WHAT IS LEARNING
This is continuous intake of knowledge, ideas, information and skills which shape our actions, habits, styles of personality, even our likes and dislikes. It is a key process in human behavior. Learning can be defined as any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience or practice. The term "behavior " in this definition means that for there to be learning, a change in an individual's thought processes or attitude must be accompanied by a change in behavior. Thus, the basic elements of learning are
1. Change of behavior.
2. Change occurring experience or practice.
3. Relative permanent of change of behavior.
FORM OF LEARNING
1. HABITUATION: This is usually defined as a decrease in the strength of response as a result of repeated stimulation. Habituation therefore can and usually does consist of presenting one stimulus again and again until the response that usually occurred to it weakens and eventually disappears entirely. The best example is everyday human experience involves our sense of smell, which habituate more easily than most of our other senses.
2. SENSITIZATION: it is an increase in response as a result of repeated stimulation.
3. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: It is a situation of specific reaction when something happens.
The theory of classical conditioning was as a result of experiments conducted by a Russian physiologist,
Ivan Pavlov.
The experiments were primarily aimed at determining the degree of salivation of a dog when the sound of a bell is followed by presentation of food.
It should be stressed, however, that this form represents an insignificant part of total human learning.
4. OPERANT CONDITIONING: It is a learned or voluntary behavior and it is determined, maintained and controlled by it's consequences. It suggests that individuals emit(I.e show/send out) responses that are rewarded and will not emit responses that are either not rewarded or are punished.
FACTORS AFFECTING EFFECTIVE LEARNING
1. Inhibitions _these are divided into two:
(a) Retroactive Inhibition: A previously learnt experience on a material disrupting the recall of a newly learnt material.
(b) Proactive Inhibition: A material exposed to later learning may affect the recall of a previously learnt material.
2. Forgetting: A temporary or permanent loss of a previously learnt material.
3. Intelligence Quotient (IQ): People with higher IQ are able to learn better than those with low IQ.
4. Distraction: Disturbance (e.g noise ) in the environment have negative effect on learning.
5. Individual Differences: Inbuilt factors in a learner may affect learning. While some are fast learners, others learn slowly.
RECALL
This is the ability to retain what was previously learn and bring it back from memory.
FACTORS THAT DETERMINE RECALL
1. Nature of material learnt: Some material are simple and can easily be recall while some are complex and difficult to retain.
2. Attention: The time given to sorting and selecting information determine is recall
3. Practice: Practice makes for perfection. It is achieved by learning a material repeatedly or being exposed repeatedly to an experience until recall is automatic.
4. Interest: Apathy against learning material will negatively affect its retention.
5. Memory: Intelligence Quotient (IQ ) of individual affect the ability to store and retrieve information from memory
6. Organization Of Learned Material: Learning is not a planless task. The brain has its perceptual processes, which are based on certain rules of organization of information in the memory bank.
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