Understanding Approaches to Learning

• Learning involves gaining knowledge, skills, or behaviors through experience.
• Learning can be intentional, such as taking piano lessons, or unintentional, like learning by watching someone play the piano.
• Learners can be either active or passive participants in the learning process.

Approaches to Learning

• Behaviourist approach: Learning occurs through interaction with the external environment, like touching a stove and getting burnt
• Social cognitive approach: Learning happens in social settings and involves cognitive processes.
• System approach: Learning involves interconnected social, physical, and spiritual understanding, informing survival and contributing to a strong sense of identity, common in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing.

Behaviourist Approaches to Learning

• Behaviourism: Psychology can be objectively studied through observable actions.
• Operant conditioning: Subjects learn behaviours by associating them with consequences.
• Classical conditioning: Subjects learn to associate two unrelated stimuli with each other.

Classical Conditioning

• It is a learning process through involuntary associations between a neutral stimulus (NS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US), resulting in a conditioned response.
• Learning is involuntary, and the subject doesn't need to consciously try to learn.
• Conditioning: The process of learning associations between a stimulus and a behavioural response.
• Stimulus: An event that causes a response.
• Response: A reaction to a stimulus.

Classical Conditioning - 3 Phase Model

• Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that does not initially produce any particular response.
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that naturally triggers an automatic reflex response.
• Unconditioned Response (UCR): The response that occurs automatically when the UCS is presented.
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A stimulus that was initially neutral but, through repeated association with the UCS, now produces the same effect as the UCS.
• Conditioned Response (CR): The learned response produced by the CS, not the UCS.

Phase 1: Before conditioning (before learning)

• This is the natural condition before any learned response is established.
• The UCS is presented separately to elicit an automatic response while the NS elicits no response.
• The NS has no associations and therefore produces no significant response.

Phase 2: During conditioning

• The NS is repeatedly paired with the US, producing the UCR, to form an association between the two stimuli.
• The NS is presented first, followed by the UCS.

Phase 3: After conditioning

• The NS is presented alone, and if a response occurs, learning has taken place.
• The NS becomes the CS, which produces the CR.

Operant Conditioning

• Learning occurs through interaction with the external environment.
• Behaviour is influenced by direct and observable environmental consequences.
• Learning is based on consequences.
• Organisms repeat behaviours with desirable consequences (reinforcement) and avoid behaviours with undesirable consequences (punishment).
• The learner is active. Their behaviour is consciously changed in response to a consequence.

Operant Conditioning - 3 Phase Model

• Antecedent/Stimulus: A stimulus or event that elicits a particular behaviour in the learner's environment.
• Behaviour/Response: The voluntary actions that occur in the presence of the antecedent.
• Consequence: The outcome of the behaviour, which determines the likelihood that it will occur again. It can be reinforcement or punishment.

Types of Consequences

• A consequence is an outcome of a behaviour that determines the likelihood of that behaviour occurring again in the future.
• There are two types: reinforcement and punishment.

Reinforcement

• It is a consequence that increases the likelihood of a behaviour reoccurring.
• Positive Reinforcement: Adding a desirable stimulus increases the likelihood of a behaviour occurring.
• Negative Reinforcement: Removing an undesirable consequence increases the likelihood of a behaviour occurring.

Punishment

• It is a consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour occurring.
• Positive Punishment: Adding an undesirable stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behaviour occurring.
• Negative Punishment: Removing a desirable stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behaviour occurring.

Classical Conditioning vs Operant Conditioning

• Similarities: Both are behaviourist approaches to learning and involve multiple phases.
• Classical: Requires several trials for learning to occur with the NS and UCS need to be repeatedly paired.
• Operant: Requires several trials for learning to occur and is more likely to occur if the consequence occurs several times in response to the behaviour.
• Differences: Operant involves voluntary behaviour, while classical involves involuntary behavior.

Social Cognitive Approach to Learning

• Social learning theory (Albert Bandura 1960s): Learning occurs in a social situation. Behaviours are learned by watching and imitating others in these settings.
• Observational Learning: Learning involves watching a model's behaviour and the associated consequences. It is vicarious learning where one is indirectly conditioned by watching someone else's conditioning.
• Model: The individual who performs the behaviour that the learner observes.
• Learner: Watches and pays attention to the model in order to imitate the behavior.

Three types of models

• Live model: A real-life individual who is displaying the behaviour.
• Verbal model: A real-life individual who does not display the behavior, but explains it.
• Symbolic model: A real or fictional character displaying the behavior in books, films, TV shows, or other media.

5 Stages of Observational Learning (ARRMR)

• Attention: Individuals focus on the model's behaviour and its consequences. Learners are more likely to pay attention to models who are perceived positively, of high status, similar to the learner, and behave in ways the learner believes can be imitated.
• Retention: Individuals create a mental representation to remember the model's demonstrated behaviour.
• Reproduction: Individuals must have the physical and mental capabilities to replicate the behaviour.
• Motivation: Individuals must want to reproduce the behaviour (intrinsic or extrinsic).
• Reinforcement: Receiving a positive consequence for the behaviour makes the individual more likely to reproduce the behaviour in the future. No reinforcement reduces the likelihood of reproducing the behaviour.

Types of Reinforcement

• Self-reinforcement: Behaviour is reinforced through factors internal to the individual.
• External reinforcement: Reinforced by factors external to the individual.
• Vicarious reinforcement: Reinforced by observing the reinforcement of another person performing the same behaviour.
• Reinforcement is the only stage that occurs after the behaviour is performed.
• Individuals progress through the stages sequentially.