After reading this article you will learn about Learning:- 1. Animal Learning 2. Human Learning 3. Plateau 4. Theories 5. Transfer.
Animal Learning:
(i) Learning by Trial and Error (Thorndike):
Learning involves (1) motivation, (2) random responses, (3) elimination of unsuccessful responses, and (4) fixation of successful responses which satisfy the motive.
Thorndike made experiments on animals, like cats, dogs and monkeys with the help of cages, in order to observe their method of learning. He confined a hungry cat in a cage closed by a door which could be opened by turning a latch or a button, and food was put near-by where it could be seen by her.
She made a large number of random movements. She tried to crawl through the bars. She clawed, bit, and scratched at the walls. Sooner or later, by pure, chance, she pushed the latch or pressed the button, opened the door, and escaped. But one successful movement did not teach her the method of opening the door.
When put in the cage again, she went through a series of random movements a second time, and again hit upon the correct response by chance. Each trial, on the average required less time than the preceding one.
After a number of repetitions, varying from a small number to a large number, the cat would perform the successful movement at once every time that it was put into the cage. She could not derive any advantage from having the trick performed for her by an animal that had already mastered it. She could not learn by imitation.
(a) It is Gradual:
The animal’s learning was gradual. The ‘learning curves’ showed a gradual improvement, though not quite regular, with no sign of sudden knowledge of the right answer. If the animal had learned a movement by reasoning, he would have known the right answer at some particular time and then performed the correct movement always promptly.
Hence Thorndike concluded that the animal did not learn by reasoning. He ruled out learning by imitation because the animal could not learn the correct movement by seeing it performed by another animal who mastered it.
She made a number of random unsuccessful movements, by chance made the successful movement, gradually eliminated the unsuccessful movements, repeated the successful movement and turned it into a habit. Hence Thorndike concluded that trial and error was animal method of learning.
We should remember Loyal Morgan’s cannon: “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale” This is the fundamental cannon of animal psychology.
Is the trial and error method of learning, blind or not? As to the end, it is not blind. As to the means, it is. An animal may see the goal clearly enough; at least, it may have a definite orientation towards the goal. But it is unable to see the path in its entirety. It is not conscious of the way which will lead to the goal.
(b) Set:
The animal is ‘set’ to reach a certain goal. He is unable to see any clear way to the goal. He explores the situation, and finds some leads to reach the goal. He tries these leads. If some leads lead him astray and frustrate his efforts, he gives them up and tries other leads.
Finally, he finds a good lead, follows it and reaches the goal. He explores the situation, finds leads, tries them in succession, finds most of them bad, and one good. These are the essential of trial and error behaviour.
(c) Observation and Movements:
Learning by trial and error mainly consists of observation and bodily movement. Does the animal learn by observing or by moving? Does he learn to observe the right lead, or to make the right movement? At first he makes a variety of movements and tries many leads, but gradually eliminates the wrong leads, follows the right lead, and reaches the goal.
Does he keep the right lead, or the right movement? The puzzle-box experiments on cats indicate that they learn more by observation than by movement. Movement is necessary in investigating the various leads, but seeing the result of a movement is more important than performing the movement.
They explore the situation observe the characteristics of the situation and the objects in it as they manipulate them. They execute the proper movements when they are impressed with the characteristics of the objects and the situation.
The proper movements follow when the situation is rightly observed. When the cat in a cage is impressed with the characteristics of the button by pressing which she can come out, she executes the proper movement.
Thus observation seems to be more important than motor activity in some learning. But sometimes combination of movements seems to be more important. When the rat in a maze has learned to keep out of the blind alleys, and come out of the maze by the open passage, he executes a series of proper movements quickly and accurately.
He acquires this skill by integration of movements. He masters the complex movement by motor learning. Thus there are two kinds of learning, by observing the situation and by combining movements. There is learning by observation. There is motor learning.
There are the following factors in learning by trial and error.
I. The animal is definitely motivated, seeks to gain something or to avoid something. It is oriented to a goal.
II. The animal makes random and variable responses blindly and mechanically.
III. Successful random responses axe repeated, and unsuccessful random responses tend to be eliminated. There is a process of selection in the course of repeated trials.
IV. The repeated successful responses are ingrained in the organism as habits. Habits of some definite movements are formed out of random responses.
V. The habitual movement is made in response to a particular stimulus or stimulus pattern.
(ii) Learning by Insight:
Kohler, a German psychologist, performed experiments with higher animals. Chimpanzees do not learn by trial and error but by insight, provided the path be clearly visible. A chimpanzee first learned to use a stick to pull in a banana on the floor outside his cage.
Then he was given two sticks of bamboo, one of which could be fitted into the open end of that other and made a long stick. The banana was placed at such a distance that it could not be reached with a single stick.
The chimpanzee made unsuccessful movements to pull in the banana with a single stick. He gave up the job and began playing with the two sticks in the rear of the cage. He seemed by chance to put them end to end, pushed the smaller one into the larger and made a long stick.
He jumped up, came to the front of the cage and pulled in the banana with the joined stick. When the sticks loosely joined fell apart, he promptly joined them and pulled in the banana. .Next day, he made a few useless movements, but in few seconds joined the sticks and secured the banana.
The chimpanzee learned the movement by insight. There was sudden transition from trial and error behaviour to intelligent behaviour.
Another experiment was made with a chimpanzee. A banana was hung on the top of a cage. A few boxes were put on the floor. The animal could not reach the fruit by stretching his hands. After a few attempts to reach, he put two or three boxes one on top of the other in order to reach it.
He learned the trick by insight Insight is sometimes foresight and sometimes hindsight. The chimpanzee showed foresight when he made the joined stick and reached for the banana with it. He foresaw success through a particular means. But in trial and error behaviour there is hindsight.
The cat in a cage does not see the way to the goal before taking it. The button is hidden from her sight. She tries the various leads and finds one of them to be the right lead. She sees that a lead is good after trying it. This is hindsight. Foresight is seeing the way to the goal before reaching it.
Hindsight is seeing that a lead is good and may lead to the goal after trying it. When the whole situation is presented, there may be foresight. When the essential characteristics of the situation are concealed, there may be hindsight.
There are the following factors in learning by insight.
I. The animal reacts to a situation as a whole, not merely to a part of it.
II. It reacts to certain relationships within the situation as a whole.
III. The relationship between a means and the end or goal determines its behaviour.
IV. The animal reconstructs the field, and apprehends or perceives it.
V. It integrates part processes into a new total pattern. Part processes are provided by previous experience.
VI. There is a sudden change in its total behaviour.
The suddenness is indicative of insight in learning. The Gestalt psychologists discount the role of hindsight or previous experience and exalt the role of the present situational factors. But previous experience does play an important part in insightful learning, which has been shown by a recent experimental study.
(iii) Negative Adaptation:
A useless response is eliminated by the animal when it gets used to the stimulus. While the spider is on its web, a tuning fork is sounded. The spider drops on its thread. This is a defensive response to the sound. The spider makes the same response to the sound several times.
But after several repetitions it ceases to drop. Next day again.it drops on hearing the sound. But, after several repetition for a number of days, the spider ceases to drop on hearing the sound. It becomes negatively adapted to the sound for all time.
It learns by negative adaptation. Domestic animals also learn by negative adaptations. Bullocks get used to running motor cars or railway trains in towns. Horses get used to the harness. Dogs get used to the presence of cats in the house. Thus animals learn by negative adaptation which consists in gradual eliminating the useless responses.
(iv) Conditioning:
Conditioned Response. We have already discussed the nature of the conditioned response. A response is excited by a substitute or conditioned stimulus. Or the same stimulus excites a different response. The sight of a curious object evokes withdrawal instead of approach.
Responses are conditioned in two ways. A response is attached to a conditioned or substitute stimulus. Or the same stimulus evokes a substitute response. Animals learn by conditioned responses.
(a) Conditioning:
Pavlov made experiments on dogs in order to study their salivary responses to conditioned or substitute stimuli. He connected the salivary gland to a measuring instrument through a glass tube by a surgical operation. He presented food to a hungry dog and rang a bell 50 or 60 times, and thus connected the salivary response to a conditioned stimulus. Food is the natural stimulus of the salivary response.
The sound of a bell is the conditioned or substitute stimulus of the response. The salivary response is conditioned to this stimulus by repetition. The process is called conditioning. A bell was repeatedly rung at the time of presenting food or just before it was presented. Hunger, the motive must have been present each time when the food was presented and a bell was rung.
The natural stimulus was connected with the substitute stimulus by pairing them a minimum number of times. Repetition of the pairing of the natural stimulus with the conditioned stimulus increases the strength of the connection up to a certain point beyond which it cannot be strengthened any more.
(b) Extinction:
Just as repetition of the pairing of the natural stimulus with the conditioned stimulus strengthens the connection, so presentation of the conditioned stimulus without presentation of the natural stimulus gradually decreases the conditioned response.
The dog no longer salivates at the sound of a bell after it has been rung a number of times without presenting food at the same time or immediately after it. Thus a conditioned response is extinguished. But the extinguished response may again be recovered by a conditioned stimulus after it is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus. This process is called spontaneous recovery.
(c) Stimulus Generalization:
Generally, in the initial stages of learning by conditioning, the subject’s organism not only responds to the exact conditioned stimulus used in the first learning but to a variety of stimuli similar to the first stimulus used.
There is the greatest conditioned response to the original conditioned stimulus, but it gradually decreases to stimuli more and more dissimilar to the original stimulus. If the conditioned stimulus is a tone with a certain pitch, the conditioned response is the greatest to this pitch. But it decreases a proportion to the decrease of pitch of the tone.
Differentiation—In an advanced stage of learning a conditioned response is fixed to a conditioned stimulus with the same intensity as the original one. Salivation is excited by a tone with a particular pitch as the original one. Even a slight variation in the intensityof the pitch does not excite the conditioned responses.
This process is called differentiation. This is found when no food is presented to a dog along with a conditioned stimulus, a note with a pitch of less intensity. The subject’s organism differentiates between the original conditioned stimulus and its variation and does not respond to the latter.
Human Learning:
Man utilizes all the methods of animal learning. Young children learn motor skill by trial and error. They learn writing, swimming, riding a bicycle, type-writing, etc., by this method. They learn by insight also. They abruptly shift from uncertain movements to a certain successful movement.
They observe a significant fact or see a relationship among facts by insight. Young children partly learn by trial and error, and partly by insight. As they grow older and older, they progress from the trial and error method to the rational or intelligent method.
They learn by conditioned responses also. Young children learn to read the alphabet with the help of pictures. They at first respond to the pictures along with the alphabet. But later they respond to the alphabet only apart from the pictures. They learn the meanings of signs by conditioned responses. They see the wet ground and touch it.
They at first perceive wetness by touch. But later they can perceive wetness of the ground merely by its sight. Men learn by negative adaptation also. They become negatively adapted to unimportant stimuli. They cease to respond to them after some time.
Men learn by observation more than animals can. They have greater power of observation than animals have. They can quickly observe the important characteristics of the situation and its objects, and manipulate them properly to reach the goal.
Human learning is superior to animal learning in the following respects:
I. Man has a greater power of observation than an animal. He observes many characteristics of the environment, which are beyond the scope of an animal.
II. Man uses ideation which is much more developed in man, in solving a problem.
III. Man uses more deliberation in attacking a problem.
IV. Man makes use of language, means, members, and symbols in learning.
Human learning is superior to animal learning in the following respects:
I. Man has a greater power of observation than an animal. He observes many characteristics of the environment, which are beyond the scope of an animal.
II. Man uses ideation, which is much more developed in him, in solving a problem. He has memory and imagination, and can make use of his past experience and rearrange its contents into a new pattern to solve a problem.
III. Man uses more deliberation in attacking a problem. He can reason out the solution of a problem by interrelating the date of observation.
IV. Man makes use of language, names, numbers and symbols in learning. He can make use of others’ experiences and instructions to master similar situations.
V. Man has a greater power of learning by imitation than animals.
VI. Man has greater power of learning by insight than animals
Plateau of Learning:
Learning curves indicate a flat stretch which shows that for some time there is no progress in learning. It is followed by rapid improvement. The same amount of effort is made under similar conditions, but no progress is made’. This flat stretch indicating no progress is called a plateau.
It may be due to insufficient motivation, insufficient integration of simpler habits into complex habits, and a conflict between old habits and new habits. It may represent a physiological limit for the action, and a further rise to a higher level is due to stronger motivation or improved methods.
During this period old associations or partial habits are more firmly implanted, and this is essential for any further advance. This is the period of consolidation of past learning and preparation for further progress in learning.
Theories of Learning:
I. Thorndike holds that learning is governed by the Law or Exercise and the Law of Effect. The Law of Exercise includes the Law of Use, the law of Disuse, the Law of Frequency, and the Law of Recency. Practice or repetition strengthens a motor response.
Want of practice or repetition weakens it. The more a motor response is repeated, the stronger it becomes. A motor response recently performed is stronger than one performed long age.
The Law of Effect means that an agreeable response is repeated and easily fixed as a habit, while a disagreeable response is not easily fixed. A successful action is satisfying, and, therefore repeated and stamped in. An unsuccessful action is annoying, and, therefore, not repeated and gradually stamped out.
Thorndike’s theory is called connectionism. He regards the connections between stimuli and responses as unconscious and automatic.
II. Watson, a Behaviourist, rejects the Law of Effect because it assumes consciousness in the form of pleasure and pain. He explains learning by the Law of Frequency and the Law of Recency. He regards all learning as conditioning.
Learning consists in attaching a response to a substitute stimulus or in replacing a native response by a substitute response. Both Thorndike and Watson hold that all learning is by trial and error, and that all learning is blind and mechanical.
III. Pavlov also regards all learning as conditioning. Learned responses are conditioned responses.
IV. The Gestalt psychologists, Koffka, Kohler and others hold that learning is not a blind and mechanical process, but that it involves insight or seeing the relation of things in a situation.
In learning the maze, the animal reacts to a pattern of a whole situation from the beginning; but in the end when he thoroughly learns a movement, he perceives the situation together with the right movement and the goal as forming one whole. All learning is by insight.
V. McDougall, the founder of the Hormic school, regards all learning as intelligent because it involves foresight. Ail learning is intelligent seeking of a goal; it involves, at least, vague consciousness of success and failure, and pursuit of success, and avoidance of failure.
All behaviour is purposive. Purpose implies foresight of the coal and desire for the realisation of the goal. McDougall lays stress on the primacy of striving or seeking, rather than on the primacy of foresight.
It is difficult to believe that all human learning and higher animal learning are conditioning. They cannot be wholly explained by the Behaviourist theory. Nor can all animal learning be regarded as learning by insight as the Gestalt psychologists hold, of as purposive behaviour as Hormic psychology believes.
Animal learning should not be explained by a higher mental process, if it can be explained by a lower one. Human learning cannot be adequately explained by the laws of animal learning. The problem of learning is yet undecided.
Transfer of Learning:
The skill acquired by learning one kind of a complex movement may, to a certain extent, be transferred to a similar situation. A person who have learned to drive one car, can drive a similar car without more practice. This kind of transfer is called positive transfer But the skill acquired by learning one kind of complex movement cannot be transferred to a dissimilar situation.
A person has acquired a skill in typing with the ‘hunt-and-peck’ method. He cannot transfer the skill to learn typing with the ‘touch’ system. It is more difficult for him to learn typing in this way because of the skill. This kind of transfer is called negative transfer.
Learning a skill by practice upon the same kind of material—mazes, cages, word list, poems, etc., generally facilitates the learning of other samples of the same kind of material.
When a new stimulus is presented, it tends to excite the response which has been connected with similar stimuli in the past. When a stimulus A has been connected with the response B, it is difficult to connect it with the response C. Transfer of learn: will be considered again in connection with memory training.