Human

Learning
Chapter 4
LEARNING AND TRAINING
First,
you will need to specify entry behavior
Next, you need to formulate explicitly the
goals of the task.
You would also need to devise some
methods of training.
Finally, you would need some sort of
evaluation procedure.
Four psychologists
Two representing a behavioral viewpoint
(Pavlov and Skinner)
One representing a cognitive stance
(Ausubel)
One that stretches into what could be
loosely defined as a constructivist school of
thought (Rogers).

The four positions should illustrate not only some of

the history of learning theory, but also the diverse
perspectives that form the foundations of varying
language teaching approaches and methods.
PAVLOVS CLASSICAL
BEHAVIORISM
Was a famous Psychologist.
Was interested in the behavior of both,
humans and animals.
Was involved with physiological researches
with dogs.
 His biggest contribution to the field of
psychology is the Classical Conditioning
He often used animals in his experiments.
The dogs he used, showed a salivation
response when they were offered food
(unconditional stimulus).
The food was offered many times with the
sound of a ring bell (conditional stimulus)
After this, only the sound of the ring bell
could produce salivation response.
SKINNERS OPERANT
CONDITIONING
He was an American psychologist.
He followed the tradition of Watson, but
other psychologists have called him a
neobehaviorist because he added a
unique dimension to behaviorist psychology.
Operant conditioning can be described as
a process that attempts to modify behavior
through the use of positive and negative
reinforcement.
 Skinners operant conditioning attempted for most of
human learning and behavior. It can be described as a
process that attempts to modify behavior through the
use of positive and negative reinforcement. Through
operant conditioning, an individual makes an
association between a particular behavior and a
consequence.
Operant behavior is behavior in which one operates on
the environment.
A behaviorist theory based on the fundamental idea
that behaviors that are reinforced will tend to continue,
while behaviors that are punished will eventually end.
According to Skinner, the events or stimuli that follow a
response and that tend to increase the probability of a
recurrence of that response constitute a powerful in the
control of human behavior.
 Operants are classes of responses.
They are sets of responses that are
emitted and governed by the
consequences they produce. E.G:
Crying, sitting down, walking.
David Ausubel
Learning takes place in the human organism through a
meaningful process of relating new events or items to
already existing cognitive concepts or prepositions within
an individuals cognitive structure.
It is nonarbitrary.
Rote learning: mental storage of items having little or no
association with existing cognitive structure.
Meaningful learning: relating new material to relevant
established entities in cognitive structure.

Any learning situation can be meaningful

if learners have a disposition to relate the new learning
task to what they already know
if the learning task itself is potentially meaningful to the
learners.
We can make things meaningful if necessary and if we
are strongly motivate to do so (manufacturing
meaningfulness by Frank Smith).
Frank Smith also noted that
Students studying for an exam often invent a
mnemonic device for remembering a list of items. By
associating items retention is enhanced.
Imagine putting each object in a different location
on your person. Bay later taking a tour around your
person, you can feel the objects there in your
imagination.
William James (1890:662) also described meaningful
learning:
the more others facts a fact is associated with in
the mind, the better possession of it our memory
retains. The secret of good memory is the secret of
forming diverse and multiple associations with every
fact we care to retain.
The distinction between rote and meaningful
learning may not appear to be important:
In both cases the material can be learned.
But we have to consider them in terms of
retention or long term memory.
We often examine learning from the
perspective of input alone, falling to
consider that the learned item that is not
retained is useless.
Human beings are capable of learning
almost any item for perhaps a few seconds,
but long-term memory is different.
Systematic Forgetting
Rotely learned material: do not interact with
the cognitive structures in a substantive fashion,
they are leaned through the laws of
association, and their retention is influenced by
the interfering effects of similar rote materials
learned immediately before or after the
learning task.
Meaningful material relevant and
cumulatively stablished ideational systems in
cognitive structure with which the learning task
interacts
eg. Addresses/ telephone numbers
 Cognitive pruning:
eg. hot definition: excessive heat capable of
burning
hotness
Language attrition:
the strength and condition of initial learning
the kind of use that a second language has been
put to
the motivational factor
Native language forgetting
occurs in some cases if subtractive bilingualism
members of a minority group learn the language of
the majority group and the latter group downgrades
speakers of the minority language.
 The notion that forgetting is systematic has
important implication for language learning
and teaching. In the early stages of
language learning, certain devices
(definition, paradigms, illustrations or rules)
are often used to facilitate subsumption.
These devices can be made initially
meaningful by assigning meaningfulness. But
in the of making language automatic , the
devices serve only as interim entities,
meaningful at a low level of subsumption,
and they are systematically pruned out at
later stages of language learning.
ROGERSS HUMANISTIC
PSYCHOLOGY
has more of an affective focus than a cognitive
one.
Rogers and Vygotsky share some views in
common in their highlighting of the social and
interactive nature of learning.
In Client-Centered Therapy (1951), Rogers
carefully analyzed human behavior in general,
including the learning process, by means of the
presentation of 19 formal principles of human
behavior.
Rogers studied the whole person as a physical
and cognitive, but primarily emotional, being.
 Fully functioning persons, according to
Rogers, live at peace with all of their
feelings and reactions; they are able to
reach their full potential (Rogers, 1977).
The focus is away from teaching and
toward learning or, put in more recent
terms, transformative pedagogy .
The goal of education is the facilitation of
change and learning.
he feels, if the context for learning is
properly created, then human beings will, in
fact, learn everything they need to.
Paolo Freire (1970)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, has inspired
many a teacher to consider the importance
of the empowerment of students in
classrooms.
For him, students should be allowed to nego-
tiate learning outcomes, to cooperate with
teachers and other learners in a process of
discovery, to engage in critical thinking, and
to relate everything they do in school to their
reality outside the classroom.
 In adapting Rogerss ideas to language
teaching and learning, we need to see to it that
learners understand themselves and
communicate this self to others freely and
nondefensively. Teachers as facilitators must
therefore provide the nurturing context for
learners to construct their meanings in
interaction with others.
Classroom activities and materials in language
(earning should therefore utilize meaningful
contexts of genuine communication with
students engaged together in the process of
becoming persons.
 BEHAVIORISTIC COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTIVIST
Classical Operant
[Pavlov] [Skinner] [Ausubel] [Rogers]
Meaningful =
Governed by
powerful Fully functioning
consequences
Respondent Rote = weak person
Emitted
conditioning Subsumption Learn how to
response
Elicited Association learn
R S (reward)
response Systematic Community of
No punishment
SR forgetting learners
Programmed
Cognitive Empowerment
instruction
"pruning"

Note: S = stimulus, R = response-reward