Stages of learning
- Key People:
- Leslie Valiant
- On the Web:
- Verywell Mind - Learning Theories In Psychology (Nov. 08, 2024)
Should the basic process prove to be the same for all varieties of learning, there would still be reason to believe that it operates differently from one stage of practice to another. For example, in coping with painful stimuli (e.g., electric shocks) laboratory animals seem to learn in two successive, distinguishable phases. Apparently they first learn to fear the situation, then to avoid it.
For example, when an animal learns to avoid painful shock (by turning a paddle wheel or by running away), a warning signal can be given; e.g., with a flash of light or a buzzer. The two stages of learning then can be studied separately. The animal first is subjected to pairings of signal and unavoidable shock to establish (by classical conditioning) signs of fear in response to the signal. In the second stage it is allowed to stop the frightening signal by making an appropriate response. Preconditioned members of the many animal species have learned to avoid the signal itself, even though shock never was presented again.
Theoretically, the classically conditioned signs of fright in response to the initially neutral signal have a motivating function. Termination of that stimulus is seen as instrumental—that is, as rewarding the animal by reducing learned experiences of fear.
Classical conditioning
A two-stage process has been suggested even for classical conditioning. One theory is that in the first stage the subject learns that a neutral stimulus (a ringing bell) is to be presented along with another stimulus (food) whether or not it exhibits a reaction (salivation). Conditioning of any reaction is held to constitute the second stage of learning. The skimpy supporting evidence points to the first stage as a prerequisite, suggesting that responses can only be conditioned after the sensory conditions are recognized.
Verbal learning
Theories that interpret verbal learning as a process that develops in stages also have been worked out. In one variety of rote learning the subject is to respond with a specific word whenever another word with which it has been paired is presented. In learning lists that include such paired-associates as house–girl, table–happy, and parcel–chair, the correct responses would be girl (for house), happy (for table), and chair (for parcel). By convention the first word in each pair is called the stimulus term and the second the response term. Paired-associate learning is theorized to require subprocesses: one to discriminate among stimulus terms, another to select the second terms as the set of responses, and a third to associate or link each response term with its stimulus term. Although these posited phases seem to overlap, there is evidence indicating that the first two (stimulus discrimination and response selection) precede the associative stage.
Remembering and forgetting
Learning, remembering, and forgetting often have been considered separate processes. Yet these distinctions seem to blur in the face of contemporary research and theory.
Transient and enduring memory
Evidence for stages of learning comes from observations of learners over relatively extended series of trials (or comparatively long periods). The empirical data suggest that several alterations in memory function occur even during a single trial. The process that commits information to memory also seems to have several stages.
Most theorists attribute at least three stages to memory function: immediate, short-term, and long-term. Immediate memory seems to last little more than a second or so. For example, subjects may be asked to remember where specific objects are located within a complex array they have just seen. Their performance shows that considerable information is retained only briefly, rapidly fading unless it is given special attention.
Short-term memory lasts about 15–30 seconds, as after looking up a telephone number. One makes the call, discovers he has forgotten the number (perhaps in the midst of dialing), and has to look it up again. Nevertheless, such short-term retention does make information available long enough to be rehearsed; if the learner repeats it to himself, the number can be transferred to some sort of longer term storage.
Thus, rehearsal seems to facilitate transfer of data from short-term to long-term memory. Once committed to long-term memory, the results of learning tend to endure but can be abruptly abolished when specific parts of the brain are injured or removed; they also are vulnerable to interference from other learning. Nevertheless, conditioned responses may undergo little or no forgetting over periods of months or years. And electrical stimulation of the surgically exposed brain while a person is awake can make him remember experiences long thought forgotten. Recall is reported to be similarly enhanced during hypnosis.
Retrieval
The amount of information one readily can retrieve from what is stored in memory is prodigious. In locating an item in memory, he apparently activates a system that stores a set of related data; then he searches for the item within that system. For example, a person is shown a long, randomly mixed list of words that belong to different categories (e.g., names of animals, plants, professions, tools). When asked to remember as many words as he can, he spontaneously will tend to group them by category; this is called clustering of recall. Thus, names of animals (spread throughout the original list) are likely to be remembered one after the other.
Studies of the familiar tip-of-the-tongue experience yield analogous results. College students who heard definitions (of this sort: a small, open Chinese boat) were asked to supply the right word (in this case it would be sampan). Those who said they might have it somewhere on the tip of the tongue were significantly accurate in guessing the first letter and the number of syllables. Their tendency also to recall words that sounded the same or that had similar meanings is reminiscent of clustering.
Considerable evidence of this kind supports the theory that the process of retrieval first locates stored data in some sort of associative network and then selects an item with specific characteristics.
Forgetting
Whether immediate and short-term data simply decay or are lost through interference is a matter of controversy. However, evidence is clearer that interference affects retention of information in long-term storage. Retention of the word happy (learned as a paired associate of table) seems to be subject to the interference of a strong tendency to associate table with chair. Thus, the paired associate table–happy becomes more readily forgotten when followed by parcel–chair as the very next item in a list; this seems to help chair reassert its old tendency to be associated with table. In general, it is found that associations tend to interfere with or to inhibit one another. Interference deriving from earlier (and later) associations is called proactive inhibition (and retroactive inhibition). These two forms of inhibition commonly are accepted as major processes in forgetting, proactive inhibition being assigned greater importance.