MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGY

1. LEARNING
BY M R J O N E S H . M - M B A
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2. DEFINITION
• It is a relatively permanent change that is
brought about by experience. or
• It is a process by which perception and
behavior are modified by experience.
• This means that as we interact with our
environment we encounter a lot of learning
experiences.
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3. DEFINITION CONT
• In psychology and education, a common
definition of learning is a process that brings
together cognitive, emotional, and
environmental influences and experiences for
acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in
one's knowledge, skills, values, and world
views (Illeris,2000; Ormorod, 1995).
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4. FORMS OF LEARNING
• There are various forms of learning i.e.;
• Conditioning,
• Trial and error,
• Cognitive,
• Observation and
• modeling
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5. CONDITIONING
• This is the way in which an events, stimuli and behaviour
become associated with one another.
• Works done by Pavlov Ivan a Russian psychologist used meat
powder and a bell.
• The dogs associated sound of a bell with meat powder.
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6. TRIAL AND ERROR
• This is learning that happens by trying something and learning
from the outcomes.
• When a child touches fire and is burnt, she may associate the
fire with pain.
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7. COGNITIVE LEARNING
• This type of learning looks at what happens to the learner with
regard to the mental Processes
• The learner is viewed as an active participant in her learning
process
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8. OBSERVATION
• This is the type of learning that happen by observing and then
modeling the activity he/she observed.
• The instructor may demonstrate a procedure and ask a student
to give a return demonstration
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9. MODELING
• This means practicing the observed activities. Or mimicking
what was observed.
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10. INTRODUCTION TO
LEARNING THEORIES
• A learning theory is an attempt to describe how people and
animals learn, thereby helping us understand the inherently
complex process of learning.
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11. INTRODUCTION TO
LEARNING THEORIES CONT
• There are three main categories or philosophical frameworks
under which learning theories fall:
behaviorism,
cognitivism, and
constructivism.
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12. INTRODUCTION TO
LEARNING THEORIES
• Behaviorism focuses only on the objectively
observable aspects of learning.
• Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to
explain brain-based learning.
• And constructivism views learning as a
process in which the learner actively
constructs or builds new ideas or concepts.
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13. BEHAVIORISM
• In essence, three basic assumptions are held to be true.
First, learning is manifested by a change in behavior.
Second, the environment shapes behavior.
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14. BEHAVIORISM CONT
And third, the principles of contiguity (how close in time, two
events must be for a bond to be formed ) and reinforcement
(any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be
repeated ) are central to explaining the learning process.
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15. BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF
LEARNING
• Ivan Pavlov a Russian psychologist is one of the examples of
behavioral psychologists, who used biological principles.
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16. BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF
LEARNING CONT
• He wanted to see if a dog can even salivate to the sound of a
bell with out meat powder.
• He got meat powder( unconditioned stimuli) which will give rise
to the unconditioned response.
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17. IVAN PAVLOV CONT
• He paired a bell sound with meat powder
• Each time he rung the bell he gave the dog
meat powder ant the dog started associating
the sound of the bell with availability of meat
powder and it started salivating.
• Next he rung the bell and did not pair it with
meat powder but the dog salivated, because
it was conditioned
• He called this classic conditioning
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18. IVAN PAVLOV CONT
• The sound gave a conditioned response.
• From this experience Pavlov came up with what
he referred to as;
• Stimulus generalization; he found that the dog
later salivated not only to the sound of the bell
but to other similar sounds.
• He also discovered that the more different the
stimulus is to the original one the less the
response.
• He called this “stimulus discrimination”
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19. IVAN PAVLOV CONT
• He also discovered that as he continued the bell alone without
the meat powder, the dog’s response to the bell died out or
became extinct.
• He called this ‘Stimulus extinction’
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20. IVAN PAVLOV CONT
• Later on when he again started pairing the bell with the meat
powder the lost condition response of salivation due to non
reinforcement was recovered.
• He called this spontaneous recovery.
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21. IVAN PAVLOV CONT
• From Pavlov experiment we can learn that:
• Reinforcement is important in learning in
order to sustain a desired behavior.
• Failure to give positive reinforcement will
result in extinction of the conditioned
response.
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22. JOHN WATSON
• This is yet another behavioral psychologist who worked on
conditioning in the U.S.A..
• He was concerned with how humans can learn to fear certain
things.
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23. JOHN WATSON CONT
• He used a human being called little Albert (Little Albert was
taken because he did not fear rabbits. The only thing little
Albert feared was loud sound.
• He wanted to see if little Albert can learn to fear rabbits
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24. JOHN WATSON CONT
• What Watson did was that each time he presented a natural
stimulus (rabbit) it was immediately followed by loud sound.
• This continued for a while until Little Albert started associating
the sight of a rabbit with loud noise.
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25. JOHN WATSON CONT
• Albert started fearing rabbits
• However apart from fearing rabbit little Albert also spread the
fear to anything woolen material.(Stimulus generalization)
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26. JOHN WATSON CONT
• The less similar the material or substance was
from the rabbit the less Albert feared.
• Vicarious conditioning of fear: This is the
association of the experience with a bad
thing, e.g. if a child is injected by the nurse in
a white uniform he/she may start associating
the white uniform with painful injections.
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27. JOHN WATSON CONT
• In teaching it is important that the student is
taken well so that they develop a positive
attitude towards you and the may enjoy the
learning experience.
• The same is the case for the nurse and how
he/she treats the patients or clients.
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28. B.F SKINNER
• He agreed with Pavlov to a large extent but said the approach
taken by Pavlov was limited to biological principles.
• He came up with “operant conditioning”
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29. B.F SKINNER CONT
• He stressed the importance of reinforcement.
• He divided reinforcement into two (2) i.e.
• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement
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30. B.F SKINNER CONT
• Positive reinforcement: Here the
consequence following a behavior a
presented in order to encourage the
behavior, e.g. if the child passes an exam the
mother buy it a present this will motivate the
child to even pass more.
• For the nurse if the patient does something
that indicate compliance to treatment praise
him in order to promote this sort of behavior.
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31. B.F SKINNER CONT
• Negative reinforcement: Here the consequence that follow a
behavior are removed to strengthen good behavior and
discourage bad one, e.g. If the child fails to clean her room the
mother will nag her until she start cleaning the room.
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32. B.F SKINNER CONT
• The child will start cleaning the room in order to avoid being
nagged by the mother.
• Something bad is remove in order to promote good behavior
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33. B.F SKINNER CONT
• Skinner said there are times when you have to
teach complex behavior bit by bit
• This is what he called shaping
• He said identify something positive in the
child and encourage it
• Slight improvement in behavior should be
rewarded if the child is to exhibit positive
behavior.
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34. EDWARD THORNDIKE( TRIAL
AND ERROR)
He attempted to explain that trial and error
can result in learning.
oHe did an experiment he called the “positive
box”
oHe put an hungry cat in the box with a lever
in it if pressed the lever would lead to more
food dropping in the box
oAs a result of this he came up with 3 laws
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35. EDWARD THORNDIKE (
TRIAL AND ERROR) CONT
Law of effects: It say when a connection is made between a
stimulus and a response.If it is followed by satisfying state of
affairs the connection is strengthened. One the other hand if it
is followed by the annoying state of affairs the connection is
weakened
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36. EDWARD THORNDIKE ( TRIAL
AND ERROR) CONT
Law of exercise :It stipulates that the connection is
strengthened with use and weakened with disuse. The use
referred to here involves rewards. Practice without rewards is
useless.
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37. EDWARD THORNDIKE (
TRIAL AND ERROR) CONT
Law of readiness: It says that in order for any learning to take
place the learner must be ready.
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38. COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORY
• This theory looks at what happen to the learner with regards to
mental processes.
• It views the learner as the active participant in the learning
processes.
• Kohler did an experiment to try and understand how the human
mind is involved in learning.
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39. COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORY CONT
• He used a chimpanzee in the cage and hanged a banana on the
roof
• Additionally he put a box horizontally so that when it stood on
it couldn’t reach the banana but if it is vertically positioned the
Chimp could reach the banana
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40. COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORY CONT
• After some time the Chimp was able to figure out this and got
the banana.
• The chimp perceived the situation, identified the problem, the
formed the actual horizontal insight and applied the insight to
solve the problem
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41. COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORY CONT
• Later he change the arrangement by putting
the banana outside the cage and replace the
box with a stick which was in two segments.
• If joined the stick could reach the banana and
manage to get it.
• The chimp was also able to figure this out .
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42. COGNITIVE LEARNING
THEORY CONT
• To him this indicated that the human mind is active in problem
solving as well as learning.
• He later concluded that there are mental processes involve to
enable the chimp figure out how to solve the problem.
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43. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGIST
• This group of psychologist argue that learning is made easier by
putting things in a whole pattern
• They say that pattern gives meaning to things.
• Gestalt means pattern.
• Meaning is attached to something on the basis of our past
experiences
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44. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGIST
CONT
• This is yet another group of cognitive psychologist
• The came up with the law of perception
• They said that when confronted with the disorganized
perceptual field the first reaction is to try and impose order on
it.
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45. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGIST
CONT
• The laws they came up with are;
Law of similarity
Law of proximity
Law of continuity
Law of closure
Law of membership
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46. CONSTRUCTIVISM
• Constructivism views learning as a process in
which the learner actively constructs or builds
new ideas or concepts based upon current
and past knowledge or experience.
• In other words, "learning involves
constructing one's own knowledge from
one's own experiences."
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47. CONSTRUCTIVISM CONT
• Constructivist learning, therefore, is a very
personal endeavor, whereby internalized
concepts, rules, and general principles may
consequently be applied in a practical real-
world context.
• This is also known as social constructivism .
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48. CONSTRUCTIVISM CONT
• Social constructivists posit that knowledge is constructed when
individuals engage socially in talk and activity about shared
problems or tasks.
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49. CONSTRUCTIVISM CONT
• Learning is seen as the process by which
individuals are introduced to a culture by
more skilled members"(Driver et al., 1994)
• Constructivism itself has many variations,
such as Active learning, discovery learning,
and knowledge building.
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50. CONSTRUCTIVISM CONT
• Regardless of the variety, constructivism promotes a student's
free exploration within a given framework or structure.
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51. CONSTRUCTIVISM CONT
• The teacher acts as a facilitator who
encourages students to discover principles for
themselves and to construct knowledge by
working to solve realistic problems.
• Aspects of constructivism can be found in
self-directed learning, problem based
learning, transformational
learning,experiential learning, situated
cognition, and reflective practice.
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52. OTHER THEORIST OF
LEARNING
o Humanist theorist of learning like;
Maslow
Arthar combs and
Carl Rodgers
NOTE: Read about them in your own time
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53. MEMORY
• It is the retention and ability to recall information, personal
experiences and procedures
• The human mind works like a computer it encodes information,
store information and retrieves information.
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54. MEMORY CONT
• Our lives a centered around memory
• We are able to communicate with others because we are able to
remember them and the word to use.
• Memory processes a mainly located in the in the frontal lobe.
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55. STAGES OF MEMORY
• Psychologist distinguish the three stage of memory:
Encoding: getting information into the memory.
Storage: maintaining the of the stored information
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56. ENCODING
• This is the process by which the information is received int
storage.
• Usually the information does not get encoded unless there is
direct attention to it.
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57. ENCODING CONT
• Therefore if we do not make a conscious effort the information
may not be encoded as a result it can’t be stored or processed
further.
• You receive a lot of information from the surrounding e.g. visual
audio etc. This will compete for attention
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58. ENCODING CONT
• You therefore select what is important and
what is not.
• This is called ‘selective attention’ and
‘selective extraction’
• Selective attention is the ability to choose
among various inputs
• Selective extraction involves locating
outstanding characteristics of incoming
information
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59. STORAGE
• In order for the encoded information to be used later it must be
store in the brain.
• It must register for future use the stored input is what is called
memory.
• There are two types of memory ie Short term and long term
memory
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60. RETRIEVAL
• The stored information is useless unless it can be retrieved from
memory.
• Retrieval is the process of receiving information laid down in
memory.
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61. RETRIEVAL CONT
• Although you have learned something and laid it down in the
storage, something may go wrong and we may fail to retrieve
the information, however if you successfully recall information
then the memory process of encoding, storage and retrieval of
information is successful
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62. TYPES OF MEMORY
• Short term memory: The first part of memory
is the sensory register of a combination of
sensation that affect our perception.
• Selective attention will determine what sort of
information move to the S.T.M. other books
call the short term memory (S.T.M.) the
working Memory.
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63. TYPES OF MEMORY CONT
• The STM does not have a big capacity as we
can only keep 5-9 items at a time.
• However human being have the capacity to
store than 5-9 through the use of ‘ chunking
of information’
• Chunking is used to expand the capacity of
the STM by putting items in categories
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64. TYPES OF MEMORY CONT
(STM)
• The information in short term memory is very
vulnerable to forgetting.
• To ensure that we don’t forget the we have to
subject the information to rehearsal ,this
process is called ‘maintenance rehearsal’. This
will keep the information for a while before it
is sent to the long term memory.
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65. LONG TERM MEMORY
• This where information is store fore a relatively permanent
period.
• However if it is not used often it decays or moves out.
• To store information in LTM you need to use ‘Elaborate
rehearsal’
• This involve relating the old and new subject.
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66. LONG TERM MEMORY CONT
• To make items go into long term memory
there is need to emphasize on the meaning of
the information, so that you understand
• The other thing you need to do is to put
related information together in an organized
manner.
• If you put this information together or in an
organized manner it is easy to remember.
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67. LONG TERM MEMORY CONT
• Some scholar argue that if the information is
properly stored in the LTM it stays
permanently.
• However if the information is nit used it
decays making retrieval difficulty
• This is because it decays leaving only the
remnants of beats and pieces of the
information, when met the second time.
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68. LONG TERM MEMORY CONT
• Therefore the way you store the information
i.e. conceptualized will determine how we are
going to retrieve it.
• If it is stored properly all you need to do is
spread the activation and the rest fall into
place.
• This is what is called imformation processing
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69. IMPLICATION OF TYPES OF
MEMORY TO THE TEACHER
• The educator must always capture the
attention of the learners
• Draw the attention to the core business of
what you are teaching to you audience
• Present the information in a connected
manner, move from the known to the
unknown
• Give room for repeatition
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70. IMPLICATION OF TYPES OF
MEMORY TO THE TEACHER
• You should have a patter of what you are teaching.
• You have to encourage the learner to focus on the meaning
than to rote learn.
• Allow them to paraphrase.
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71. CAUSES OF MEMORY
FAILURE (FORGETTING)
• Time lag between input and stimulus
• Retrieval failure; having no enough information to enable
retrieval.
• Interference during encoding ie the conflict between new and
old information stored.
• Disuse of information resulting in decay of the information.
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72. FACTORS THAT PROMOTE
LEARNING
• Conducive environment.: The environment should be quiet
enough and free fro other disruptions.
• Voice clarity: The teacher’s voice should be clear in order to
promote learning.
• Readiness: The learners must be ready to learn
• Active participation by the learners
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