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GRADE 11 NOTES
SUBJECT: PSYCHOLOGY (037)

CH-6 LEARNING

Learning is defined as any relatively permanent change in behavior or behavioral potential,

produced by practice or experience.

What are the Features of Learning

1. Learning always involves some kind of experience. Repeated experience of satisfaction after
doing some act in a specific manner leads to the formation of habit. For eg. One learns that if
the bell rings in the hostel after sunset, then dinner is ready to be served. Eg.2- you’ve learnt
to give respect because in return, you get respect.
- At times, even a single experience can lead to learning. Eg. A child strikes a matchstick on
the side of a matchbox and gets his/her finger burnt. This leads the child to learn to be careful
in using a matchbox in the future.
2. Behavioral changes that occur due to learning are relatively permanent. They are different
from the Behavioral changes that are neither permanent nor learned. For eg. A change in
behavior can occur because of being tired/fatigued, habituation and drugs. The changes due to
these causes don’t constitute learning since these are temporary.
i. While learning how to swim, a time comes when you feel tired and stop to take rest.
This behavioural change is due to fatigue and is temporary.
3. Learning differs from habituation. Habituation refers to change caused due to continuous
exposure to stimuli. For eg. A marriage function is taking place next to your house. A lot of
noise is generated till late into the night. In the beginning, the noise distracts you from your
work, since you feel disturbed. During the event of the noise being present , you make some
orienting reflexes, that is reflexes towards something new in the environment. Here , it is the
noise that leads you to maybe change your place or room etc. these reflexes become weaker
and finally become undetectable.
4. Individuals, who have consumed drugs or alcohol, show a change in behavior. As the effect of
the substance wears off, the new kind of behavior disappears.
5. Learning is an inferred process and differs from performance. Performance refers to a person’s
observed behaviour or response or action. For eg. You’re asked to memorize a poem to be
recited in school . you read it a no. of times at home. At school, you’re able to recite the whole
poem. The recitation by you is your performance. On the basis of your performance, the teacher
knows that you have learned the poem.
6. Learning involves a sequence of psychological events. This will become clear if we were to
describe a typical learning experiment. Suppose psychologists are interested in understanding
how a list of words is learned. They will go through the following sequence : (i) do a pre-test
to know how much the person knows before learning, (ii) present the list of words to be
remembered for a fixed time, (iii) during this time the list of words is processed towards
acquiring new knowledge, (iv) after processing is complete, new knowledge is acquired (this
is LEARNING), and (v) after some time elapses, the processed information is recalled by the

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person. By comparing the number of words which a person now knows as compared to what
s/he knew in the pre-test, one infers that learning did take place.

Paradigms of Learning
The simplest kind of learning is called conditioning. The two main types of conditioning are-
classical conditioning and instrumental/operant conditioning .The main theories of learning are:
observational learning, cognitive learning, verbal learning, concept learning and skill learning.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

1. This was first explained by Ivan P. Pavlov. This kind of learning takes place by association.
It involves S-S learning, since one stimulus(bell) becomes a signal for another
stimulus(food).
2. Pavlov was mainly interested in the physiology of digestion. During his studies he noticed
that dogs on whom he was doing his experiments, started secreting saliva as soon as they
saw the empty plate in which food was served. Saliva secretion is a reflexive response to
food or something in the mouth. Pavlov designed an experiment to understand this process
in detail in which dogs were used. The experiment is as follows:
i) In the first phase, a dog was placed in a box and harnessed. The dog was left in the box
for some time. This was repeated a number of times on different days. A simple surgery
was conducted, and one end of a tube was inserted in the dog’s jaw and the other end
of the tube was put in a measuring glass.
ii) In phase 2, the dog was kept hungry and placed in harness with one end of the tube
ending in the jaw and the other end in the glass jar. A bell was sounded and just after
that food was presented to the dog. The dog was allowed to eat it. For the next few
days, a bell was sounded every time before the presentation of food. After a number of
such trials, a test trial was done. In the test trial, all conditions were kept the same
except that when the bell was sounded, no food was presented. But the dog still
salivated at the sound of the bell. This happened as the dog connected /associated the
bell to the presentation of the food. This association between the bell and food resulted
in gaining of a new response by the dog, i.e. salivation to the sound of the bell. This
has been termed as conditioning.

Unconditioned stimulus: is a stimulus that consistently evokes a response or is always followed

by a response. It is not taught and is an inborn response.
Unconditioned response: is the response that follows the unconditioned stimulus. It is not taught
and is an inborn response.
Conditioned stimulus: is a stimulus that elicits only an alerting response for the first few times
that it is presented for.
Conditioned response: is the response produced by the Conditioned stimulus after pairing with
the unconditioned stimulus

In the experiment, the following sequence of events happens:

Stages of Conditioning Nature of Stimulus Nature of Response

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Before Food (US) Salivation (UR)

Sound of the Bell Alertness(No Specific Response)
During Sound of the Bell (CS) + Food (US) Salivation (UR)
After Sound of the Bell (CS) Salivation (CR)

-At the beginning of the experiment, on the presentation of the unconditioned stimulus (which is
the food), an Unconditioned response (salivation) is shown. Here, the bell only alerts the dog.
-During the conditioning process, presentation of the Conditioned stimulus (bell) along with the
Unconditioned stimulus (food) will generate the Unconditioned response (salivation ). Because of
repeated trials where both the stimuli (bell and food) are paired, a connection is formed between
the two, by the dog.
-Thus, after the conditioning is done, when only the bell is sounded and no food is presented, the
dog salivates expecting the food to follow.
- Another example of classical conditioning is as follows- In the early stages of childhood, one is
naturally afraid of any loud noise. Suppose a small child catches an inflated balloon which bursts
in her/his hands making a loud noise. The child becomes afraid. Now the next time s/he is made
to hold a balloon, it becomes a signal or cue for noise and elicits fear response. This happens
because of connecting presentation of balloon as a conditioned stimulus (CS) and loud noise as an
unconditioned stimulus (US).

Determinants of Classical conditioning

Time Relations between Stimuli Type of Unconditioned Stimuli Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli
A no. of factors influence the rate at which responses are acquired in classical conditioning. They
are as follows:
1. Time Relations between Stimuli : The classical conditioning procedures are of four types
based on the time relations between the onset/starting of conditioned stimulus (CS) and
unconditioned stimulus (US). The basic experimental arrangements of these procedures are
as follows:

a) Simultaneous conditioning: When the CS and US are presented together.

Forward b) Delayed conditioning: the onset of CS comes before the onset of US. The CS ends before
conditioning the end of the US.
c) Trace conditioning: the onset and end of the CS comes before the onset of US with
some time gap between the two.
Backward d) In backward conditioning, the US comes before the onset of CS.
conditioning

- Research shows that delayed conditioning procedure is the most effective way of
acquiring a CR.
-Simultaneous and trace conditioning procedures also lead to acquisition of a CR, but they
require greater number of acquisition trials in comparison to the delayed conditioning
procedure.

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- In backward conditioning the acquisition of response is very rare.

2. Type of Unconditioned Stimuli : The unconditioned stimuli used in studies of classical

conditioning are of two types, i.e. appetitive and aversive.
i) Appetitive unconditioned stimuli produce approach responses, such as eating, drinking,
caressing, etc. These responses give satisfaction and pleasure. Food, praise,
appreciation are examples of appetitive stimuli.
ii) Aversive unconditioned stimuli produce avoidance and escape responses. These kind
of stimuli produce pain or discomfort and we respond in way so that we can escape
from them or avoid them. Examples of aversive stimuli are noise, bitter taste, electric
shock, painful injections.
iii) It has been found that appetitive classical conditioning is slower and requires greater
number of acquisition trials. Aversive classical conditioning is established in one, two
or three trials depending on the intensity of the aversive US.

3. Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli: This effects the development of both appetitive and
aversive classical conditioning. The more intense is the conditioned stimulus, the fewer are
the number of acquisition trials needed for conditioning.

OPERANT/INSTRUMRNTAL CONDITIONING
1. This type of learning was first studied by B.F.Skinner. He studied occurrence of voluntary
responses when an organism operates on the environment. He called them operants.
Operants are those behaviours or responses, which are produced by animals and human beings
voluntarily and are under their control. The term operant is used because the organism
operates on the environment. Conditioning of operant behaviour is called operant
conditioning.
2. Skinner conducted his studies on rats and pigeons in specially made boxes, called the Skinner
Box.
i) A hungry rat (one at a time) is placed in the Skinner Box.it is made in such a way that
the rat could move inside but could not come out.
ii) In the chamber there was a lever, which was connected to a food container kept on the
top of the chamber. When the lever is pressed, a food pellet drops on the plate placed
close to the lever.
iii) While moving around and touching the walls (exploratory behaviour), the hungry rat
accidentally presses the lever and a food pellet drops on the plate. The hungry rat eats
it.
iv) In the next trial, the rat is again put into the chamber. after a while the exploratory
behaviour again starts. As the number of trials increases, the rat takes lesser and lesser
time to press the lever for food.
v) Conditioning is complete when the rat presses the lever immediately after it is placed
in the chamber.
vi) Pressing the lever is an operant response and getting food is the consequence. Such
consequences are called reinforcers. A reinforcer is defined as any stimulus or event,
which increases the probability of the occurrence of a (desired) response.
vii) In the above situation the response is instrumental in getting the food. That is why, this
type of learning is also called instrumental conditioning.

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viii) Examples of instrumental conditioning are-

- Children who want to have some sweets in the absence of their mother learn to locate
the jar in which mother hides the sweets and eat it.
-Children learn to be polite and say ‘please’ to get favors from their parents and others.
-One learns to operate mechanical gadgets such as radio, camera, T.V., etc. based on the
principle of instrumental conditioning.

Determinants of Operant conditioning

Types of reinforcement (positive or negative)

Number and Quality of reinforcement

Features of the Schedule of reinforcement (continuous or

reinforcer affecting intermittent/partial)
nature of the response.
Delayed reinforcement

1. Types of Reinforcement
Reinforcement may be positive or negative.
i) Positive reinforcement involves stimuli that have pleasant consequences. They
strengthen and maintain the responses that have caused them to occur. Positive
reinforcers satisfy needs, which include food, water, medals, praise, money, status,
information, etc.
ii) Negative reinforcers involve unpleasant and painful stimuli. Responses that lead
organisms to get rid of painful stimuli or avoid and escape from them provide negative
reinforcement. negative reinforcement leads to learning of avoidance and escape
responses. For example, one learns to put on woolen clothes, burn firewood or use
electric heaters to avoid the unpleasant cold weather. One learns to move away from
dangerous stimuli because they provide negative reinforcement.
iii) Negative reinforcement is not punishment. Use of punishment reduces the response
while a negative reinforcer increases the probability of avoidance or escape response.
For instance, drivers and co-drivers wear their seat belts to avoid getting injured in case
of an accident or to avoid being fined by the traffic police.( Negative reinforcement).

-Not all punishment suppresses a response permanently. Mild and delayed punishment
has no effect. The stronger the punishment, the more lasting is the suppression effect
but it is not permanent. Sometimes punishment has no effect, irrespective of its
intensity. On the contrary, the punished person may develop dislike and hatred for the
punishing agent or the person who administers the punishment.

2. Number of Reinforcement and other Features

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i. It refers to the number of trials on which an organism has been reinforced or rewarded.
Amount of reinforcement means how much of reinforcing stimulus (food or water or
intensity of pain causing agent) one receives on each trial.
ii. Quality of reinforcement refers to the kind of reinforcer. Chickpeas or pieces of bread
are of inferior quality as compared with raisins or pieces of cake.
iii. as the number, amount, and quality of reinforcement increase, the course of operant
conditioning is usually enhanced, to an extent

3. Schedules of Reinforcement

i. A reinforcement schedule is the arrangement of how reinforcement will be delivered during

conditioning trials. Each schedule of reinforcement influences the course of conditioning
in its own way. Thus conditioned responses occur with differential characteristics.
ii. Continuous reinforcement: is the condition when a desired response is reinforced every
time it occurs.
iii.Intermittent reinforcement: is the condition where responses are sometimes reinforced,
sometimes not. It is also known as partial reinforcement. It has been found to produce greater
resistance to extinction – than is found with continuous reinforcement.

4. Delayed Reinforcement
The effectiveness of reinforcement is changed by delay in the occurrence of reinforcement.
i. It is found that delay in the delivery of reinforcement leads to poorer level of
performance.
ii. Smaller rewards immediately after showing a desirable behavior will be
preferred over getting a reward after a long gap.

SOME IMPORTANT LEARNING PROCESSES

Reinforcement Extinction Spontaneous Recovery Generalization and Discrimination

Reinforcement
1. Reinforcement is the process of administering a reinforcer by the experimenter.
2. Reinforcers are stimuli that increase the rate or probability of the responses that come before
presentation of reinforcer.
3. Reinforced responses increase in rate, while non-reinforced responses decrease in rate.
4. A positive reinforcer increases the rate of response that precedes its presentation. Negative
reinforcers increase the rate of the response that precedes their removal/termination.
5. A primary reinforcer is biologically important since it determines the organism’s survival
(e.g., food for a hungry organism).

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A secondary reinforcer is one which has developed characteristics of the reinforcer because
of the organism’s experience with the environment (for eg. money, praise, grades)

Extinction
1. Extinction means disappearance of a learned response due to removal of reinforcement from
the situation in which the response used to occur.( refer to the diagram below)
2. If the occurrence of CS-CR is not followed by the US in classical conditioning, or lever
pressing is no more followed by food pellets in the Skinner box, the learned behaviour will
gradually be weakened and ultimately disappear.
3. Learning shows resistance to extinction. It means that even though the learned response is now
not reinforced, it would continue to occur for some time.
4. But, as the no. of trials without reinforcement increase, the response strength gradually reduces
and ultimately it stops occurring.
5. How long a learned response shows resistance to extinction depends on a number of
factors:

i. As the no. of reinforced trials increases, resistance to extinction increases. learned response
reaches its highest level. At this level performance gets stabilized. After that the numbers
of trials do not make a difference in the response strength.
ii. If the reinforcement is delayed during acquisition trials, the resistance to extinction
increases.
iii. Resistance to extinction increases with increasing number of reinforcements during
acquisition trials, beyond that any increase in number of reinforcement reduces the
resistance to extinction. Studies have also shown that as the amount of reinforcement
(number of food pellets) increases during the acquisition trials, resistance to extinction
decreases.
iv. Continuous Reinforcement makes the learned response less resistant to extinction.
Intermittent or partial reinforcement during acquisition trials makes a learned response
more resistant to extinction.

Spontaneous Recovery
1. It refers to an increase in magnitude of CR after a period of time in which no clear training
is given. (refer to the diagram above)
2. It occurs after a learned response is extinguished.

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3. For eg. an organism has learned to make a response to get reinforcement. Then the
response is extinguished and some time passes. It has been demonstrated that even after
a considerable amount of time passes by, the learned or Conditioned Response recovers
and occurs in response to the CS.
4. The amount of spontaneous recovery depends on the duration of the time which has
passed after the extinction session. The longer the duration of time which has passed, the
greater is the recovery of learned response. (Such a recovery occurs spontaneously.)

Generalization and Discrimination

1. Generalization refers to the phenomenon of responding similarly to similar stimuli.

Suppose an organism is conditioned to elicit a CR (saliva secretion or any other reflexive
response) on presentation of a CS (light or sound of bell). After conditioning is done, and
another stimulus similar to the CS (e.g., ringing of telephone) is presented, the organism
makes the conditioned response to it. Considering Pavlov’s experiment, if the dog salivates
at the sound of a phone bell too, this shows generalization.
When a learned response occurs or is elicited by a new stimulus, it is called generalisation.

2. Discrimination refers to the phenomenon of making one response to one stimuli and a
different response or no response to another stimuli.
For example, suppose a child is conditioned to be afraid of a person with a long moustache
and wearing black clothes. When s/he meets another person dressed in black clothes with
a beard, the child shows signs of fear. The child’s fear is generalized. S/he meets another
stranger who is wearing grey clothes and is clean-shaven. The child shows no fear. This is
an example of discrimination.

3. Occurrence of generalization means failure of discrimination. Discriminative response

depends on the discrimination capacity or discrimination learning of the organism.
Generalization is due to similarity while discrimination is a response due to difference .

OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
• Takes place by observing others.
• Was earlier called imitation.
• In this kind of learning, human beings learn social behaviours, therefore, it is sometimes
called social learning.
• In many situations individuals do not know how to behave. They observe others and copy
their behaviour. This form of learning is called modelling.
• Examples of observational learning -Fashion designers employ tall, pretty, and gracious
young girls and tall, smart, and well-built young boys for popularising clothes of different
designs and fabrics. People observe and imitate these models.

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• in observational learning observers acquire knowledge by observing the model’s

behaviour, but performance is influenced by model’s behaviour being rewarded or
punished.
• In an experimental study, Bandura showed a film of five minutes duration to children.
The film shows that in a large room there are numerous toys including a large sized
‘Bobo’ doll. Now a grown-up boy enters the room and looks around. The boy starts
showing aggressive
behaviour towards the toys in general and the bobo doll in particular. He hits the doll,
throws it on the floor, kicking it and sitting on it. This film has three versions.

VERSION
VERSION 1 VERSION 2 3
a group of A group of
A group of
children see the children
boy (model) children see
the boy are shown
being rewarded
by an adult for being the version
being punished for where the
aggressive to his boy is
the doll. aggressive neither
behaviour. rewarded
nor
punished
for his
aggressive
behaviour .

After viewing a specific version of the film all the three groups of children were placed in
an experimental room in which similar toys were placed. The children were allowed to
play with the toys. These groups were secretly observed and their behaviours noted. It
was found that those children who saw aggressive behaviour being rewarded were most
aggressive. Children who had seen the aggressive model being punished were least
aggressive.

COGNITIVE LEARNING
• Some psychologists view learning in terms of cognitive processes that underlie it.
• In cognitive learning, there is a change in what the learner knows rather than what
s/he does.

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• This form of learning shows up in insight learning and latent learning.

Insight Learning
• Insight (in learning and problem solving) refers to the relatively sudden solution to a
problem.
• Insight learning is the process by which the solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear
• In normal experiment on insight learning, a problem is presented. It is followed by a
period of time when no apparent progress is made. Then, a solution for the problem
emerges suddenly. Once the solution has appeared, it can be repeated immediately the
next time the problem is confronted. Thus, it is clear that what is learned is not a specific
set of conditioned associations between stimuli and responses but a cognitive relationship
between a means and an end. As a result, insight learning can be generalized to other
similar problem situations.

• Kohler performed a series of experiments with chimpanzees that involved solving

complex problems:
(1) He placed chimpanzees in an enclosed play area where food was kept out of their
reach.
(2) Tools such as poles and boxes were placed in the enclosure, which could be used
to reach the food.
(3) There was a period of trial and error, but no progress was made by the
chimpanzee towards the solution.
(4) Then suddenly the chimpanzees would stand on a box, grab a pole and strike a
banana, which was out of normal reach above the enclosure. Thus, learning came
about in sudden flashes of insight.

Latent Learning
• Latent means “hidden”
• Latent learning is the process in which a new behaviour is learned but not demonstrated
until reinforcement is provided for displaying it.
• Tolman made an early contribution to the concept of latent learning.
• His experiment was as follows: he put two groups of rats in a maze and gave them an
opportunity to explore.

i) In group1, rats found food at the end of the maze and soon learned to make their way
rapidly through the maze.
ii) In group 2, rats were not rewarded and showed no visible signs of learning. But later,
when these rats were reinforced, they ran through the maze as efficiently as the
rewarded group.
iii) Tolman believed that the unrewarded rats had learned the layout of the maze early in
their explorations. They never displayed their latent learning until the reinforcement
was provided. the rats had developed a cognitive map of the maze, i.e. a mental
representation of the spatial locations and directions, which they needed to reach their
goal

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CONCEPT LEARNING

• A concept is defined as ‘a set of features or attributes connected by some rule’.

• A concept is a category that is used to refer to a number of objects and events. Animal,
fruit, building, and crowd are examples of concepts or categories (the terms, concept and
category, are interchangeably used.)
• A concept is a way of classifying the elements in the world
• Examples of a concept are those objects or events or behaviours, which have common
features. A feature is any characteristic or aspect of an object or event or living organism
that is observed in them, and can be considered equivalent to some features observed or
discriminated in other objects.
i) Properties like colour, size, number, shape, smoothness, roughness, softness, and
hardness are called features.
ii) Rules that are used to connect the features to form a concept may be very simple or
complex. A rule is an instruction to do something.

• Psychologists study two types of concepts : artificial concepts and natural concepts.
i) Artificial concepts are those that are well defined and rules connecting the features
are precise and rigid. Every object must have all the features in order to become an
instance of this concept.
[eg. A triangle, players in 2 cricket teams (categorized by their dress colour,
positions, whether they bat or are bowlers) ]
ii) Natural concepts or categories are usually ill-defined. Numerous features are found in
the instances of a natural category. Such concepts include biological objects, animals,
birds, real world products (tree, fruit), and human artefacts such as tools,
clothes,(dress-shirts, trousers etc) houses, colours etc.

• Conjunctive concepts are defined by presence of several characteristics. (eg. Players in

cricket teams of 2 different countries….) +figure 6.5 in NCERT

FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING

Continuous vs. Partial Reinforcement

• In continuous reinforcement the participant is given reinforcement after each target

response.
i) This kind of schedule of reinforcement produces a high rate of responding.
ii) However, once the reinforcement is withheld, response rates decrease very quickly,
and the responses acquired under this schedule tend to extinguish.
iii) When reinforcement is continuous it is easier to tell when it has been discontinued

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• In partial or intermittent reinforcement some responses are reinforced and others are
not reinforced.
i) It has been found that partial reinforcement schedules often produce very high rates
of responding (particularly when responses are reinforced according to ratio).
ii) In this kind of reinforcement, only some responses are reinforced. Therefore, it
becomes difficult to tell when reinforcement has been discontinued completely and
when it has been delayed.

• Extinction of a response is more difficult when it is reinforced by partial reinforcement

than when reinforced by continuous reinforcement. (since, in partial reinforcement Only
some responses are reinforced. Therefore, it becomes difficult to tell when reinforcement
has been discontinued completely and when it has been delayed)

i) The fact that the responses acquired under partial reinforcement are highly resistant to
extinction is called partial reinforcement effect.

Motivation
• Motivation is a mental as well as a physiological state
• It arouses an organism to act for fulfilling the current need.
• It energises an organism to act enthusiastically to attain some goal. Such acts persist until
the goal is attained and the need is satisfied.
• Motivation is required for learning to take place.
• The more motivated you are, the more hard work you do for learning.
• Motivation to learn something arises from two sources:- You learn many things because
you enjoy them (intrinsic motivation) or they provide you the means for attaining some
other goal (extrinsic motivation)
• Examples:
(1) a child looks for food in the kitchen when the mother is not in the house.S/he does
so because s/he needs sweets to eat for which s/he is trying to locate the jar in
which sweets are kept. During the course of this search, the child learns the
location of the jar.
(2) A hungry rat is placed in a box. The animal searches in the box for food.
Incidentally it presses a lever and food drops in the box. With repeated experience
of such activity, the animal learns to press the lever immediately after the animal
is placed there.

Preparedness for Learning

• The members of different species are very different from one another in their sensory
capacities and response abilities.
• One can learn only those associations for which one is genetically prepared for.
• The mechanisms needed to establish associations, ( such as S-S or S-R) also vary from
species to species.
• Different species have biological limitations on their learning capacities: some species
can learn some things well, while others cannot.
• The kinds of S-S or S-R learning an organism can easily acquire depends on the
associative mechanism that it is genetically prepared for. A particular kind of associative
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learning is easy for apes or human beings but may be extremely difficult and sometimes
impossible for cats and rats.
• The concept of preparedness is best understood as a band/continuum :
(1) on one end of this band are those learning tasks or associations which are easy for
the members of some species (eg: humans learn how and when to control the
urge to eat food)
(2) on the other end of the band are those learning tasks for which those members are
not prepared at all and cannot learn them. (eg: humans can’t learn to jump from
tree to tree like monkeys can)
(3) In the middle of the band, fall those tasks and associations for which the members
are neither prepared nor unprepared. They can learn such tasks, but only with
great difficulty and persistence.

VERBAL LEARNING

It refers to the process of learning to respond verbally to verbal stimuli (which may include
symbols, nonsense syllables, and lists or words).

Methods used in Studying Verbal Learning

Paired-Associates Learning Serial Learning Free Recall

Paired-Associates Learning:

1. In this method, a list of paired-associates is prepared.

2. The first word of the pair is used as the stimulus, and the second word as the response.
3. Members of each pair can be from the same language or two different languages. [for
example, the first members of the pairs (stimulus term) are nonsense syllables
(consonant-vowel-consonant), and the second are English nouns (response term), such
as YOL-BOAT, MUP-BALM.
Or, the first members of the pairs (stimulus term) are words of a foreign language, and
the second are English nouns (response term), such as NOIR-BLACK, ROUGE-RED]

4. The learner is shown both the stimulus-response pairs together. S/he is then told to
remember and recall the response after each stimulus term is shown.
5. Then, a learning trial begins. In one trial all the stimulus terms are shown.
6. One by one the stimulus words are presented. The participant tries to give the correct
response term. In case s/he doesn’t give correct term , s/he is shown the response word.

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7. The Trials continue until the participant gives all the response words without any error.
8. The total number of trials taken to reach an errorless performance becomes the measure
of paired-associates learning.
9. This method is similar to S-S conditioning and S-R learning. It is used in learning some
foreign language equivalents of mother tongue words.

Serial Learning:

1. This method is used to find out how participants learn lists of verbal items.
2. First, lists of verbal items are prepared. These items can consist of nonsense syllables,
most familiar or least familiar words, interrelated words, etc.
3. The participant is shown the entire list and is asked to recall the items in the same serial
order as shown in the list.
4. In the first trial, the first item of the list is shown, and the participant has to tell the
second item. If the subject does not do so within the given time, the experimenter
presents the second item. Now, this item becomes the stimulus and the participant has to
produce the third item that is the response word. If s/he fails, the experimenter gives the
correct item, which becomes the stimulus item for the fourth word. This procedure is
called serial anticipation method. Learning trials continue until the participant correctly
tells all the items in the given order.

Free Recall:

1. In this method, participants are presented a list of words, which they read and speak out.
(Words in the list may be interrelated or unrelated. More than ten words are included in
the list. The presentation order of words varies from trial to trial. )
2. Each word is shown for a fixed duration.
3. Immediately after the list is show, the participants are asked to recall the words in any
order they wish to.
4. This method is used to study how participants organize words for storage in memory.
Studies indicate that the items placed in the beginning or end of the lists are easier to
recall than those placed in the middle, which are more difficult to recall.

Determinants of Verbal Learning

Meaningfulness of the material Length of the list to be learned

1. Meaningfulness of material is measured in several ways:-

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i. The number of associations which can be generated in a fixed time,

ii. familiarity of the material and frequency of usage,
iii. relations among the words in the list,
iv. sequential dependence of each word of the list on the previous words

Lists of nonsense syllables are available with different levels of associations.

2. Length of the list to be learned

The time taken to learn increases when:
i. length of the list increases
ii. words with low association values are used
iii. there is no relation among the items in the list
3. The Total time principle: This principle states that a fixed amount of time is necessary
to learn a fixed amount of material, irrespective of the number of trials into which that
time is divided. The more time it takes to learn, the stronger becomes the learning.

4. If participants are allowed to give free recall, verbal learning becomes organizational.
i. Bousfield first demonstrated this experimentally. He made a list of 60 words
that consisted of 15 words taken from four categories each of-names, animals,
professions, vegetables.

These words were presented to participants one by one in random order.

The participants were required to make free recall of the words.

They recalled the words of each category together.

ii. He called this category clustering. Here, category clustering occurred because
of the nature of the list.

• Subjective organization - It has been demonstrated that free recall is always organized
subjectively. It shows that the participants organize words or items in their individual
ways and recall accordingly.
• Verbal learning is both intentional as well as incidental. It is usually intentional but a
person may learn some features of the words unintentionally or incidentally (such as,
whether two or more words rhyme, start with identical letters, have same vowels, etc.)

LEARNING DISABILITIES

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Learning disability refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders visible in terms of difficulty in

learning, reading, writing, speaking, reasoning, and mathematical activities.

• Learning disabilities may be present in children of average to superior intelligence, those

having adequate sensory motor systems, and adequate learning opportunities.
• If it is not treated, it may continue throughout life and affect self-esteem, social relations,
daily living activities, job performance and the like.

Symptoms of Learning Disabilities

The symptoms of learning disability can be present in different combinations in children who
suffer from this disorder irrespective of their intelligence, motivation, and hard work for
learning.

1. Difficulties in writing letters, words and phrases, reading out text, and speaking.

i.They face listening problems, though they may not have auditory weaknesses.
Such children are very different from others in developing learning strategies and plans.

2. Learning-disabled children have disorders of attention.

i.They get distracted easily and cannot sustain attention on one point for long.
ii.The lack of attention leads to hyperactivity, i.e. they are always moving, doing different
things, trying to manipulate things constantly.

3. Poor space orientation and inadequate sense of time.

i. Such children do not get easily oriented to new surroundings and get lost.
ii. They show confusion in direction and misjudge right, left, up and down.
iii. They lack a sense of time and are late or sometimes too early in their routine work.

4. Learning-disabled children have poor motor coordination and poor manual dexterity.

i. This is visible in their lack of balance, inability to sharpen pencil, handle doorknobs,
difficulty in learning to ride a bicycle, etc.

5. These children fail to understand and follow oral directions for doing things.

6. They misjudge relationships as to which classmates are friendly and which ones are
indifferent. They fail to learn and understand body language.

7. Such children usually show perceptual disorders.

i. These may include visual, auditory, tactual, and kinesthetic misperception.

ii. They fail to differentiate a call-bell from the ring of the telephone. They can perceive
sensations, but fail to use them in performance.

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8. A large number of such children have dyslexia.

i. They fail to copy letters and words; for example, they fail to distinguish between b and d,
p and q, P and 9, was and saw, unclear and nuclear, etc.
ii. They fail to organize verbal materials.

• Educational psychologists have developed appropriate techniques and are in the process
of developing new ones for correcting symptoms related to learning disabilities.

APPLICATIONS OF LEARNING PRINCIPLES

Organizations Child rearing School learning Treatment of maladaptive behaviors

Applications of learning principles in organizations

1. Organizations face issues such as frequent medical leaves, absenteeism, indiscipline, lack
of proper skill and the like.
2. To increase attendance and reduce absenteeism, a method is used in some organizations.
At the end of every third month, name slips of employees who have not taken any leave
on a working day are placed in a drum. Four to five per cent of the names are randomly
drawn and they are given attractive rewards for not being absent on a single working day.
Such rewards have been found to reduce absenteeism.
i. To increase the number of employees, who have not gone on medical leave for
full one year, various benefits are given. Such partial rewards reduce the
frequency of medical leave.
3. to improving discipline, managers start functioning as models for employees, or
employees are placed under such model managers whose good conduct they can observe
and imitate.

Applications of learning principles in child rearing

1. For the principles of learning to be effective, both the parents need to be aware of them.
2. Using the classical conditioning procedure, children are made to learn signs of danger
and safety.
3. The use of operant conditioning procedures can help to modify and shape children’s
behavior.
i. By using rewards wisely parents can make children keen learners.

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4. By being good role models and guides, parents can teach children social and moral
values, as well as make them good citizens.

Applications of learning principles in schools

1. The instructional tasks are analyzed and fit into various types of learning) such as S-S or
S-R, verbal, observational, and skill learning.) Then, the Educational objectives are
decided
2. Students are told what they have to learn. They are provided appropriate practice
conditions. (Such as recitation, homework, class work, assignments etc).
3. Students are made active participants in the gaining of information, understanding
meaning, and correct responses.
4. Teachers act as models and mentors for students so that they imitate them and learn
appropriate social behaviors and personal habits.
5. Skills are analyzed as S-R chains and students are allowed to learn skills practically.

Applications of learning principles in Treatment of maladaptive behaviors

1. Flooding: is used for individuals who show irrational fear along with accompanying
avoidance behavior. In this technique, the client is exposed to an actual feared object.
2. Systematic desensitization: is another technique used to treat people of phobias. It attempts to
help client overcome the fear by using counter-conditioning, i.e. it attempts to reverse the
process of classical conditioning by associating the crucial stimulus with a new conditioned
response.
3. Aversion therapy: is used to eliminate habits that are undesirable and injurious for health and
happiness.
i. The therapist arranges things in such a way that engaging in maladaptive habits
creates distress for client. To avoid this unpleasantness; clients learn to give them
up.
ii. For example, alcohol is paired with and drug which induces severe nausea and
vomiting so that nausea and vomiting become a conditioned response to alcohol.

4. Modeling and systematic use of reinforcement are used for shaping and developing
certain skills.
5. Assertive learning: is used for Persons who suffer from excessive shyness and have
difficulties in interpersonal interactions.

6. Biofeedback: in this technique, a bodily function (such as heart rate or blood pressure) is
monitored and information about the same is told to the person.
i. This is done to help the client to improve control over the physiological process.

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ii. It is used for clients who become anxious easily and show physiological
symptoms such as, increased breathing rate, loss of appetite, and rise in blood
pressure.
iii. It is based on the interaction between classical and instrumental conditioning.

LEARNING STYLES

Learning style is defined as ‘a learner’s consistent way of responding to and using stimuli in the
context of learning’. It is ‘the way in which each learner begins to concentrate, processes, and
retains new and complex information’. This interaction occurs differently for everyone.

Learning styles are derived from:

1. Perceptual Modality are biologically-based reactions to the physical environment. It refers to

the preferences of persons through which they take in information such as auditory, visual, smell,
kinesthetic, and tactile.

2. Information Processing distinguishes between the way we are structured to think, solve
problems, and remember information. It is the way we process information. For example,
sequential/global, serial/simultaneous, etc.

3. Personality Patterns are the way we interact with our surroundings.

i. Personality is defined as the characteristic and consistent ways in which one behaves
ii. This approach focuses on understanding how personality affects the way people interact
with the environment, and how this affects the way individuals respond to each other
within the learning environment.
iii. Different individuals prefer different learning environments, learning modalities and they
all have unique strengths, talents, and weaknesses. Therefore, it is necessary to examine
each individual’s personal characteristics to determine what is most likely to catch each
learner’s concentration, maintain it, match her/his natural processing style and facilitate
long-term memory.
Table 6.6 -from N.C.E.R.T-Page 126

TRANSFER OF LEARNING

1. It is also called transfer of training or transfer effect.

2. It refers to the effects of prior learning on new learning.
3. Transfer is considered to be positive if the earlier learning helps in current learning.(e.g.
knowledge of math helps to learn physics. if you know how to type, it’ll be easier to learn
to play the piano.)

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4. Transfer is said to be negative if new learning is slowed down/ reduced due to the effect
of prior learning. (e.g. BUT and HUT have similar pronunciations, PUT has a different
one. one needs to know the rules of grammar to pronounce it correctly)
5. Absence of facilitative or retarding effect means zero transfer.
6. Transfer is possible when some common or identical elements are present
7. Suppose you want to know whether learning of English language affects learning of
French. To study this you select a large sample of participants. Now you randomly divide
the sample into two groups, one to be used in the experimental condition and the other as
control group.

Experimental group Control group

Year 1 learns English Doesn’t learn

English

Year 2 learns French learns French

Achievement scores of French are calculated

• If the achievement score of the experimental group is higher than that of the control
group, it implies that positive transfer has taken place.
• If the achievement score of the experimental group is lower than the control group, it
means negative transfer has taken place.
• If the two groups perform equally well, then it shows that transfer effect is zero.

8. Prior learning always leads to positive general transfer.

9. Only in specific transfer can transfer effects be positive, negative or zero effect.

General (Generic) Transfer

i. Prior learning predisposes one to learn another task in a better manner.

ii. The learning of one task warms-up the learner to learn the next task more conveniently.

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iii. E.g. a cricketer going to the pitch to take her/his position near the wicket does some
warm up exercises first.
iv. E.g. When you write answers while appearing at the examination, your writing is slow
and sitting position is not comfortable to be able to write efficiently. you get warmed up
after having written two or three pages. Your speed increases and your body gets well
adjusted to the writing task. Warm-up effect lasts over one session of learning.

Specific Transfer

i. Specific transfer means the effect of learning of task A on learning of task B. The
learning of task A may make the learning of task B easier or more difficult or have no
such effect. Such transfers depend on similarity-dissimilarity between the initial learning
task and the second task.
ii. Whenever an organism learns something, it consists of a series of stimulus-response
associations. Any task can be understood as a chain of different stimuli, each of which
has to be associated with a specific response.

SKILL LEARNING
1) A skill is defined as the ability to perform some complex task smoothly and efficiently.
Car driving, airplane piloting, ship navigating, shorthand writing, and writing and reading
are examples of skills.
2) Skills are learned by practice and exercise.
3) A skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor responses or as a sequence of S-R
associations.
4) Skill learning passes through several qualitatively different phases.
i. With each attempt at learning a skill, one’s performance becomes smoother and
requires less effort. That is, performance becomes more automatic.
ii. It has also been shown that in each phase the performance improves.
iii. In transition from one phase to the next, when the level of performance stands
still, it is called performance plateau. Once the next phase begins, performance
starts improving and its level starts going up.

Phases of Skill Acquisition

According to Fitts, skill learning passes through three phases, viz. cognitive, associative and
autonomous. Each phase or stage of skill learning involves different types of mental processes.

1) In the cognitive phase of skill learning, the learner has to :

i. Understand and memorize the instructions, understand how the task has to be
performed.

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ii. In this phase, every outside cue, instructional demand, and one’s response
outcome have to be kept in consciousness.
2) In the associative phase:
i. Different sensory inputs or stimuli are linked with appropriate responses.
ii. As the practice increases, errors decrease, performance improves and time taken
is also reduced.
iii. With continued practice, errorless performance begins. But the learner has to be
attentive to all the sensory inputs and maintain concentration on the task.
3) In autonomous phase:
i. Two important changes take place in performance: the attentional demands of the
associative phase decrease, and interference created by external factors reduces.
ii. skilled performance reaches automaticity and minimal conscious effort is now
required

As the practice increases, improvement rate gradually increases; and automaticity of errorless
performance becomes the seal of skill. That is why it is said that ‘practice makes a man perfect’.

LEARNING DISABILITY

• Learning disability refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested in terms of difficulty in

the acquisition of learning, reading, writing, speaking, reasoning, and mathematical activities.
• The sources of such disorders are inherent in the child.
• We can identify students with learning disabilities from many symptoms.
• These symptoms are following:
• (i) Difficulties in writing letters, words, and phrases, reading out text, and speaking, appear quite
frequently, quite often they have listening problems, although they may not have auditory defects.
Such children are very different from others in developing learning strategies and plans.
• (ii) Learning disabled children have disorders of attention. They get easily distracted and cannot
sustain attention on one point for long. Sometimes it leads to hyperactivity ie they are always
moving, doing different things and trying to manipulate things without any purpose.
• (iii) Poor space orientation and inadequate sense of time are common symptoms. Such children do
not get easily oriented to new surroundings and get lost. They lack a sense of time and are late or
sometimes too early in their routine work. They also show confusion in direction and misjudge
right, left, and down.
• (iv) Learning-disabled children have poor motor-coordination and poor manual dexterity. This is
evident in their lack of balance. They show Inability to sharpen pencil, handle doorknobs, difficulty
in learning to ride a bicycle, etc.
• (v) These children fail to understand and follow oral directions for doing things.
• (vi) They misjudge relationships as to which classmates are friendly and which ones are indifferent.
They fail to learn and understand body language.
• (vii) Learning-disabled· children usually show perceptual disorders. These include visual, auditory,
tactual and kinesthetic, misperception etc. They fail to differentiate a call-bell from the ring of the
telephone. It is not they do not have sensory acuity. They simply fail to use it in performance. (viii)

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Fairly large number of learning-disabled children has dyslexia. They quite often fail to copy letter
and words. e.g.: they fail to distinguish between band d, p and q, p and I, was and saw, unclear and
nuclear etc., they fail to organize verbal material.

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