Psychology of learning

The psychology of learning is a theoretical science.

Learning is a process that depends on experience and leads to long-term changes in behavior potential. Behavior potential designates the possible behavior of an individual, not actual behavior. The main assumption behind all learning psychology is that the effects of the environment, conditioning, reinforcement, etc. provide psychologists with the best information from which they can understand human behavior.

As opposed to short term changes in behavior potential (caused e.g. by fatigue) learning implies long term changes. As opposed to long term changes caused by aging and development, learning implies changes related directly to experience.

Learning theories try to better understand how the learning process works. Major research traditions are behaviorism, cognitivism and self-regulated learning. Media psychology is a newer addition among the learning theories because there is so much technology now included in the various types of learning experiences. Neurosciences have provided important insights into learning, too, even when using much simpler organisms than humans (Aplysia). Distance learning, eLearning, online learning, blended learning, and media psychology are emerging dimensions of the field.

Socrates (469-399 B.C.) introduced a method of learning that is now referred to as piloting. Piloting refers to arriving at answers through one's own power of reasoning. This was used when Socrates was teaching geometry to a young slave boy who knew math but nothing of geometry. He would ask this boy to solve a problem like finding the area of a square. When the boy would get the answer incorrect he would repeatedly question his reasoning by contradicting his logic. The notion that knowledge comes from within was inspired by Socrates and his experiments.

In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850—1909) continued the study of learning. Specifically he studied memory in its "pure" form. "Pure" meaning free from meaningful associations. With himself as his own experimental subject he exercised this form of memory with the use of meaningless syllables and repetition. Ebbinghaus laid the way to another form of learning; becoming increasingly able to recall something as a result of practice and repetition. He was known for the discovery of the learning curve and the forgetting curve.

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