Learning, Language, Thinking

Learning, Language, Thinking Saad Almoshawah Ph.D

Learning • Although most of us have a general idea of what we mean by "learning," it is helpful to agree on a specific • We can define learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior caused by experience or practice. • There are three parts to this definition. First, after you learn something, you behave differently from before. • Second, the change must be fairly permanent, or at least consistent. This distinguishes changes due to learning from those caused by temporary physiological or external influences.

Learning • Third, the new behavior must be due to experience or practice. this distinguishes learning from behavioral changes caused by ill-ness injury or maturation. A broken leg causes you to limp a major change in behavior but not due to learning. • thought all learning falls under this general definition, different types of learning involve somewhat different mechanisms and functions.

During the first half of the twentieth century, developmental researchers tended to believe that the three mechanisms of maturation and classical and operant conditioning were fully adequate to explain all the different aspects of child development. Nowadays, however, we take a less simplistic view of human nature. Psychologists are aware that there are many other mechanisms involved in how the child develops. Since most of these are to do with the child's social experience, they are often grouped loosely together under the heading of social learning mechanisms.

Learning theories • classical conditioning involves four elements: the unconditioned stimulus (US), which automatically produces the unconditioned response (UR), and the conditioned stimulus (CS), which after being paired often enough with the US produces the conditioned response (CR). • Extinction the elimination of a conditioned response occurs when Conditioned stimulus CS and US are not paired. Spontaneous recovery occurs when an apparently extinguished conditioned response regains strength after a period of no trials.

Operant conditioning requires the subject to operate on the environment in order to acquire a new behavior. The behavior is learned through reinforcement, an event that increases the likehood that a response will occur in the future. • Drive reduction theory states that anything that reduces an organism drive is positively reinforcing. The idea of an optimal level of arousal explains why arousal is sometimes positively reinforcing. Every animal has an optimal level of arousal. An animal in a relaxed state (below optimal level) may be brought back to its optimal level by exposure to arousing stimuli.

A conditioned, or secondary reinforcer is an initially neutral stimulus that acquires some of the properties of a primary reforcer and can serve as a reinforcer. Much of human motivation and behavior is shaped by conditioned reinforcers. • Successful operant conditioning depends on the proper timing reinforcement. Humans can learn even when reinforcement delayed for a long time because they are able to make connections between events and anticipate the future.

The greater the number of reinforced trials, the better a response will be learned; similarly, larger reinforcements teach a response more quickly. However, partial reinforcement makes a behaviour more resistant to extinction than continuous reinforcement. • By means of the process of shaping, an animal can be taught behavior patterns that are not ordinarily in its repertoire. Shaping involves reinforcing successive behaviors that gradually approximate the desired behavior, until the animal is performing the desired behavior.

Research on operant conditioning of physiological process suggests that humans and other animals can be conditionedestablish more control over internal bodily processes than they do ordinarily. • A third type of learning, imitation, involves observing a behaviourt and then repeating it. Imitation is extremely efficient because eliminates the need for trial and error required by both classic; and operant conditioning. • Innate characteristics and experience both play a part in behaviour but the role of learning increases as we ascend the developmental scale.

One of the most fundamental social learning mechanisms is the process of imitation. As any parent knows, children learn by copying other people's behaviour. Imitation is a very useful shortcut for gaining information about how to act in the world. • Imitation also allows us to see quickly which actions are likely to have pleasant consequences

Behaviour shaping • One major difference between classical and operant conditioning is the type of behaviour with which each form of learning is primarily concerned. Classical conditioning, as we have seen, tends to be concerned with autonomic responses like emotional reactions, or with reflexes. Operant conditioning, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with voluntary behaviour: acts which can be deliberately controlled .The emphasis on voluntary behaviour means that operant conditioning can be used to create new forms of behaviour, by a process known as successive

Language • The psychological study of language draws from many different fields of expertise. A considerable amount of research has gone into the way that children acquire language, and many of the insights which have been gained from this have been directly applied in special education schemes. Psychologists have also studied how people make use of non-verbal communication to direct and regulate conversation and social interaction verbal communication is sometimes closely linked with the use of language, such as through tones of voice or intonation, which are used to clarify or amplify the verbal message.

The psychology of language, however, also includes understanding the way in which the language that people use, and the manner in which they use it, affects people's thinking and their social relationships. As such, the psychology of language draws from sociolinguistics-the study of language in relation to society. Language is a cultural institution too.

Language and thinking • One of the most important areas for psychologistsinvestigating language has been the way that languageinterlinks with other cognitive processes. In particular, thedebate has centred around the precise relationship betweenlanguage and thinking: are thinking and language one andthe same thing, as the behaviourists asserted? Are theyentirely different, at least in their origins? Or does speaking a particular language shape a person's thought, and if so, to what extent?

Thinking and language as the same thing • the behaviourists denied that cognitive processes existed as separate processes from human behaviour. Their view on thinking was that it was simply a form of sub-vocal speech. A small child talks aloud as it monitors its actions and works out problems, but as we grow older, we learn to suppress our speech movements. But according to the behaviourists, we do not suppress them entirely. They argued that what people generally refer to as thinking are really infinitesimal movements of the larynx and throat, which have become so habitual that the person no longer notices that they are happening. So for the behaviourists, at least, the processes of language and thinking were one and the same: thinking was nothing more than sub-vocal language.

Other researchers showed that some forms of thinkingdo not need to involve language at all. In a study of concept- formation, Humphrey (1951) showed that if people were asked to identify the concept linking a series of cards which were turned over one at a time, they would generally find that they could select the right card long before they could articulate the rule that they were following. It was apparent, then, that some forms of cognitive representation could take place without language, and the behaviourist idea that language and thought were simply the same thing was largely discredited.

Language as dependent on thinking • The developmental psychologist Piaget, believed very firmly that knowledge was acquired through interaction with the environment, and represented internally as a result. Language, Piaget believed, is only one of several possible ways in which the child can represent its knowledge (Piaget,1959). In other words, Piaget saw knowledge as being the precursor to language. First, the child has experiences, and then it uses language to represent that experience, both internally and socially. In this view, language is a symbolic system used to express thought, but the child might equally well use other forms of representation, such as symbolic play, imitation or even drawing.

Piaget's belief that knowledge precedes language also ledto the idea that the language which the child uses willsimply reflect its cognitive development. So, for example,the use of egocentric language would indicate egocentricthought. As the child matures and acquires more subtleuses of language, Piaget believed, it does so because itsunderlying thought processes have become more subtle.The fact that children learn the word 'taller' after they havelearned the word 'tall' indicated, to Piaget, that the childhad a mental tendency to perceive in absolutes first, andrelative concepts later.

Stages of Language • Behavioural perspectives on language acquisition Fry (1977) identified a behavioural sequence in language development: • 0-2 months The only vocalisations that the child makes tend to indicate discomfort, such as crying and whimpering. • 2-4 months The child begins to make noises indicating pleasure, e.g. burbling and cooing. • 4-9 months The child begins babbling - practicing repetitive sounds, such as saying 'dadadada' repeatedly

Stages of Language • 9-18 months Babbling continues, but the child is now experimenting with similar sounds, e.g.'mamamama' and 'babababa'. It is building up a phoneme system, which it will use later for making words. The first words Start to appear, • 18-30 months The child begins to produce two-word phrases, like' allgone milk'. • 30 months- The child learns rules of grammar, expands its • 4 years vocabulary, completes development of thephoneme system, and learns how to put together complex sentences. • 4-6 years The child has acquired all the basic adult grammar and syntax needed for communication. The main task from then on is extending and developing its vocabulary.

Reading • When we read, we can experience language even if there isnobody else around, or directly talking to us. The process of interpreting the printed or displayed symbols which signify language has become an important skill in modern society, and a considerable amount of research has been devoted to studying it. Reading and writing are, by definition, metalinguistic skills. Without knowing about language, we could not learn how to use it in a more abstract or symbolic form, as we do when reading or writing.

Theories of reading • The theories of reading put forward by psychologists haveoften reflected the approaches in psychology at the time that they were put forward. For instance, early research onreading looked mainly at connections between the stimulusand the response, following the S-R behaviourist tradition,and involved analyzing the characteristics of the stimuli(written words and letters) in order to comprehend thereading process.

Reading disorders • Because reading is regarded as so important in our society, a considerable amount of research has gone into investigating reading disorders. Problems with learning to read can arise from factors other than disorders in reading itself. Conrad (1977) argued that deaf children rarely learn to read well, and suggested that this might be to do with methods of teaching children to read, which require the child to pronounce the words out loud, this is something which expert readers do not do, but which is usually considered necessary for learners. Since deaf children often have problems interpreting spoken words, this interferes with their learning, producing a readingdeficit which increases as the child grows older. Recentprojects involving teaching deaf children in different waysseem to support this argument.

Reading disorders • More common instances of reading disorder arise from children growing up in homes in which nobody else reads.Because children usually take their models of behaviour from family members, such a child gets an implicit message that reading is a 'school' activity, and not really relevant for home. If there is also a conflict of values between home and school, the child can end up seeing school learning as irrelevant and tedious. Such children often make little effort to learn to read, seeing little or no purpose in it; and simply learn to conceal their non-reading from their teachers. Most of the adults who eventually join adult literacy schemes have been through this kind of process. Teachers who believe in verbal and cultural deprivation can sometimes make this worse, by labelling the child as 'verbally deprived' and seeing their efforts as pointless, because, they think, the child will not learn anyway.

Reading disorders • Gunter (1983) showed how heavy television viewing atan early age could have a directly damaging effect on howwell children learn to read. One reason for this seems to bethe way that television provides 'instant' rewards. The childdoes not need to make any effort to understand what is ontelevision, and the stimulus is rich and varying. Learning toread, on the other hand, is a slow and tedious process which requires considerable effort from the child in. return for very little reward in the early stages.

Dyslexia • Reading disorder is known by the general term dyslexia.There are two main types of dyslexia: • acquired dyslexia,which arises as a direct result of either accidental injury or brain disease, • developmental dyslexia, which becomes apparent during the time that a child is learning to read. Although most research has focused on developmental dyslexia, research into acquired dyslexia has also produced some interesting insights.

Acquired dyslexia • A different kind of dyslexia, deep dyslexia, wasdescribed by Shallice and Warrington (1980). In deepdyslexia, the person's comprehension is affected, so theyfind it easier to read nouns and adjectives than harderwords like verbs or function words. This seems to relate tohow easy it is to form a mental image of a particular word -words like 'and' are difficult to imagine, while nouns aremuch easier. When people with this form of dyslexia weregiven different nouns to deal with, they found the nounsthat were easiest to picture much more manageable thanmore abstract ones. People with deep dyslexia also oftenhave difficulty reading nonsense words, even ones whichcan be pronounced easily, like 'framble'; but this is notdifficult for surface dyslexics.

Developmental dyslexia • In 1970, Critchley defined developmental dyslexia as: 'a disorder of children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities'. Smith etal. (1983) suggested that some developmental dyslexia's are genetic disorders. From an analysis of nine families. Smith etal. hypothesised that the disorder was carried as a dominant gene on chromosome15, the chromosome known to be involved in the development of language areas in the left hemisphere of the brain.

Other disorders • Student should referred to DSM-IV-R &ICD/10 &11 • Phonological Disorder 315.39 DSM • Stuttering F98.5 ICD/10 (307.0 DSM) • Cluttering F98.6 ICD/10 • AUTISTIC DISORDERS (299.00 DSM)

Thinking/ Thinking and problem- solving • Eysenck and Keane (1995) argue that there are three distinct features of thinking. • Firstly, it has to involve some degree ofconscious awareness - although that does not mean that we are aware of every aspect of our thinking. Usually, we are aware of the end product of our thinking, but not of all of the steps which we went through to get to that end product.

The second feature of thinking is that it can involvedifferent amounts of goal-orientation - in other words,there is a lot of variation in how far thinking is directed towards a particular goal or end-point. Some of our thinking is very goal-oriented: that is the kind of thinking we do as we try to solve puzzles, or to find solutions to problems that are worrying us. • But some of our thinking is not particularly goal-oriented at all. Gilhooly (1995) studied undirected thinking, where people just explore ideas or experience impressions, and found that this accounted for quite a significant proportion of our everyday thinking experience.

The third feature of thinking identified by Eysenck andKeane is that it can involve very different amounts ofknowledge. Some thinking, such as that involved inthinking about social situations or making expert judgments, can draw on enormous amounts of knowledge, and they are sometimes referred to as 'knowledge-rich' situations. Other types, such as working out arithmetic problems or solving geometric puzzles, may only involve a limited amount of knowledge, and psychologists tend to refer to these as 'knowledge-lean‘ problems.

Learning, Language, Thinking