Learning is the process that leads to a relative permanent behavior change or potential behavior change, meaning that as individuals learn they change the way they look at their environment, interpret the coming stimuli hence they way they make their interactions. This essay critically synthesizes learning and reflection of psychology under four different contexts.
The main tenets of classical conditioning are acquisition which is the first stage in learning when the response is established at first and strengthened gradually. After the acquisition of response, reinforcement follows. The next tenet is extinction, which appears when the occurrences of the conditioned response have decreased. In classical conditioning, it usually happens when the condition stimulus is no longer pairing with the stimulus that is unconditional. Spontaneous recovery is another principle. Which is the reappearance of the response after a period of rest f the response? Stimulus generalization tenet is the tendency of the stimulus evoking responses that are similar after the conditioning of the response. The last major tenet is discrimination, which refers to the ability to give a difference between conditioned stimulus and other stimulus that has not been paired with conditioned stimulus ( Christopher, 2001).
The major tenet of instrumental conditioning is found in the Skinner’s theory is the concept of reinforcement, which is considered to being the main factor in learning. The divisions in the schedule are continuous where every response is reinforced and the second is intermittent where only some responses are reinforced. Another tenet is shaping which relates to animal behavior. Animals are capable of being trained to under take complex functions by the use of shaping techniques. Behavioral objective is another application of Skinner theory. It is an approach to curriculum designing that gives an emphasis on the detailed prescription of the objectives of learning by the educational institutions.
The tenets of memory as it relates to learning include; the principle of short-term and long-term memory that gages one on recitation and re-writing what you learnt. The principle of over learning that applies when one after reciting the lesson can long enough say it perfectly. The last tenet is the principle of recitation that involves transferring materials from short-term memory to long-term memory ( Christopher, 2001).
There are many ways in which history has helped to shape important contemporary learning theories and issues. Before education psychology became a discipline that is formal, the concern of scholars was what individuals think and do as they learn and teach. Aristotle and Plato discussed the topics that are still under study by the psychologists. They discussed the role of teacher, relationship between teachers and students, teaching methods, nature and the order of learning and the role of effect in learning.
In history, Juan gave an emphasize on the value of practice, need to tap interests of students and the adaptation of instruction to deference of individuals and the positives of using self-comparison other than competitive social comparison when evaluating the work of students. History has lead to the introduction of visual aid by Comenius and the proclamation that understanding is the goal of teaching but not memorizing. The writings of philosophers from Europe for example Rousseau, has stressed the importance of activities, prior experience and interest. All these ideas and thoughts are consistent with the present work in education psychology.
History has brought in the psychology and main issues in the development of Education theories. This is because the continued development in education has been closely tied to psychologists in the first half of twentieth century. History has helped in moving from contemporized educational psychology. Many psychologists of education have developed the teaching approaches with the aim of foreshadowing some of the contemporary arguments and applications. It has also seen in the contemporary views of learning and motivation. The psychologists throughout history have studied cognition, learning, instruction, motivation among others that relates to education and schooling. Due to all these, different theories have impacted differently on education and supports different practices.
The issues of diversity have are very important in learning and memory. The diversity of perceptual categories influences learning, item recognition and generalization by changing the scale of similarity and positioning of exemplars within the space of stimulus. Individuals learning a diverse category make more errors and give slower response than these who are learning clustered category. They are more likely to accept distant peripheral items as members of the category, also these who learn a category that is diverse, have higher chances of wrongly thinking that they previously had seen a distant peripheral item. The influence of diversity of the recognition and generalization are generally consistent with the response on the ground of item similarities (Bandura, 1973).
However the regression modeling with the GCM reveals another influence. The perception of the participants of the stimuli is changed, so that the individual who learns a diverse category needs a greater physical difference so that they can perceive the similar psychological differences between the stimuli. This perceptual rescaling impact leads to lower degree of accuracy in the training task, poor item recognition, and wider generalization and above the effects that can be attributed to similarities of item.
There are many category learning that can explain the reduced learning accuracy that is observed in diverse conditions but does not at the same time explain the effects that are observed in generalization and recognition. The diverse categories are learned slowly as compared to clustered ones since the estimates of means and variances converge more slowly when the stimuli are less uniform. Since category density model is concerned with categorization it does not explain the diversity effects, though it gives a prediction that diversity affects generalization, (Randi, 2010).
The diversity effects can possibly arise from item similarities, shift in the boundaries of the categories or rescaling of the similarity connections. The effects of diversity manipulation on individual items are a bit smaller after factoring out the similarities of the item. There is no response that makes it possible in the principle, the distinction of the change in category biases and similarity rescaling. Studies have found out that judgments of category membership differ from the judgment of category similarity and specifically, the categorization of items at the boundary is biased in favor of diverse category.
It has be found that diversity affects the whole stimulus space in learning, generalization and memory tasks but there is no identification of the part of diversity that is significant. The participants may be sensitive to total stimuli range or to average absolute deviations (Randi, 2010).
If the theory has the capability to be used with the students’ difficult life, the student will become engaged mostly with that theory and be committed to learn more about the theory. The case vignettes, duty plays tends to be less involving the challenges that student’s life undergoes, hence getting the theory well involves application of the theory at a personal level. To apply the theory to other individuals’ problems, counselors should ensure that has practical applications through personal experience with the theory. It is similar as no one wants to jeopardize a dinner party with the meals that are untested. Which counselor is then ready to apply theories with others without personal experience to the theory? They need to know the idiosyncrasies of their chosen theories that have to be personal experience to the counselor through the application to personal life challenges (Vygotsky, 1962).
In conclusion psychology learning in this essay has been synthesized and reflected context of the following: major tenets of classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning, and memory (as it relates to learning) as they apply to the field of psychology; has discussed theways that history has helped to shape important contemporary learning theories and issues; has explored and analyzed the relevance of issues of diversity in learning and memory and lastly, a demonstration of critical comparative psychology skills in order to determine important similarities and differences in the various counseling approaches and interventions using the different learning theories.
