Professional English-1 Hw_1

Due date: Feb 27, 2009

Learning Theories

In psychology and education, learning theories are attempts to describe how people learn, thereby helping us understand the inherently complex process of learning. A learning theory is an organized set of principles explaining how individuals learn, that is, how they acquire new abilities and/or knowledge.

Learning has been studied for hundreds of years, and many theories have been proposed to explain it.
These theories are generally categorized in three approaches:
- the behavorial appraoch,
- the cognitive approach, and
- the constructivist approach.

Behaviorism is a theory of animal and human learning that only focuses on objectively observable behaviors and discounts mental activities. Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior.

Experiments by behaviorists identify conditioning as a universal learning process. There are two different types of conditioning, each yielding a different behavioral pattern:
1) Classic conditioning occurs when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus. The most popular example is Pavlov’s observation that dogs salivate when they eat or even see food. Essentially, animals and people are biologically “wired” so that a certain stimulus will produce a specific response.
2) Operant conditioning occurs when a response to a stimulus is reinforced. Basically, operant conditioning is a simple feedback system: If a reward or reinforcement follows the response to a stimulus, then the response becomes more probable in the future. For example, leading behaviorist B.F. Skinner used reinforcement techniques to teach pigeons to dance and bowl a ball in a mini-alley.