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Samenvatting Human Learning
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Comprehensive summary of 'Human Learning' describing all the key aspects you need for the Learning and Cognition exam.
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Samenvatting Leren en Cognitie, Literatuur 'Human Learning' + samenvatting hoorcolleges (eigen cijfer 7)
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Samenvatting Human Learning, Global Edition, ISBN: 9781292104386 Leren En Cognitie
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Chapter 1 Learning: definition, principles, and theoriesThe importance of learning
The ability to acquire a large body of knowledge and a wide variety of behaviors allows the
human race a greater degree of flexibility and adaptability than is true for any other species
on the planet. Because so little of our behavior is instinctive and so much of it is learned,
we’re able to benefit from our experiences.
Human beings seem to inherit an ability to think and learn in ways that nonhumans cannot.
The particular environment in which we live has a huge impact on the knowledge and skills
we do and don’t acquire, of course, but our capacity to be versatile and adapt to many
different situations and environments far exceeds that of other animal species.
Defining learning
Learning is the means through which we acquire not only skills and knowledge, but also
values, attitudes, and emotional reactions. We’ll define learning as a long-term change in
mental representations or associations as a result of experience. Let’s divide this definition
into its three parts. First, learning is a long-term change: it isn’t just brief, transitory use of
information, but it doesn’t necessarily last forever. Second, learning involves mental
representations or associations and so presumably has its basis in the brain. Third, learning
is a change as a result of experience, rather than the result of physiological maturation,
fatigue, use of alcohol or drugs, or onset of mental illness or dementia.
Sometimes learning is a very passive process: it happens simply by virtue of something
happening to a learner. More often, however, it requires the learner to do something -
something physical, something mental, or, ideally, something both physical and mental.
Determining when learning has occured
Many psychologists would agree with the definition of learning just presented. However,
some would prefer that the focus be on changes in behavior rather than on changes in
mental representations or associations. In fact, regardless of how we define learning, we
know it has occurred only when we actually see it reflected in a person’s behavior.
Types of learning research
Although psychologists may differ in their view of how best to define learning and determine
when it has occurred, virtually all of them agree on one point: they can best understand the
nature of learning by studying it objectively and systemically through research. When
studying the nature of human learning, some psychologists conduct basic research: they
investigate specific learning processes under tightly controlled conditions, often looking at
people’s responses to contrived learning experiences in a laboratory. Others conduct applied
research: they investigate people’s learning in more ‘real-world’ tasks and settings.
The kinds of data collected vary from study to study as well. In some instances the data
collected are quantitative, taking the form of measurements and other numbers. In other
cases the data are qualitative, in that they’re complex verbal or behavioral performances that
a researcher must closely inspect and then judge for the presence or absence of specific
contents or skills.
Learning principles and theories
Consistent patterns in research findings have led psychologists to make generalizations
,about learning processes through the formulation of both principles and theories of learning.
Principles of learning identify certain factors that influence learning and describe the specific
effects these factors have. Principles are most useful when they can be applied to many
different situations. When a principle is observed over and over again, it is sometimes called
a law. Theories of learning provide explanations about the underlying mechanisms involved
in learning. Whereas principles tell us what factors are important for learning, theories tell us
why these factors are important.
Principles of learning tend to be fairly stable over time: researchers observe many of the
same factors affecting learning over and over again. In contrast, theories of learning
continue to change as new research methods are developed, new research is conducted,
and new research findings come to light.
How theories of learning have evolved over time
When psychologists first began to study learning in earnest in the late 1800s, the two
dominant perspectives in psychology were structuralism and functionalism. Although these
two perspectives differed considerably in their underlying assumptions and topics of study,
they shared a common weakness: they lacked a precise, carefully defined research
methodology. The primary means of investigating learning and other psychological
phenomena, especially for structuralists, was a method called introspection: people were
asked to ‘look’ inside their heads and describe what they were thinking.
In the early 1900s, some psychologists began to criticize the introspective approach for its
subjectivity and lack of scientific rigor. They proposed that to study learning in an objective,
scientific manner, theorists must focus on two things that can be observed and objectively
measured: people’s behaviors (responses) and the environmental events (stimuli) that
precede and follow responses. Since then, many psychologists have attempted to describe
and understand learning and behavior primarily through an analysis of stimulus-response
relationships. Such psychologists are called behaviorists.
The behaviorist perspective has contributed immensely to our understanding of how people
learn and how instructional and therapeutic environments might help them learn and behave
more effectively. Over the years, however, its limitations have become apparent. For
example, early behaviorists believed that learning can occur only when learners actually
behave in some way. But in the 1940s, some psychologists proposed that people can also
learn a new behavior simply by watching and imitating what other people do. This idea of
modeling provided the impetus for an alternative perspective, social learning theory, that
focused on how people learn from observing those around them.
Behaviorism and social learning theory developed largely in North America. Meanwhile,
many early-twentieth-century researchers in Europe took an entirely different tack,
presenting situations and tasks that might reveal the nature of people’s internal mental
processes, such as Piaget, Vygotsky and Gestalt psychologists.
Over time it became clear that a study of behavior alone couldn’t give us a complete picture
of learning, but that we had to take human thought processes, or cognition, into account as
well. A very different perspective emerged, one known as cognitive psychology or
cognitivism. Social learning theorists, too, gradually incorporated cognitive processes into
their explanations of learning, resulting in a perspective now more often referred to as social
cognitive theory.
Advantages of theories
Certainly the changeable nature of theories can be frustrating, in that we can never be
confident that we have the ultimate truth on how people learn. Yet it’s precisely the dynamic
nature of learning theories that enables us to gain increasingly accurate understandings of a
,very complex, multifaceted phenomenon.
Theories have several advantages over principles. First, they allow us to summarize the
results of many, many research studies and integrate numerous principles of learning. In that
sense, theories are often quite concise. Second, theories provide starting points for
conducting new research; they suggest research questions worthy of study. Third, theories
help us make sense of and explain research findings. Research conducted outside the
context of a particular theoretical perspective can yield results that are trivial and non
generalizable. Interpreted from a theoretical perspective, however, those same results can
be quite meaningful.
Theories have a fourth advantage as well: by giving us ideas about the mechanisms that
underlie human learning and performance, they can ultimately help us design instructional
and therapeutic strategies and environments that facilitate human learning and development
to the greatest possible degree.
Potential drawbacks of theories
Despite their advantages, theories also have two potential drawbacks. First, no single theory
explains everything researchers have discovered about learning. Current theories of learning
tend to focus only on certain aspects of learning. Theorists who adhere to a particular
perspective are apt to either ignore or discredit phenomena that don’t fit comfortably within it.
Second, theories affect the new information that’s published, thereby biasing the knowledge
we have about learning. In this way, theories may occasionally impede progress toward truly
accurate understandings of learning.
Applying knowledge about learning to instructional practices
A great deal of learning takes place in classroom contexts, and most of it is beneficial.
Unfortunately, children may also learn things at school that aren’t in their best interests over
the long run. For instance, although they may learn to read, they may also learn that the
‘best’ way to remember what they read is to memorize it, word for word, without necessarily
trying to understand it.
With human beings so dependent on their environment to acquire the knowledge and skills
they’ll need in order to become productive members of society, the learning that takes place
in educational institutions cannot be left to chance. To maximize productive student learning,
teachers must understand the factors that influence learning (principles) and the processes
that underlie it (theories). They must also draw on research findings regarding the
effectiveness of various instructional practices.
Chapter 3 Behaviorism
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS IN BEHAVIORISM
Early research on learning relied heavily on introspection, but in the early 1900s, some
psychologists argued that such self-reflections were highly subjective and not necessarily
accurate. Beginning with the efforts of the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov and the
, American psychologist Edward Thorndike, a more objective approach to the study of
learning emerged. These researchers looked primarily at behavior - something they could
easily see and objectively describe and measure - and so the behaviorist movement was
born.
Behaviorists haven’t always agreed on the specific processes that account for learning, yet
many of them have historically shared certain basic assumptions.
● Equipotentiality: principles of learning should apply equally to different behaviors and
to a variety of animal species.
● Learning processes can be studied most objectively when the focus of study is on
stimuli and responses.
● Black box perspective: internal processes tend to be excluded or minimized in
theoretical explanations, because we can’t directly observe and measure them.
● Learning involves a behavior change.
● Organisms are blank slates; they aren’t born with predispositions to behave in
particular ways, but learn everything through experience.
● Learning is largely the result of environmental events.
Some early behaviorists, such as Skinner, were determinists: they proposed that if
we were to have complete knowledge of an organism’s inherited behaviors, past
experiences, and present environmental circumstances, we would be able to predict
the organism’s next response with 100% accuracy. More recently, most behaviorists
have rejected the idea of complete determinism. In their view, any organism’s
behavior reflects a certain degree of variability that genetic heritage and stimulus-
response associations alone can’t explain.
● The most useful theories tend to be parsimonious ones.
According to behaviorists, we should explain the learning of all behaviors by as few
learning principles as possible.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
In the early 1900s, Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov conducted a series of experiments with
dogs to determine how salivation contributes to the digestion of food. He noticed that after a
few experiences, a dog would begin to salivate as soon as the lab assistant came into the
room, even though it hadn’t yet had an opportunity to see or smell any meat. Apparently, the
dog had learned that the lab assistant’s entrance meant that food was on the way, and it
responded accordingly. Pavlov devoted his later years to a systematic study of this learning
process and summarized his research in his book Conditioned Reflexes.
The phenomenon Pavlov observed is now commonly known as classical conditioning. There
are three steps in Pavlov’s experiment:
1. A neutral stimulus (NS), a stimulus to which the organism doesn’t respond in any
noticeable way, is identified.
2. The neutral stimulus is presented just before another stimulus which does lead to a
response. This second stimulus is called an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), and the
response to it is called an unconditioned response (UCR).
3. After being paired with an unconditioned stimulus, the previously neutral stimulus
now elicits a response and thus is no longer ‘neutral’. The NS has become a
conditioned stimulus (CS) to which the organism has learned a conditioned response
(CR).
Classical conditioning is most likely to occur when the conditioned stimulus is presented just
before the unconditioned stimulus. For this reason, some psychologists describe classical
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