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example, changes in behaviour often occur or action.
Let us understand what is meant

due to the effects of fatigue, habituation, and by the term inference. Suppose you are asked
drugs. Suppose you are reading your textbook by your teacher to memorise a poem. You read
of psychology for sometime or you are trying that poem a number of times. Then you say
to learn how to drive a motor car, a time comes that you have learned the poem. You are asked
when you will feel tired. You stop reading or to recite the poem and you are able to recite
driving. This is a behavioural change due to it. The recitation of the poem by you is your
fatigue, and is temporary. It is not considered perf o rmance. On the basis of your
learning. performance, the teacher infers that you have
Let us take another case of change in one’s learned the poem.
behaviour. Suppose in the vicinity of your
residence a marriage is being performed. It
P ARADIGMS OF LEARNING
generates a lot of noise, which continues till
late night. In the beginning, the noise distracts Learning takes place in many ways. There are
you from whatever you are doing. You feel some methods that are used in acquisition of
disturbed. While the noise continues, you simple responses while other methods are
make some orienting reflexes. These reflexes used in the acquisition of complex responses.
become weaker and weaker, and eventually In this section you will learn about all these
become undetectable. This is also one kind of methods. The simplest kind of learning is
behavioural change. This change is due to called conditioning. Two types of conditioning
continuous exposure to stimuli. It is called
have been identified. The first one is called
habituation. It is not due to learning. You must
classical conditioning, and the second
have noticed that people who are on sedatives instrumental/operant conditioning. In
or drugs or alcohol, their behaviour changes
addition, we have observational learning,
as it affects physiological functions. Such
cognitive learning, verbal learning, concept
changes are temporary in nature and
learning, and skill learning.
disappear, as the effect wears out.
Learning involves a sequence of
psychological events. This will become clear if C LASSICAL CONDITIONING
we were to describe a typical learning
experiment. Suppose psychologists are This type of learning was first investigated by
interested in understanding how a list of words Ivan P. Pavlov. He was primarily interested in
is learned. They will go through the following the physiology of digestion. During his studies
sequence : (i) do a pre-test to know how much he noticed that dogs, on whom he was doing
the person knows before learning, (ii) present his experiments, started secreting saliva as
the list of words to be remembered for a fixed soon as they saw the empty plate in which
time, (iii) during this time the list of words is food was served. As you must be aware, saliva
processed towards acquiring new knowledge, secretion is a reflexive response to food or
(iv) after processing is complete, new something in the mouth. Pavlov designed an
knowledge is acquired (this is LEARNING), and experiment to understand this process in detail
(v) after some time elapses, the processed in which dogs were used once again. In the
information is recalled by the person. By first phase, a dog was placed in a box and
comparing the number of words which a harnessed. The dog was left in the box for some
person now knows as compared to what s/he time. This was repeated a number of times on
knew in the pre-test, one infers that learning different days. In the meantime, a simple
did take place. surgery was conducted, and one end of a tube
Thus, learning is an inferred process and was inserted in the dog’s jaw and the other end
is different from performance. Performance of the tube was put in a measuring glass. The
is a person’s observed behaviour or response experimental setup is illustrated in Figure 6.1.
109
Chapter 6 • Learning

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example, changes in behaviour often occur or action.

Let us understand what is meant

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