Learning
Learning is the act of acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing, existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information.
Contents
Description
The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines.
Learning takes time
Progress over time tends to follow a learning curve.
It does not happen all at once, but builds upon and is shaped by previous knowledge.
To that end, learning may be viewed as a process, rather than a collection of factual and procedural knowledge.
Produces changes
Learning produces changes in the organism and the changes produced are relatively permanent.
Social context
Human learning may occur as part of education, personal development, schooling, or training.
Goal orientation and motivation
Learning may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation.
Fields
The study of how learning occurs is part of:
- Educational psychology
- Neuropsychology
- Learning theory
- Pedagogy
Classical conditioning
Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals.
Conscious or unconscious
Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness.
Learned helplessness
Learning that an aversive event can't be avoided nor escaped is called learned helplessness.
Prenatal learning
There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.
Learning and play
Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning. Children experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact through play. Lev Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they make meaning of their environment through playing educational games.
See also
- Analysis
- Artificial intelligence
- Education
- Information
- Knowledge
- Mnemonic
- Play
- Problem solving
- Reason
- Zeigarnik effect
External links
- Learning @ Wikipedia
