The Psychology of How People Learn

Nature, all of us, from day one, tries to adopt our environment, at homes and everywhere. The entire process of development from birth to death involves adapting to increasing complex, ever changing environment, using continuously updated knowledge gained through experience. The ability to adapt to changing environments appears in animals and human adaptation follows the principle of learning. Many of creatures are born with a genetic blue print for life. We struggle to find the life creation, we learn from experience. Our learning gives us flexibility. We can learnt a lot and adapt to almost any environment. Indeed, nature’s most important gift to us may be our adaptability. It is our capacity to learnt new behavior that enables us to cope with ever-changing circumstances.

Definition

Learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from experiences. The term behavior is defined very broadly to include reflexes, voluntary behaviors, verbal behaviors, unabsorable behavior, such as thinking, or even neural activities in the brain.

Learning is not observed directly, but is inferred from changes in observable behavior. Learning occurs when we demonstrate new skills to ourselves; swimming, driving, dancing etc. learning is apparent from improvement in our performance.

Characteristics of Learning

• Learning can take place only through experience. Experience means something that happens to us during our life time, usually involving interaction with our environment. Psychologists are especially interested in discovering what aspects of behavior can be changed through experiences and how such changes come about. Some lasting changes in behavior require a combination of experiences and maturational readiness 
• Learning is relatively defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior. So to qualify as learned, a change in behavior must be permanent. When one learns swimming, probably always be able to do so. Those changes caused by fatigue, drug or any disease are transient, so can’t be called as learning.
• Learning shapes our thoughts and language, motivations and emotions, our personalities and attitudes.
• Learning in all such realm, breads hope. What is learnable we can potentially e teach. This fact encourages parents, educators, athletes, coaches and animal trainers.
• What has been learnt that can potentially be changed buy new learning. It underlies counselling psychotherapy and rehabilitation. 
• Of all the words creatures we humans are the most capable of changing our behavior through learning.

Types of learning

 

Greek philosopher Aristotle concluded that we learn by Association. Our mind naturally connects events that occur in sequence; we associate them. Simple animal can learn simple association. More Complex animals can teach more complex associations, especially those that bring favorable consequences.  Very complex animals, like chimpanzees, can learn behavior by merely observing other perform them.

Will human can learn by all these ways; and through language, we can learn thing we have neither experienced nor observed. It includes learning of moral ideas, self concept, depth perception etc

Learning can be following types.  These all are also considered as method of learning.

1. Learning by Observation
2. Learning by Cognition/Insight
3. Learning by Trial and Error
4. Learning by Conditioning

Humans and animals utilize these methods according to the needs and their capacity. Most often, we apply I more than one method at a time.