Learning

6 Pages 1594 Words

Learning
Learning is the acquiring of knowledge or the developing of the ability to perform new behaviors. It is common to think of learning as something that takes place in school, such as being enrolled in Dr. Kaplan’s psychology class, but much of human learning occurs outside the classroom.
We learn throughout our lives and this affects almost everything we do. The study of learning is important in many different fields. Teachers need to understand the best ways to educate children. Psychologists and other human-service workers need to understand how certain experiences change people’s behaviors. Employers, politicians, and advertisers make use of the principles of learning to influence the behavior of workers, voters, and consumers: advertisers can make a person believe anything given enough time!
Learning relates closely to memory, which is the storage of information in the brain. Psychologists who study memory are interested in how the brain stores knowledge, where this storage takes place, and how the brain later retrieves knowledge when we need it. In contrast, psychologists who study learning are more interested in behavior and how behavior changes because of a person’s experiences.
There are many forms of learning, ranging from simple to complex. Simple forms of learning involve a single stimulus. A stimulus is anything perceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. In a form of learning known as classical conditioning, people learn to associate two stimuli that occur in sequence, such as lightning followed by thunder. In operant conditioning, people learn by forming an association between a behavior and its consequences (reward or punishment). People and animals can also learn by watching; that is, by watching others perform behaviors. Some complex forms of learning include learning languages, concepts, and motor skills.
Habituation, one of the simplest types of learning, is the tendenc...