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Learning is a change in an individual caused by experiences. Learning does not include natural changes in development or characteristics present at birth but these can be significantly linked to each other. For example, walking is part of developmental progression but that skill also depends on experiences with crawling and other activities. We will be focusing on the different theories of learning and the ultimate impact on our behavior.
The most well known behavioral learning theories are Pavlov’s classical conditioning and Skinner’s operant conditioning. Pavlov and Skinner were early researches trying to understand how people and animals learn.
Classical conditioning involves conditioning a person or animal to respond in certain ways by pairing a previously neutral stimulus with an unconditioned response. The most famous study is where Pavlov paired a ringing bell with a dog salivating. At first, the bell meant nothing to the dog but the dog would salivate when he saw his food. Pavlov began ringing the bell before giving a dog food until the dog learned to salivate to just the sound of the bell. The response was automatic after this conditioning. Classical conditioning focuses on reflexive behavior or behavior that involuntary.
B.F. Skinner argued that reflexive behavior only accounts for a small portion of all behavior. He focused on operant behaviors. Operant conditioning uses pleasant and unpleasant consequences to increase or decrease certain behavior. This process invokes systematic changes in behavior by giving an immediate consequences. A consequence is an outcome and can either be a reinforcer or punisher. A reinforcer strengthens a behavior, so it increases the frequency. There are different types of reinforcers, including primary and secondary, positive and negative, and intrinsic and extrinsic. Different types can mean different things to different people. Just because a reinforcer works for one person does not mean it will work for another person. Candy may be a great reinforcer for certain children but if a child doesn’t like the particular candy that is being offered, it is not a reinforcer anymore. Punishers weaken a behavior, so it is meant to decrease the frequency of a behavior. Similar to reinforcers, the effectiveness of a punisher cannot be assumed. One child may respond as intended to being scolded while another child may desire being scolded for attention.
Social learning theories were developed from behavioral learning theories; however, this focuses on the effects of cues on behavior and the internal mental processes. Albert Bandura developed this theory to account for aspects he thought behaviorism ignored. He believed behavior was learned directly from a model and not by consequences alone. Modeling is the imitation of others’ behavior. When a parent smiles and coos, their infant child may imitate this facial reaction and coo back. The response didn’t require a learning process and the child could produce the response immediately. Observational learning is when we learn from the success and failures of others. A young child may see their caregiver drink out of a cup for a drink and thus they slowly tilt their cup to also get a drink. The child saw the caregiver’s success with drinking and also attempted it. Bandura also notes that vicarious learning takes place. Similar to observational learning, we learn by seeing others reinforced or punished for certain behaviors. We may drive more appropriately after seeing another person being pulled over by the cops. We may buy certain clothing after we see an advertisement of a model holding hands and smiling. Although we know those are paid people and the clothing isn’t what made them happy, we want those experiences and are more likely to imitate their behavior.
Information comes into the mind through our senses- what we see, smell, taste, hear, feel. That stimuli come into the sensory register. The sensory register forgets and discards a majority of the information that comes in but if it notices something that matters, according to factors that are unique to us, it passes that information on to the working memory. Working memory will then take that information and evaluate it based on background knowledge from our long-term memory. It will compare the information to past experiences and attempt to link the new stimuli with something we already know or have experienced. Working memory is the most active part of our memory system. It is where true ‘thinking’ takes place. It is where our minds determine if something is truly worth keeping. If the working memory determines something is important, it will store that information in long-term memory to be used later. If it determines it is not important, it will discard the information.
An example of this is when walking in a store you smell a certain perfume or cologne. Your sensory register is flagged because it thinks it knows this smell from before so it passes that on to the working memory. The working memory pulls information from your long-term memory and determines that it does, in fact, know that smell from before. Maybe it was the same perfume or cologne wore by your high school love or first love years ago. You may start to remember a specific memory with that person, all from simply passing that smell again. The sense of smell is believed to be the strongest sense connected to our memory.
Let’s look at this system a little closer. Our sensory register, the part that determines to pass the information along or not, only holds information for a very short amount of time- not more than a couple of seconds. It uses information from our long-term memory to decide if the information is important or to interpret incoming stimuli. Our working memory, again also called short-term memory, can only hold a certain amount of information for a few seconds. Our current thoughts that we are thinking about are stored in this part. Working memory operates on information, organizes information for storage or discarding, and links stimuli to information. The capacity of working memory is about five to nine items and has a duration of about 12 seconds. Long-term memory is where we keep information for extended periods of time, sometimes forever. The capacity of long-term memory is unlimited. There are three main parts to long-term memory- episodic memory, semantic memory, and procedural memory. Episodic memory is our memory of personal experiences, like memories related to a college graduation. Semantic memory is our memory about facts- rules, concepts, principles. This includes our problem-solving skills. Information you’ve learned in college are stored here. Procedural memory is the ability to recall how to do something, it’s the “knowing how” instead of “knowing that”. Examples of information in this part of memory are riding a bike, typing on a keyboard, or walking.
Okay, we’ve covered a lot in this video. The most important thing to remember is that we learn in a variety of ways, like through conditioning, the use of consequences, modeling from others’, and our memory system. We are constantly taking in information and deciding how we need to use this.
We love you guys! Go out and be your best self today! And as always, Happy Nursing!
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