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1. Some basic background

Learning is an issue that mostly psychology as a science has been observing and researching. As such, the acquired results are by definition not universal applicable, they must be interpreted as findings of empirical testing. Be it behaviourist psychology, that completely ignores the cognitive functions of the mind or the cognitive psychology that specifically tries to open that black box, the formulation of concepts of learning and knowledge has not come to a rest.

Let us first start by defining "learning". We shall use the following definition of Zimbardo (1992):

"Learning is a process that leads to relatively stable changes in the behaviour or potential behaviour and that builds upon experiences. It cannot be observed, it must be inferred from the observable behaviour."

From that definition we can draw two basic consequences:

1. Learning can be identified by amelioration of performances
2. The performance does not reflect all learning

The latter consequence stresses, that there are believed to be conscious and subconscious learning processes that both form not explicit but rather potential ameliorations in behavior. We shall call this kind of learning latent learning.

2. Behaviorist and cognitive theory

What can be said about this approach to the conception of a persons learning, is that it focuses on the exterior conditions in learning situations. Behaviourism explicitly leaves the cognitive processes out of the picture. As such, the focus is on the triggering of reactions through impulses, especially on punishment and gratification of ones behaviour. Behaviourist theory is strongly founded on Pawlovs Experiments with so-called conditioning. The following links discuss his findings in more detail:

--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioning
--> http://nobelprize.org/medicine/educational/pavlov/readmore.html

Another approach of behaviourist learning theory is the so-called observational learning promoted by Albert Bandura, who stresses the importance of a persons surrounding conditions, especially during the childhood years. People are strongly influenced by their parents, the media such as television, idols etc. By observing and imitating, we design or actions. For more details please follow the links below:

--> http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/bandura.html
--> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_learning

Although behaviourist theory does give us some implications on how to structure a specific learning situation, it does not address the brains function in the process. Since this very process seems to be much more relevant for a persons learning, I shall focus mainly on the cognitive approach. Cognition can be defined as the processes of perception, awareness, judgement and conclusion (Davison and Neale, 1998, S. 53).

3. Thinking and problemsolving

There have been some astonishing discoveries of exceptional achievements by the brain of "unintelligent" persons. In 1945, an eleven year old boy with an IQ of 50 could name the weekday of any given date from 1880 through 1945. You could give him a date and right away would get the answer which day of the week that day was. In the 1980s, a math student at college could calculate pi to the 75th decimal, but wasn’t very good at anything else (Hussy 1993).

Exceptional achievements of the brain do not necessarily have much to do with intelligence as we measure it! Learning how to solve a problem does not need a rocked scientist. Wemayhowever, devlop certain preferences in learning procedures. This insight leaves us with two sets of questions. The first is a set of basic questions, namely what is meant by intelligence, how can Intelligence be measured and what do such measures imply (such as the IQ). The second set is more practically oriented: How can we find out about a person’s exceptional competences, how do we best use these kinds of competences, what can we generally learn from so capable people etc. The former set shall not be addressed here, but would be a very interesting subject for further analysis. The latter set, however, can be answered partly by certain findings of research in this field.

The first and most intrinsic way is to practice and do something over and over again. This is a typical behaviour if we are trying to study words in a foreign language or formulas for a physics class for example. Chase and Ericsson (1982) have shown that indeed, by repetition we can improve greatly o­n our memorizing ability. In an experiment they practiced the memorization of numbers with a student. Each second they would say a number between 0 and 9 and then ask the student, how many numbers she could remember. The average number that “ordinary people” can remember is seven. After 220 hours of practice the student was able to memorize 82 numbers in a row!

As we have seen above, behaviourist approaches tell us, that the external conditions can have a rather large impact o­n the persons learning. It seems to me that this perception of the subject at hand can be viewed in a sociological context also. Observational learning theory tells us, that subjects tend to imitate certain behaviours. Sociological approaches o­n knowledge have claimed that knowledge is strongly dependant from socio-cultural backgrounds. Knowledge is a construct that defines our very perceptions and views, even ideas. The link between knowledge and learning is described in the article “Learning as a gift...“. Learning is the process in which knowledge is formed and internalized.
Viewed in such a way, learning as the behaviourist approach describes is not constant but fluctuates within different cultural contexts. Cognitive approaches, o­n the other hand, try to define certain fundamental structures within the human brain, or better, nature. Cognitive findings can be generalized whereas behaviourist o­nes cannot.

4. An interesting experiment

We shall now look at an experiment that could give us some clues about cognitive functions. It shows a deterioration of our cognitive capabilities under stress. Stress seems to trigger certain natural intrinsic instincts that permit our reasonable thinking to occur. Instead we react in a reflex to a given situation, which often leads to mediocre if not weak results. This effect of “switching back into primitive mode” is discussed in the article “Why smart people underperform” by E.M. Hallowell in the January 2005 Harvard Business Review. His Analysis focuses o­n the attention deficit trait (ADT) syndrome. The experiment that we shall focus o­n is a different o­ne, it is described in Süllwold (1988). It studied the capability of a person to move certain numbered cards in six fields into a desired state, as illustrated in Fig. 2. The situation in a) shows the desired result, the situations in b) and c) show different starting points.

 

The situation of stress was caused by negative feedback from the conductor of the experiment who would refer to an unrelated other exercise in which the test person had previously failed. A possible solution for the problem could be achieved in 10 different moves, as indicated below. The researchers now measured the number of moves it would take the average male and female test person to solve the problem.

 

As it turned out, under stress the test persons clearly performed much poorer. A specifically interesting result was that women scored a lot better under special conditions than men did. Compare the test results in figure 4. Clearly, the men’s performance started off with an edge, but even with little stress the performance worsened at a steep rate. Both groups performed equally well. But whereas the men’s performance worsened, the women’s became better and better with the applied stress level.

The results achieved by this experiment should of course not be generalized, and there are of course men who perform brilliantly under stress and o­n the other hand women that perform very poor. What this kind of experiment can be used for is at most to give us some kind of hints for our own interpretation and they show how interesting the field of human learning is. Let us now explore some more details about our understanding of learning.

5. Learning and layers of knowledge

Thinking and problem solving require learning about an issue that must be resolved in a process. Four elements common to these processes can be identified (Hussy, 1993):

1. They are goal oriented
2. not solely limited o­n the discovery and identification of a stimulus
3. not solely limited o­n the memorisation or recalling of facts and
4. that make the processing of facts necessary

The goal is of course always the resolution of a given problem. In order to do so, we must first identify the stimulus. That alone will not give us the required result. We must seek a relationship between the given characteristics of the stimulus and our memorized concepts so that we can point out similarities. In some cases, problems can be solved by drawing analogous conclusions, but this cannot be called learning, because we base the solution o­n pre-existent knowledge. Rather than learning I would call this “rigidification” of pre-existent knowledge patterns. It confirms what we already know. Yet, this alone will in many cases not resolve a problem. Often we must “work with the facts”, we must interrelate the elements and find new, unexpected patterns. By doing this we form new regularities and thus learn.

It should be noted that in order to solve given problems we must have an understanding of the elements that our problem founds o­n. That is, we must know the basics about the situation. I for example we must solve a number problem such as 1+1 equals?, then we must know the semantics as well as the syntax. Our ability to memorize is an indispensable asset when it comes to learning. From these findings it can also be inferred that the more knowledge we keep “stored” inside our brain, the more potential learning processes can be performed and the more likely will a positive outcome be achieved. In modern society, we can identify three layers of learning. First is what we call common knowledge. Although it is supposed to be common I cannot claim to know what it consists of but at least I know that it contains those things everyone should know. Common knowledge highly varies with differences in cultural backgrounds but within certain groups it is fairly stable and generally accepted. Knowledge is collected, not created, so common knowledge is reactive to events and findings from the other two layers. The second layer is field-specific knowledge. Often, the key elements make up a jargon that is used to communicate in a group. This knowledge is specialized in a certain field of work and based around a specific problem or a group of problems.

Field-specific knowledge consists of static as well as dynamic parts and creates new knowledge. The third layer is expert knowledge. This is unique field-specific knowledge from o­ne or more fields that crates highly innovative approaches to problem solving in a field. The knowledge of these different layers allows us to differentiate the value of learning. If for instance we learn that fire is hot and we can seriously burn our skin, then this is not worth a lot, because it is common knowledge; everyone knows. If we know what causes fire, which materials burn easiest or which particles are burnt at different temperatures, we have field-specific knowledge of a chemical reaction. This is more valuable, because we can potentially combine this knowledge to gain insight into the functioning of other reactions. Yet it is not expert knowledge. This would be for example how to prevent fire in wooden attics by producing and integrating a special material that does not allow fire to spread. Expert knowledge has the potential to become generally accepted field-specific or even common knowledge. o­ne example would be Einstein’s theory of reflexivity, that in physics is still o­ne of the foremost paradigms and at least by its name has become common knowledge.

6. Various views of learning

After these first insights let us now focus o­n the question “how do we learn?” For the first basic concept we turn to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who lived from 384 – 322. He formulated two basic principles that defined learning. First, the principle of the idea and second the principle of association. Association takes three distinct forms:

a) Contiguity: If objects or events occur in a close timely or special relation then our memory combines them.
b) Similarity: If things are similar, then our memory combines them.
c) Contrast: If things are opposing to each other, then they are combined by our memory

It can be frequently observed in scientific and non-scientific argumentation that these concepts are applied in order to illustrate a process of enlightenment or the creation of results. Aristotle was very sophisticated in his findings in this way that he focused o­n the cognitive functions o­nly and did not resort to in our time known as behaviourist concepts, which we shall describe in just a moment.

Before we do so, we shall focus o­n the ideas about the cognitive elements promoted by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879. He tried to construct our consciousness with three elements, namely

a) Sensation
b) Imagination and
c) Feelings

Wundt didn’t believe that learning could be observed so he focused o­n the structure of the consciousness. His concepts were supplemented by Hermann Ebbinghaus who focused o­n the very processes of learning. Two of his concepts are illustrated in figure 6, the learning curve that illustrates the close relationship between repetition and memorisation, and the forgetting curve that illustrates how fast we forget what we have learned.

The behaviourist approach to learning completely ignores any kind of cognitive process. Learning is seen as a result from the stimulus, the reaction and the association between stimulus and reaction. Above I have mentioned the classic conditioning by Pavlov, another central behaviourist concept of learning is trial and error. Learning is seen as a hierarchy of reactions. If reactions do not lead to a desired result, then they move down the hierarchy ladder and vice versa thje successful reactions move up. o­ne specific pattern turns out to fit a problem and will therefore be applied in future situations of the same kind. Again, this approach ignores cognitive functions. It seems intrinsically logical that this cannot be sufficient to explain such a complex concept such as learning.

More recent theories have discovered the importance of cognitive processes. o­n of these theories is described by Bandura (1971). He adds the importance of imitation in our learning processes. By observing a model and the results achieved by that model we make a judgement whether the results convince us or not. If they do strongly enough, we will imitate them.

Imitation of observed behaviour is o­nly done if the following conditions hold:

1. The learner must have some sort of emotional relation to the model. The model must at least be respected.
2. The model must be important, e.g. have power, success or enjoy a high social status.
3. The results must be achievable
4. the actions of the model must have succeeded and reinforced
5. The learner himself must be enforced to show the observed behaviour.

The fourth and fifth point might be a bit troubling at first, so let me explain what is meant by “enforce” and “reinforce”. A person must see the observed behaviour as an affirmation and must be motivated to imitate the model. Bandura (1971) describes this as follows: “Both operant conditioning and social learning theories assume that performance of acquired matching behaviour is strongly controlled by its consequences. But in social learning theory, behaviour is regulated not o­nly by directly experienced consequences arising from external sources, but also by vicarious reinforcement and self-reinforcement [...]." He explains that "the term vicarious reinforcement is applied to changes in the behaviour of observers that result from witnessing a model's action being rewarded or punished."

The two last concepts that we shall discuss are learning by insight and learning by assimilation and accommodation.
The concept of insight discusses the restructuring of the field of perception when confronted a specific problem. The problem is actively restructured and newly organised. As a result, new strategies for solutions are created and, when found, the behaviour is adjusted accordingly. (Hobmair, 1996). Insight is sudden, it reveals a relationship not yet discovered between the elements. But o­nce it has occurred, it persists as a dominant structure.

Insight has three characteristics:

1. It is dependant o­n the problem situation
2. If a solution is found it can be reproduced immediately. The success is not incremental but sudden and immediate,
3. Insight is not a pattern that is learned but more a cognitive structure that can also be applied in changing situations.

Piaget (1996) describes the importance of assimilation and accommodation in learning. Assimilation is the integration of new structures and experiences into an existing structure of thoughts and behaviours. External impulses are being integrated in an existent context. The existing knowledge helps to sort the new stimulus into the mental structure. Accommodation is the alignment to certain given new and special conditions. This happens when assimilation is not sufficient to cope with a situation or an impulse and the existing knowledge must be enlarged and adjusted. The cognitive structures must be readjusted so that they fit reality again.