Have you ever noticed how quickly a child acquires speech and other behaviors? How does this happen? What is learning? Learning has been defined by behavioral scientists as a change in behavior– internal or external– that follows a particular past experience. The past experience serves as a form of “feedback”, that is, a consequence. Feedback may occur as approval, a correction, or information which conveys a type of distinction. For example, a child attempting to tie his shoe may receive several forms of approval, increasing the likelihood that this process will occur even more quickly next time. Talking in class, a library, or at the same time someone else is, often elicits frowns and harsh words. Turning a door knob in one direction permits the opening of the door; entering a sequence of numbers in the correct order will allow a combination lock to open.
Many behavioral scientists have disagreed about what happens to the person during the learning process. Some have argued that learning simply requires a connection between a stimulus and response; others have insisted that some form of internal “thinking” must occur in between.
Does Pavlov ring a bell? Early in the twentieth century, a Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, performed some studies from which he acquired international recognition. In fact, Pavlov’s experiments had its participants drooling! You see, they were dogs. He was interested in studying the digestive process by measuring salivation. Meat powder placed on a dog’s tongue would naturally generate salivation. After awhile, he noticed that the dog would salivate before the food was placed in its mouth. Then the dogs began salivating at the mere sight of Pavlov. Talk about an ego! He reasoned that although salivation normally occurs as a reflex (automatic, unlearned) to the presentation of food, it apparently also occurred following a neutral event, his presence. Similarly, in other experiments, a bell rung just before the meat was given also produced salivation. This phenomenon became known as Classical Conditioning.
In human learning, there are many examples. A child, who once flinched suddenly when he burned his finger on a hot stove, now flinches when his mother bellows, “No, hot!” Imagine scraping your nails down a blackboard. What happens?
Another type of learning, whose greatest proponent was B.F. Skinner, is called, Operant Conditioning. Learning occurs as an organism operates on the environment. In other words, operant learning is voluntary. The feedback enhancing learning follows an action one emits. For example, a dog sitting for a treat, and a child waving his hand in class for attention. Although learning theorists have been concerned about the conditions necessary for learning– whether or not internal events occur between a stimulus and response– few have focused on how we learn. That is, the structure of the learning process, which provides “meaning”. Often when teaching something, a person can be very knowledgeable about it, yet know very little about how it was learned. And even less about how to teach it to someone else. When this happens, it’s convenient to assume that the other person is confused…or worse. Understanding learning is paramount to teaching it. And this requires studying the structure of subjective learning experiences. That is, how sensory systems– vision, sound and feeling– the basic elements of human behavior, become ordered in sequences (strategies) that lead to an outcome. Look at the following group of words: Not do others and sentences understandable constitute wordscertain that know we somehow. Can you make sense of this? More than likely, you first apply the learning strategy taught to you as a child. It will probably fail here. You will need to find a new one. Effective learning strategies vary among people and situations. In recent years, an explicit behavioral technology emerged for eliciting and utilizing various learning strategies that promote individual learning. For example, a successful strategy for learning to spell emphasizes visual, rather than auditory, elements. Spelling “phonetically” is considered a violation of itself. Suddenly, poor-spelling children are learning words more easily! This works well for Math and other kinds of learning, too. Someone once said, “Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day; teach him how, and you have fed him for life!” By the way, if the phrase above is still unclear, try tracking the words from bottom to top and right to left…