The document discusses the nature, factors, and theories of learning, emphasizing that learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from experience. It explores various theories such as classical conditioning, operant conditioning, cognitive learning, and observational learning, highlighting their mechanisms and processes involved. Additionally, the text covers the importance of reinforcement in learning, identifying different types of reinforcement and their effects on behavior.

1. Learning

2. Learning
 A relatively permanent change in behaviour
occurring as a result of experience

3. Nature of Learning
 Learning involves a change in behaviour.
 Behavioural change must be relatively
permanent.
 Change in behaviour should occur as a result
of experience, practice or training.
 Practice or experience must be reinforced in
order for learning to occur.

4. Factors affecting learning
 Motivation
 Mental set
 Nature of learning materials
 Practice
 Environment

5. Theories of Learning
 Classical conditioning
 Operant conditioning
 Social learning theory
 Cognitive theory

6. Classical Conditioning (S-R Learning)
 States that behaviour is learned by repetitive
association between a stimulus and a
response.
 When an individual starts responding to a
stimulus in a manner that was not originally
present.
 Occurs when the stimulus gets associated
(through pairing) with another stimulus to
which the response was originally present

7. Classical Conditioning
 Unconditioned Stimulus (US): the stimulus which
originally elicits the response
 Unconditioned Response (UR): the natural response to
the US
 Conditioned Stimulus (CS): the stimulus which acquires
the properties of the US through association
 Conditioned Response (CR): the learnt response (which
is similar to the UR) to the CS

8. Classical Conditioning: based on
Pavlov Experiment on Dog
Before Conditioning
CS(Bell) No Response
US(Meat) UR( Salivation)
During Conditioning
CS(Bell)
US(Meat) UR( Salivation)
After Conditioning
CS(Bell) CR( Salivation)

9. Operant Conditioning (R-S Learning)
 Based on the premise that people learn to
behave to obtain something they want or
avoid something they do not want.
 Behaviour is brought about by controlling the
consequences of the behaviour through
rewards or punishment, i.e., by making
certain outcomes contingent on the behaviour
 People emit responses that are rewarded and
will not emit responses that are either not
rewarded or punished.

10. Cognitive learning (S-S Learning)
 Cognition refers to an individual’s ideas,
thoughts, knowledge, interpretations ,
understandings etc.
 Learning is considered to be the outcome of
deliberate thinking about a problem or
situation both intuitively and based on known
facts and responding in an objective and goal
oriented way

11. Cognitive learning: based on Tolmon
experiment on rats
 Tolmon trained a rat to turn right to get the food.
 But once he started the rat from the opposite
direction
 Surprisingly rat instead of moving right, turned
towards where the food had been placed.
 At last Tolman concluded that the rat formed a
cognitive map to figure out how to get the food.
So reinforcement was not a precondition for
learning to take place.

12. Observational Learning
 Learning in which people acquire new
behaviours by observing others – also called
modelling
 Involves vicarious reinforcement, i.e.,
observing the rewards and punishments
given to others for the behaviour in question

13. Processes of Modelling
 Attention to the model
 Retention of the model’s behaviour
 Reproduction of the model’s behaviour
 Reinforcement of the modelled behaviour

14. Reinforcement
 Reinforcement can be defined as anything
that both increases the strength of the
response and tends to induce repetitions of
the behaviour that preceded the
reinforcement. Reinforcement plays a
important role in learning.

15. Types of Reinforcement
 Positive Reinforcement: process by which people learn a
behaviour that leads to the presentation of desired
outcomes
 Negative Reinforcement: process by which people learn
a behaviour that leads to the removal of undesirable
events
 Punishment: process by which a behaviour can be
reduced by following it with undesirable consequences
 Extinction: process by which behaviours that are no
longer reinforced tend to gradually diminish

16. Training
 The process through which people
systematically acquire and improve the skills
and knowledge needed to better their job
performance
 Used to prepare new employees as well as to
refine the skills of existing employees