Class 11 Psychology Chapter 5 Learning Notes in English

1Introduction: Why Learning Matters

A newborn baby can make only a few responses, and these happen reflexively (automatically) when the right stimulus is present. As the child grows, the list of things s/he can do keeps growing: recognising mother, father or grandfather, eating with a spoon, reading and writing letters and words, copying what others do, naming objects such as a book, an orange or a cow. Later the same person learns to drive a scooter, to talk to people well and to get along with others.

Even qualities like being hard working or lazy (indolent), socially knowledgeable, skilled or professionally competent come from learning. Every person manages life and solves problems because of this capacity to learn and adapt.

2Nature of Learning

Almost everything we do is shaped by learning. The word covers a wide range of changes that our experiences bring about.

Notice the words relatively permanent. Some changes in behaviour come from drugs or tiredness. They fade away, so they are not learning. Only changes caused by practice and experience that last are examples of learning.

2.1 Features of learning

2.2 Learning as a sequence of events: a word-list experiment

By comparing how many words the person knows now with the pre-test score, we infer that learning took place.

2.3 Learning vs performance

3Paradigms (Kinds) of Learning

Some methods explain how simple responses are learned; others explain complex responses. The simplest kind of learning is conditioning.

4Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning was first investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov. He was mainly studying the physiology of digestion. He noticed that his dogs began to secrete saliva as soon as they saw the empty plate in which food was served. Salivation is normally a reflex to food in the mouth, so Pavlov designed an experiment to study this.

4.1 Pavlov’s experiment

4.2 Determinants of classical conditioning

How quickly and how strongly a CR is acquired depends on three main factors.

(1) Time relations between stimuli. There are four procedures, based on when the CS and US begin. The first three are forward conditioning; the fourth is backward conditioning.

(2) Type of unconditioned stimulus.

(3) Intensity of conditioned stimuli. A more intense CS speeds up acquisition: the more intense the CS, the fewer trials are needed. This holds for both appetitive and aversive conditioning.

5Operant / Instrumental Conditioning

This type of conditioning was first investigated by B.F. Skinner. He studied voluntary responses that an organism makes when it operates on the environment, and called them operants.

5.1 Skinner’s experiment

Skinner worked with rats and pigeons in a specially made chamber called the Skinner Box (Fig. 5.2). The rat could move about inside but not get out. A lever was connected to a food container on top; pressing it dropped a food pellet on a plate.

Lever pressing is the operant response and getting food is its consequence. Because the response is instrumental in getting food, this learning is also called instrumental conditioning.

5.2 Determinants of operant conditioning

In operant conditioning, behaviour is learned, kept up or changed through its consequences, which are called reinforcers.

What decides the course of operant conditioning:

• Features of the reinforcer: its type (positive or negative), number or frequency, quality (superior or inferior) and schedule (continuous or intermittent/partial)
• The nature of the response or behaviour to be conditioned
• The interval (delay) between the response and the reinforcement

(a) Types of reinforcement

What the book says about punishment:

• No punishment suppresses a response permanently
• Punishment that is mild or comes late does not work at all
• A harsher punishment holds the response down for a longer time, yet even then it returns
• Sometimes punishment has no effect at all, whatever its intensity; the punished person may develop dislike and hatred for the person who punishes

(b) Number of reinforcement and other features

Operant conditioning usually speeds up as the number, amount and quality of reinforcement increase.

(c) Schedules of reinforcement

(d) Delayed reinforcement

Delay in giving reinforcement lowers its effectiveness and leads to poorer performance. Ask children to choose a reward for a chore: they prefer a small reward right away to a big one after a long gap.

6Classical vs Operant Conditioning (Box 5.1)

The US has two functions: at first it elicits the response, and it also reinforces the response so that the CS can later bring it out.

7Key Learning Processes

Whether learning is classical or operant, five processes occur in it.

7.1 Reinforcement

Reinforced responses rise in rate; non-reinforced responses fall. A positive reinforcer raises the rate of the response that comes before its presentation; a negative reinforcer raises the rate of the response that comes before its removal or termination.

Shaping: a desired response that does not yet occur can be built up by systematically reinforcing successive approximations (closer and closer steps) to it.

7.2 Extinction

Example: if the CS-CR is no longer followed by the US, or lever pressing no longer brings food pellets, the learned behaviour weakens and finally disappears. But learning shows resistance to extinction: the response goes on for some time even without reinforcement.

7.3 Generalisation and discrimination

Both happen in all kinds of learning, but have been studied most in conditioning.

The occurrence of generalisation means a failure of discrimination. A discriminative response depends on the organism’s capacity for discrimination, or discrimination learning.

7.4 Spontaneous recovery

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

8Learned Helplessness (Box 5.2)

Learned helplessness results from an interaction of the two forms of conditioning, and psychologists link it with cases of depression. Seligman and Maier showed it in a study on dogs.

In humans: continuous failure in a set of tasks produces it. In experiments, subjects first get failure feedback regardless of how they perform, then are given a task. Learned helplessness is measured by the subject’s ability and persistence before giving up. Continuous failure leads to little persistence and poor performance. Many studies show that persistent depression is often caused by learned helplessness.

9Observational Learning

This form of learning takes place by observing others. Earlier it was called imitation. Bandura and his colleagues studied it in detail in a series of experiments. Because human beings learn social behaviours this way, it is also called social learning; and because people watch others and copy them when they do not know how to behave, it is called modeling.

Example: fashion designers use tall, smart, attractive young models to popularise clothes; people see them in fashion shows and advertisements and imitate them.

9.1 Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment

In daily life: children act out adults in their games: marriage ceremonies, birthday parties, thief and policeman, housekeeping. How to dress, do one’s hair and behave in society are learned by observing others. Personality traits such as aggressiveness, pro-social behaviour, courtesy, politeness, diligence and indolence are also acquired this way. (Activity 5.2: show children two or three times how to fold a paper boat; most can then make one.)

10Cognitive Learning

Some psychologists explain learning by the cognitive processes behind it, instead of only S-R and S-S connections. In cognitive learning there is a change in what the learner knows rather than what s/he does. Its two forms are insight learning and latent learning.

10.1 Insight learning (Kohler)

Kohler did experiments with chimpanzees. Food (a banana) was kept out of reach in an enclosed play area with poles and boxes. The chimpanzees wandered for a while and then suddenly stood on a box or used a pole to bring the food closer. The learning came in sudden flashes of insight, not by trial and error and reinforcement.

Once found, the solution can be repeated immediately the next time. What is learned is a cognitive relationship between a means and an end, not a set of S-R links, so insight learning can be generalised to similar problems.

10.2 Latent learning (Tolman)

Tolman argued that while simply wandering through the maze, the rats with no reward had already picked up its plan in their heads, a cognitive map: a mental representation of the spatial locations and directions needed to reach the goal.

11Verbal Learning

Verbal learning is different from conditioning and is limited to human beings. We know objects and events largely through words, and words come to be associated with one another. Materials used in experiments: nonsense syllables, familiar words, unfamiliar words, sentences and paragraphs (Table 5.2 gives samples such as YOL, RUV for nonsense syllables; ZILCH, PLUMB for unfamiliar words; BOAT, NOSE for familiar words).

11.1 Methods used in studying verbal learning

11.2 Determinants of verbal learning

The most important determinants are features of the material: the length of the list and the meaningfulness of the material. Meaningfulness is measured by:

• the number of associations a word brings out in a fixed time
• familiarity of the material and frequency of usage
• relations among the words in the list
• sequential dependence of each word on the words before it

Nonsense syllables are chosen from a list with the same association value. Learning time increases with a longer list, low association values, or a lack of relations among items. The more time it takes to learn, the stronger the learning.

Free recall is organisational. In free recall people recall words not in the order shown but in a new order of their own.

• Category clustering (Bousfield): a list of 60 words, 15 from each of four categories (names, animals, professions, vegetables), was shown in random order. Participants recalled words of each category together. This happened because of the nature of the list.
• Subjective organisation: free recall is always organised in each person’s own way, and they recall accordingly.

(Activity 5.3: read out 21 words such as book, law, bread, shirt, rice, curd, and ask people to write them in any order; check whether their recall shows grouping.)

12Skill Learning

Examples: car driving, airplane piloting, ship navigating, shorthand writing, writing and reading. Skills are learned by practice and exercise. A skill is a chain of perceptual motor responses, or a sequence of S-R associations.

Skill learning passes through qualitatively different phases; with each attempt, performance becomes smoother, less effortful and more automatic. When performance stands still during the move from one phase to the next, it is called a performance plateau; once the next phase begins, performance improves again.

12.1 Fitts’s three phases of skill acquisition

Practice is the only means of skill learning. Automatic, errorless performance is the hallmark of a skill, which is why it is said that “practice makes a man perfect”.

13Factors Facilitating Learning

Each kind of learning has its own specific determinants: contiguity 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; nature of rules and perceptual features of objects in concept learning. Besides these, some general factors matter.

13.1 Continuous vs partial reinforcement

13.2 Motivation

All living organisms have survival needs; human beings also have growth needs.

Motivation is a prerequisite for learning. A child searches the kitchen because s/he wants sweets, and in the process learns where the jar is. A hungry rat forages for food, presses the lever by chance, and learns to press it. You study psychology to pass with good marks: the more motivated you are, the harder you work.

13.3 Preparedness for learning

Species differ in sensory capacities, response abilities and the mechanisms for forming S-S or S-R associations. Species have biological constraints on learning: an organism easily learns the associations for which it is genetically prepared. Some associations are easy for apes or humans but very difficult, or impossible, for cats and rats.

So preparedness is best seen as a continuum: at one end tasks easy for a species, at the other end tasks it cannot learn at all, and in the middle tasks it can learn only with great difficulty.

14Learning Disabilities

Some children find school too difficult and drop out. Reasons include sensory impairment, intellectual disability, social and emotional disturbance, poor family economic conditions, cultural beliefs and other environmental influences. Another obstacle is learning disability, which makes acquiring knowledge and skills too difficult.

• The sources are inherent in the child, presumed to come from problems in the functioning of the central nervous system
• It may occur with or without physical handicaps, sensory impairment or intellectual disability
• It can be a distinct condition in children of average to superior intelligence, adequate sensory-motor systems and adequate learning opportunities
• If not remedied, it may last throughout life and affect self-esteem, vocation, social relations and daily living

14.1 Symptoms of learning disabilities

These show up in different combinations, whatever the child’s intelligence, motivation or hard work.

15Key Terms

16NCERT Review Questions: Short Answers

1. What is learning? What are its distinguishing features? A relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by experience. Features: it always involves experience; the change is relatively permanent (unlike fatigue, habituation, drugs); it is a sequence of psychological events and an inferred process, different from performance.
2. How does classical conditioning demonstrate learning by association? In Pavlov’s study a bell (CS) paired again and again with food (US) came to produce salivation (CR) alone. The dog learned that one stimulus signals another: S-S learning by association.
3. Define operant conditioning and the factors influencing it. Conditioning of voluntarily emitted responses (operants) through their consequences (Skinner). Factors: type of reinforcement (positive/negative), number, amount and quality, schedule (continuous/partial), delay of reinforcement, and the nature of the response.
4. A good role model matters for a growing child. Which learning supports it? Observational learning (Bandura): children learn social behaviours and traits such as courtesy or aggressiveness by watching models; their performance depends on whether the model is rewarded or punished.
5. Explain the procedures for studying verbal learning. Paired-associates learning (stimulus-response word pairs, trials to criterion), serial learning (serial anticipation method) and free recall (recall in any order).
6. What is a skill? What are its stages? The ability to perform a complex task smoothly and efficiently. Fitts’s phases: cognitive, associative, autonomous.
7. Generalisation vs discrimination? Generalisation is responding similarly to similar stimuli (due to similarity); discrimination is responding differently to different stimuli (due to difference). Generalisation means failure of discrimination.
8. Why is motivation a prerequisite for learning? It arouses and energises the organism to act until its need is satisfied; the more motivated a learner, the harder s/he works (intrinsic or extrinsic).
9. What does preparedness for learning mean? Species can easily learn only the associations they are genetically prepared for; tasks lie on a continuum from prepared to unprepared.
10. Forms of cognitive learning? Insight learning (Kohler’s chimpanzees, sudden solution) and latent learning (Tolman’s rats, cognitive map).
11. How can we identify students with learning disabilities? By the symptoms: reading/writing/speaking difficulty, attention problems and hyperactivity, poor sense of space and time, poor motor coordination, failure to follow oral directions, misjudging relationships, perceptual disorders, and dyslexia.