FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LEARNING OF

YOUNG LEARNERS
Learning depends on mental age.
Maturation means mental ability or maturity,
social maturity and psychological readiness. For
example,the development of physical factors like
sensory and reacting mechanisms.
Before learning takes place, the sensory motor
and nervous structure should reach a certain
level of maturity.
Maturation of both muscles and brain are
necessary in any skill learning situation.
Deterioration of muscular coordination and
cerebral cortex tissues in old age brings
deterioration in skill learning abilities, says
some psychologist.
Maturation is a natural development of the
nervous system and other structures which
makes one ready and able to engage in a
particular activity, whereas learning involves
the modification of existing patterns of
response.
Normal development prepares one, for the
neuromuscular systems, for making certain
responses.

Motivation leads to attain objectives and goals.
Mental and bodily physical activities are
dominated by interests. It has been found that
our feelings in the form of attitudes, interests and
aspirations have a vital relationship to learning.
Timely and methodological motivation affect
improvement in achievement as it increases the
ability of trainees.
We learn more effectively when we have the
gratification provided by knowledge of
reasonable success in our efforts.
Positive incentives help in the furtherance of
learning while negative incentives has a
retarding effect.
Favourable learning conditions are created by
means of rewards (praising, appreciating,
awards, scholarship, etc.)
Punishments like fines and scolding lead to
diminishing learning process.

Learning process is affected by observation.
An individual observes process, behavior and phenomena
and later copy them in his own way.
Thus skill and knowledge are developed by conscious and
sometimes unconscious observation.
Children learn and acquire habits by observation.
Keen observation leads to better comprehension and
understanding.
Consequently this enables better formulation and
visualisation of goals and better visualisation leads to
development of insight, which is directed towards
achievement of required skills and knowledge.
At the very early childhood, an infant learns
through observation, by observing objects and
events through vision, hearing and other senses.
Experiences gained through the different senses
are correlated and the learning through
perception occurs.
Perception tends inevitably to lead to the
formation of concepts. But our perceptual
capacity is limited.
We do not become aware of everything within
the range of our senses, but only of those things
or a part of those things, to which our attention is
directed.
Attention plays an important role in the education, and
training process.
Without attention, one cannot observe or perceive.
Attention was associated earlier with will, judgment,
reasoning etc.
But attention is a selective activity of our
consciousness.
Attention is not a power of the mind. It is not static. It
fluctuates from one object to another, quickly.
It is very difficult to prevent such fluctuations.
Only one thing will remain in the conscious mind and
all other inattentive activities in the subconscious
mind.
Unconscious activities cannot be recalled at will.
Memory and learning are so closely connected that
people often confuse them with each other. But the
specialists who study them consider them two distinct
phenomena.
These specialists define learning as a process that will
modify a subsequent behaviour.
Memory, on the other hand, is the ability to remember
past experiences. You learn a new language by studying
it, but you then speak it by using your memory to
retrieve the words that you have learned.
Memory is essential to all learning, because it lets you
store and retrieve the information that you learn.
Memory is basically nothing more than the
record left by a learning process.Thus,
memory depends on learning.
But learning also depends on memory,
because the knowledge stored in your
memory provides the framework to which you
link new knowledge, by association.
And the more extensive your framework of
existing knowledge, the more easily you can
link new knowledge to it.