Psychology - Learning and Learning Theories owned by: Gayatgay, G>M

1. LEARNING
AND
THEORIES OF
LEARNING

2. Factors Influencing Learning
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✦ Background
experiences
✦ Length of the
working period
✦ Massed and
distributed
learning
✦ Motivation
✦ Maturation
✦ Health
condition of the
learner
✦ Psychological
wellbeing of the
learner
✦ Good working
conditions

3. Behavioral Theory of Learning
✦ learning occurs as a result of stimulus-response
associations
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Two Major Behavioral Theories of Learning:
✦ Classical conditioning
✦ Operant conditioning

4. Classical
Conditioning
by Ivan Pavlov
✦ Refers to learning that
occurs when a neutral
stimulus (e.g., tone)
becomes associated with a
stimulus (e.g., food ) that
naturally produces a
behavior.

5. Basics of Classical Conditioning
✦ Neutral stimulus: A stimulus that, before conditioning, does not
naturally bring about the response of interest.
✦ Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that naturally brings about a
particular response without having been learned.
✦ Unconditioned response (UCR): A response that is natural and needs
no training (e.g., salivation at the smell of food).
✦ Conditioned stimulus (CS): A once neutral stimulus that has been
paired with an unconditioned stimulus to bring about a response
formerly caused only by the unconditioned stimulus
✦ Conditioned response (CR): A response that, after conditioning,
follows a previously neutral stimulus (e.g., salivation at the ringing of a
bell) 5

6. “
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7. Operant
Conditioning
by B.F Skinner
✦ learning in which a
voluntary response is
strengthened or weakened,
depending on its favorable
or unfavorable
consequences.

8. Skinner developed terms that explained the processes of operant
learning :
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✦ Reinforcement- refer to any event that strengthens or increases the
likelihood of a behavior;
✦ Punishment- refer to any event that weakens or decreases the likelihood
of a behavior;
✦ Positive Reinforcement- strengthens a response by presenting
something pleasant after a response and;
✦ Negative Reinforcement- strengthens a response by reducing or
removing something unpleasant.
✦ Positive Punishment- weakens a response by presenting something
unpleasant after the response whereas;
✦ Negative Punishment- weakens a response by reducing or removing
something pleasant.

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10. Social Learning Theory
by Albert Bandura
✦ a major part of human
learning consists of
observational learning,
which is learning by
watching the behavior of
another person, or model.

11. Three Forms of Reinforcement that can encourage
observational learning:
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✦ Direct reinforcement- reproduce the
behaviors of the model;
✦ Vicarious reinforcement-the
reinforcement need not be direct
✦ Self-reinforcement- controlling
reinforcers

12. Cognitive Learning
Theory
✦ uses metacognition—“thinking about
thinking”—to understand how thought
processes influence learning. It's often
contrasted against—or complemented
by—Behavioral Learning Theory,
which focuses on the outside
environment's influences on learning.

13. Cognitive learning may take two forms:
1. Latent Learning – Latent means hidden and thus latent
learning is learning that occurs but is not evident in behavior
until later, when conditions for its appearance are favorable.
2. Insight Learning - It is a cognitive process whereby we
reorganize our perception of a problem. It doesn‘t depend
on conditioning of particular behaviors for its occurrence.
Sometimes, for example, people even wake up from sleep
with a solution to a problem that they had not been able to
solve during the day.
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14. That is all for Learning and
Learning Theories. 14