Learning
Human learning starts at birth and continues until death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between people and their environment. Active learning occurs when a person takes control of his or her learning and monitors what they do and what they don’t do. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines.
About Learning in brief
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. Human learning starts at birth ) and continues until death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between people and their environment. Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event, but much skill and knowledge accumulate from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime, and it is hard to distinguish learned material that seems to be \”lost\” from that which cannot be retrieved. Active learning occurs when a person takes control of his or her learning and monitors what they do and what they don’t do. This encourages learners to have an internal dialogue in which they understand what they are learning. This meta-cognitive and other strategies can be taught to a child over time. Studies within metacognition have proven the value in active learning, usually usually at a stronger level as a result of direct instruction from a teacher. In addition, learners have more incentive to learn when they have more control over how they learn. This is a key characteristic of student-centered learning and direct instruction is the direct characteristic of teacher-centeredlearning. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learning in certain plants. The nature and processes involved in learning are studied in many fields, including educational psychology, neuropsychology, experimental psychology, and pedagogy. Research in such fields has led to the identification of various sorts of learning. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness.
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. For Vygotsky, play is the first form of learning language and communication and the stage where a child begins to understand rules and symbols. Sensitization is thought to underlie both adaptive as well as maladaptive learning processes in the organism. This concept acts in direct opposition to sensitization. The habituation process is faster for stimuli that occur at a high rather than for stimuli for weak and strong stimuli, respectively. The concept of sensitization is based on the notion that a defensive reflex to a stimulus such as withdrawal or escape becomes stronger after the exposure to a different harmful or threatening stimulus. This definition exempts the changes caused by sensory adaptation, fatigue, or injury. For example, if a stuffed owl is put into the cage, the birds initially react to it as though it were a real predator, but soon the birds react less, showing habituation. If another stuffed owl is put in the cage and the birds respond to it again as like it are a predator, demonstrating that it is only a very specific stimulus that is habituated to. If a person rubs their arm continuously. After a while, this stimulation creates a warm sensation that eventually turns painful. The pain results from the progressively amplified synaptic response of the peripheral nerves warning that the stimulation is harmful.
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This page is based on the article Learning published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
