Page 2 - LN 1_Learning

LEARNING INVOLVES A SEQUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EVENTS.
Suppose psychologists are interested in understanding how a list of words is
learned. Following sequence will be followed:
1. Do a pre-test to know how much the person knows before learning,

2. Present the list of words to be remembered for a fixed time,
3. during this time the list of words is processed towards acquiring new
knowledge,
4. after processing is complete, new knowledge is acquired (this is
LEARNING), and
5. after some time elapses, the processed information is recalled by the
person.

By comparing the number of words which a person now knows as compared to
what s/he knew in the pre-test, one infers that learning did take place.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
▪ First investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov
▪ Pavlov was primarily interested in the physiology of digestion.
▪ During his studies he noticed that dogs, on whom he was doing his

experiments, started secreting saliva as soon as they saw the empty plate in
which food was served.
▪ Saliva secretion is a reflexive response to food or something in the mouth.
▪ Pavlov designed an experiment to understand this process in detail in which
dogs were used once again.
▪ In the first phase, a dog was placed in a box and harnessed. The dog was left
in the box for some time. This was repeated a number of times on different
days.

▪ In the meantime, a simple surgery was conducted, and one end of a tube was
inserted in the dog’s jaw and the other end of the tube was put in a measuring
glass.
▪ In the second phase of the experiment, the dog was kept hungry and placed in
harness with one end of the tube ending in the jaw and the other end in the
glass jar.

▪ A bell was sounded and immediately thereafter food (meat powder) was
served to the dog.
▪ The dog was allowed to eat it.
▪ For the next few days, every time the meat powder was presented, it was
preceded by the sound of a bell.
▪ After a number of such trials, “a test trial” was introduced in which everything
was the same as the previous trials except that no food followed the sounding
of the bell.