of as the way we process information. For example,

active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, sequential/global, serial/simultaneous, etc.

3. Personality Patterns are the way we interact with our surroundings. Each one of us has a preferred,

consistent, and distinct way of perceiving, organising, and retaining information. This approach focuses

on understanding how personality affects the way people interact with the environment, and how this

affects the way individuals respond to each other within the learning environment.

There are several dimensions along which learning styles differ. For example, Anderson differentiated

between analytic and relational styles of learning.

On the other hand, people with an analytical learning style learn more easily when information is

presented step by step in a cumulative sequential pattern that builds towards a conceptual understanding.

One must remember that the various learning styles are points along a scale that help us to discover the

different forms of mental representation. They do not characterise people. Therefore, we should not

divide the population into a set category (e.g., visual person, extrovert, etc.). We are capable of learning

under any style, no matter what our preference may be.

`LEARNING DISABILITIES

You must have heard, observed or read that thousands of children get enrolled for education in schools.

Some of them, however, find the demands of educational process too difficult to meet, and they drop

out. Such students are called “drop-outs”. The reasons for this are numerous, such as sensory

impairment, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance, poor economic conditions of the

family, cultural beliefs and norms or other environmental influences. Apart from these conditions, there

is another source of obstacle in the continuance of education that is called learning disabilities. It makes
school learning, i.e. acquisition of knowledge and skills too difficult to grapple with. Such children also

fail to move forward in their learning activities.

Learning disability is a general term. It refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested in terms

of difficulty in the acquisition of learning, reading, writing, speaking, reasoning, and mathematical

activities. The sources of such disorders are inherent in the child. It is presumed that these difficulties

originate from problems with the functioning of the central nervous system. It may occur in conjunction

with physical handicaps, sensory impairment, mental retardation, or without them.

It must be noted that learning disabilities may be observed as a distinct handicapping condition in

children of average to superior intelligence, adequate sensory motor systems, and adequate learning

opportunities. If it is not remedied, it may continue throughout life and affect self-esteem, vocation,

social relations, and daily living activities.

Symptoms of Learning Disabilities

There are many symptoms of learning disabilities. They become manifest in different combinations in

children who suffer from this disorder irrespective of their intelligence, motivation, and hard work for

learning.

1. Difficulties in writing letters, words and phrases, reading out text, and speaking appear quite

frequently. Quite often they have listening problems, although they may not have auditory defects. Such

children are very different from others in developing learning strategies and plans.

2. Learning-disabled children have disorders of attention. They get easily distracted and cannot sustain

attention on one point for long. More often than not, attentional deficiency leads to hyperactivity, i.e.

they are always moving, doing different things, trying to manipulate things incessantly.

3. Poor space orientation and inadequate sense of time are common symptoms. Such children do not get

easily oriented to new surroundings and get lost. They lack a sense of time and are late or sometimes too

early in their routine work. They also show confusion in direction and misjudge right, left, up and down.

4. Learning-disabled children have poor motor coordination and poor manual dexterity. This is evident

in their lack of balance, inability to sharpen pencil, handle doorknobs, difficulty in learning to ride a

bicycle, etc.

5. These children fail to understand and follow oral directions for doing things.
6. They misjudge relationships as to which classmates are friendly and which ones are indifferent. They

fail to learn and understand body language.

7. Learning-disabled children usually show perceptual disorders. These may include visual, auditory,

tactual, and kinesthetics misperception. They fail to differentiate a call-bell from the ring of the

telephone. It is not that they do not have sensory acuity. They simply fail to use it in performance.

8. Fairly large number of learning-disabled children have dyslexia. They quite often fail to copy letters

and words; for example, they fail to distinguish between b and d, p and q, P and 9, was and saw, unclear

and nuclear, etc. They fail to organise verbal materials.

It must be noted that learning disabilities are not incurable. Remedial teaching methods go a long way in

helping them to learn and become like other students. Educational psychologists have developed

appropriate techniques for correcting most of the symptoms related to learning disabilities.

APPLICATIONS OF LEARNING PRINCIPLES

The principles of learning have great value for enriching human life in all spheres of life. All activities

and behaviours that make personal, social, and economic life peaceful and pleasurable are learned. Their

learning should be psychologically guided. Contemporary psychologists have developed techniques and

procedures based on the principles of classical and operant conditioning, social learning, verbal

learning, concept learning, and skill learning for improving many aspects of life.

We can have a glimpse of the applications of learning principles in four areas, i.e. organisations, in

treatment of maladjusted behaviours, in rearing children, and school learning. In organisations, a

number of problems such as absenteeism, frequent medical leave, indiscipline, and lack of proper skills

pose serious problems. Applying the principles of learning may solve these problems. To increase

attendance and reduce absenteeism an interesting device is used in some organisations. At the end of

every third month, name slips of employees, not being absent on a single working day are placed in a

drum. Four to five per cent of the names are randomly drawn and they are given attractive rewards for

not being absent on a single working day.

Such rewards have been found to reduce absenteeism. To increase the number of employees, who have

not gone on medical leave for full one-year, various benefits are given. Such partial rewards reduce the
incidence of medical leave. With a view to improving discipline, managers start functioning as models

for employees, or employees are placed under such model managers.

Based on the principles of learning, a number of therapeutic procedures have been developed to modify

maladaptive and socially incapacitating habits and behaviours. In these procedures, the principle of

extinction is employed. In the case of those children and adults who exhibit irrational and unfounded

fear with accompanying avoidance behaviour, implosive therapy and flooding are used. Implosive

therapy starts with the person imagining their most feared form of contact with the feared object,

accompanied by vivid verbal descriptions by the therapist. The therapist functions as a coach. On the

other hand, flooding is exposure that takes place in vivo (e.g., with an actual feared object) and is

considered to be the most effective of all treatments for fear. To help those suffering from excessive

anxieties and fears, the technique of systematic desensitisation is used. It is a form of behaviour therapy

used to reduce phobic patients’ anxiety responses through counterconditioning, i.e. an attempt to reverse

the process of classical conditioning by associating the crucial stimulus with a new conditioned

response. In order to eliminate habits that are undesirable and injurious for health and happiness,

aversion therapy is used. The therapist arranges things in such a way that occurrence of maladjusted

habits generates painful experiences and to avoid them clients learn to give them up. For

example, alcohol is paired with an emetic drug (which induces severe nausea and vomiting)

so that nausea and vomiting become a conditioned response to alcohol. Modelling and systematic use of

reinforcement for shaping and developing competence are extensively used.

Persons suffering from excessive shyness and having difficulties in interpersonal interactions are

subjected to assertive learning. This therapy is also based on the principles of learning. There are

persons who lose mental peace with accelerated rate of breathing, loss of appetite, and rise in blood

pressure at the slightest provocation. In such cases psychotherapists give biofeedback treatment. This

technique is based on the interaction between classical and instrumental conditioning. In biofeedback, a

bodily function (such as heart rate or blood pressure) is monitored and information about the function is

fed back to the person to facilitate improved control of the physiological process. You will read in detail

about these therapies in Class XII.

The principles of learning are widely used in teaching. Educational objectives are decided after

analysing the instructional tasks and fitting them into various types of learning such as S-S or S-R,

verbal, observational, and skill learning. Students are told what they have to learn and appropriate

practice conditions are provided. Students are made active participants in the acquisition of information,

meaning, and correct responses. Teachers act as models and mentors for students to emulate them with a

view to promote appropriate social behaviours and personal habits. Students are provided ample

opportunities for practice as they are required to do homework. Skills are analysed as S-R chains and

students are allowed to learn skills practically.

The principles of learning are best applied in child rearing provided both the parents are aware of the

principles of learning. By using the classical conditioning procedure children are made to learn

necessary signs of danger and safety. The behaviour of children can easily be modified and shaped

through the use of operant conditioning procedure. By using rewards judiciously parents can make

children enthusiastic learners. As models and mentors, parents make children socially skilful, duty

oriented and resourceful.