LEARNING THEORIES AND ITS APPLICATION

INTRODUCTION

Most people have been close to formal learning situations for a significant part of their lives. They are very curious to know about its dynamics and seek to clarify the following questions. To what extent can we attribute a person’s behavior to learning? Will people learn things in spite of their environment? What is the difference between learning a behavior and acquiring it naturally? Can a skill be acquired or must an individual be born with such a talent as part their personality. These kinds of question demand that managers have a thorough understanding of what learning is and in what ways learning influences behavior.

LEARNING PROCESS

Theories of Learning: Learning is part of every one’s life. In our life, all complex behavior is learned. Learning is defined as any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience. Whenever any change occurs learning is taken place in the individual. If an individual behaves, reacts, responds as a result of experience which is different from others, a person has encountered some new learning experience in his life. This definition consists of the following four key elements:

i) Change process: Learning involves some change in oneself in terms of observable actions explicitly shown to others or change in ones attitude or thought process occur with oneself implicitly. Change may be good or bad or positive or negative from an organization point of view. If a person is happened to experience some negative incidents, that person will hold prejudices or bias or to restrict their out put. On the contrary, if a person is encountering some good incident, that person is likely to hold positive attitude.

ii) Permanent change: Due to whatever exposure a person encounters, the impact what it generates may be long lasting and permanent. Hence, the change must be of relatively permanent. If change occurs due to fatigue or alcohol consumption or temporary adaptation, it may be vanished once the goal is achieved.

iii) Setting behavioral actions: Explicit changes occurring in behavior is the main goal of learning process. A change in an individual’s thought process or attitudes without any changes in any explicit behavior will not be considered as learning process.

iv) Need for meaningful experiences: Some form of experiences is necessary for learning. Experience may be acquired directly through observation or practice. If experience results in a relatively permanent change in behavior, one can confidently say that learning has taken place.Theories of Learning: There are three types of learning theories. These theories are classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning.

Classical Conditioning Theory:

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov developed classical conditioning theory. When he was doing a research on the chemical properties of saliva of dog, he noticed accidentally that the dog started salivating the moment hearing the sound of a door of cupboard clinging. Based on his observation, he wanted to do some experiment whether the dog can be conditioned to respond to any neutral stimuli. He used a simple surgical procedure to operate the salivary glands of a dog to measure accurately the amount of saliva.

Pavlov’s Experiment: Pavlov conducted his experiment in three stages.

Stage I: When Pavlov presented the dog with a piece of meat, the dog exhibited a noticeable increase in salivation. The meat is unconditional stimulus and salivation is unconditional response.

Stage II: In this stage, the dog was not given a peace of meat but only exposed to a sound of ringing bell; the dog did not salivate to the mere sound of a ringing bell.

Stage III: Pavlov decided to link both the presentation of meat and the ringing of a bell one after the other with an interval of 5 minutes. After repeatedly hearing the bell before getting the meat, the dog began to salivate as soon the bell rang. There is an association or link between meat and ringing a bell. After repeating the association between meat and ringing a bell, the dog started salivating merely at the sound of the bell, even if no food was offered. The dog is now conditioned to respond to a sound of a bell and started salivating. This is called classical conditioning process.

Thus, classical condition is defined as the formation of S-R link (Stimulus-Response) or habit between a conditioned stimulus and a conditioned response through the repeated paring of conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus.

In this experiment, the meat is unconditioned stimulus, and the expected response that is, salivating to the meat is called as unconditioned response. The sound of a bell is a neutral stimulus which does not have any property to elicit salivation, is called as conditioned stimulus. Although it was originally neutral, if the bell was paired with meat (unconditioned stimulus) it acquired the same property as meat eliciting the salivation.

The sound of a bell produced salivation when presented alone. This is called conditioned response, that is, now the dog is conditioned to respond to the sound of a bell.

Learning conditioned response involves building up an association between a conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus. When the stimuli, one is natural and the other one neutral are paired, the neutral one becomes a conditioned stimulus and hence takes on the properties of the unconditioned stimulus. Closely associated with classical conditioning as a vehicle for learning new behaviors are the phenomenon of extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination.

Extinction

Once a dog has learned to salivate to a bell, does this reflex continue to occur if the bell is sounded for many trails without the meat (unconditioned stimulus). Pavlov found that without meat, the bell elicits less and less salivation on each trail and eventually stopped salivating once for all. This phenomenon is called as extinction.

Spontaneous Recovery

But they also found that extinction does not return the animal fully to the unconditioned state. The mere passage of time following extinction can partially renew the conditioned reflex, a phenomenon is known as spontaneous recovery. And a single pairing of the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus can renew the conditioned reflex, which can be abolished again only by another series of extinction trails. On the basis of such findings, Pavlov concluded that the conditioned reflex is not truly lost during the extinction, but is somehow inhibited, and that it can be disinhibited by such means as the passage of time or the recurrence of the unconditioned stimulus.

Stimulus Generalization

Learning research has demonstrated that individuals can respond to two separate stimuli in the same way on the basis of their similarities. Once the dog is conditioned to salivate to sound of a bell, the dog is also likely to respond to the sound of a buzzer sound which similar to the sound of a bell. In work life, for example, coffee taster must learn to respond appropriately to various flavor and aromas in deciding whether to accept or reject samples of coffee beans. Once they have learned what an ideal tastes and aroma should be, they must judge and compare samples to this standard.

After conditioning, stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus will elicit the conditioned response even though they themselves are never paired with the unconditioned stimulus. This phenomenon is called generalization. The magnitude or likelihood of a response to the new stimulus is correlated with its degree of similarity to the original conditioned stimulus. Thus a dog conditioned to salivate to a 100-hertz tone also salivated to tones of other frequencies. But the farther the tone was in frequency from the original conditioned stimulus, the less the dog would salivate to it.

For example, the acceptable or permissible level of standard is up to 4 degree variation, the taster will check to what extent the samples of coffee ordered is matching to this permissible within the 4 degree standard. On the basis of this similarity, the taster responds in a similar fashion to all samples and accepts those which are matching to that standard. If a person is learned to drive a car, and apply the same principles of driving to drive other mode of vehicles such as truck, van etc.

Stimulus Discrimination

Individuals can respond differently in the presence of two separate stimuli on the basis of differences in their characteristics. In the salivation experiment, the dog is conditioned to salivate to the sound of bell and not to the sound of any other sound. In due course of time, the dog is able to discriminate the sounds which are relatively different from the ideal bell sound. The dog, on the basis of stimulus dissimilarity, responds differently to the sounds of different tones by salivating only to the sound of a bell and not to any other mode of sound such as buzzer, metronome, musical note etc. The dog has shown stimulus discrimination.

In another experiment, dog is conditioned to salivate to the sight of Black Square and not to any other colored square. After a series of trails in which presentation of gray square were never followed by food and the presentation of the Black Square were always followed by food, the dog stopped salivating to the gray square and continued to salivate to the black one. The researchers continued this procedure with even-darker shades of gray, until the dog is conditioned to discriminate a Black Square from the gray shades. In traffic control, the drivers are learned to respond to different colors of signal and maintain the order in the traffic regulation.

Stimulus generalization and discrimination are highly important as facilitator of learning through classical conditioning. Because of our ability to recognize similarities, individuals are able to transfer what we already know to new situations through the process of stimulus association and generalization. Classical conditioning is a major avenue of learning among individuals in work organizations. For example, trainer in organization take great care to make sure that conditions in the classroom or training facility are as similar as possible to actual work conditions in order to assure that what is learned can be transferred to the job.

Application of Classical Conditioning Principles at Work

Whenever President or Vice-President of Corporate Office visits factory site the employees in the shop floor will more attentive at work and look more prim, proper and active in their work life. It is quite natural that top management personnel visit (Unconditioned Stimulus) evoking or eliciting a desired response- being prim and proper at work from the employees (Unconditioned Response). The routine cleaning of windows or floor of the administrative office will be neutral stimulus never evoking any response from the employees. If the visit of the top management personnel is associated with such cleaning process, eventually the employees would turn on their best output and look prim and active the moment windows and floor are being cleaned up. The employees had learned to associate the cleaning of the windows with a visit from the head office. The cleaning process (conditioned stimulus) evoked attentive and active work behavior (conditioned response). Similarly, Christmas Carols songs bring pleasant memories of childhood as these songs are being associated with the festive Christmas Spirit. Classical conditioning is passive. It is elicited in response to a specific, identifiable event.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioned principle is proposed by B.F. Skinner, an American Psychologist. It is a type of conditioning in which desired voluntary behavior leads to a reward or prevent a punishment. Operant conditioning principle emphasizes strongly that the behavior of an individual is a function of its consequences. If the consequences are pleasant, the behavior associated with such consequences will be repeated again and again. If the consequences are unpleasant, the behavior will be in extinct. The rationale behind this theory is that people learn to behave in order to get something they want or to avoid something they don’t want. Operant condition is learned process. The tendency to repeat such behaviouir is influenced by the reinforcement or lack of reinforcement brought about by the consequences of the behavior. The proper reinforcement strengthens a behavior and increases the likelihood that it will be repeated.

Skinner’s Experiment: Skinner developed an apparatus to conduct a series of learning experiment using rats. He named that apparatus as Skinner’s Box which has certain features such as a lever, bowl, light, water container etc. A highly deprived rat is placed in the box. Once a rat nudges or touches or hits the lever attached in the corner of the box, a piece of food pellet is dropped in the bowl. By trail and error, the rat learns that hitting the lever is followed by getting a food pellet in the bowl. Skinner coined the term operant response to any behavioral act such as pressing or hitting or nudging the lever that has some effect on the environment. Thus in a typical experiment with a skinner box, hitting or pressing the lever is an operant response, and the increased rate of lever hitting or pressing that occurs when the response is followed by a pellet of food exemplifies operant conditioning.

Application of Operant Conditioning in Work Life

If a sales person who hits the assigned target of sales quota will be reinforced with a suitable attractive reward, the chances of hitting further sales target in future will be exemplified. Skinner argued that creating pleasant consequences (giving attractive rewards) to follow specific forms of behavior (hitting sales target) would increase the frequency of that behavior. People will most likely engage in desired behaviors if they are positively reinforced for doing so.

Rewards are most effective if they immediately follow the desired response. In addition, behavior that is not rewarded is less likely to be repeated. A commissioned sales person wanting to earn a sizeable income finds that doing so is contingent on generating high sales in his territory.

Social Learning Theory

People learn through both observation and direct experience, which is called as social learning theory. Individual learn by observing what happens to other people and just by being told about something, as well as by direct experiences. By observing people around us, mostly from parents, teachers, peers, films and television performers, bosses, we learn new behavior pattern.

Albert Bandura, who has most vigorously studied observational learning in humans, has emphasized that people observe others to learn not just specific motor skills (such as driving a car and performing surgery) but also more general modes or styles of behaving. Bandura demonstrated both of these functions of observational learning – acquiring specific actions and learning general styles of behavior – in experiments with children.

Bandura proposed that people actively observe the behavior of other people to gain knowledge about the kinds of things that people do, and use that knowledge in situations where it is useful.

Social learning theory gives much importance to perceptual process. People respond to how they perceive and defy consequences, not to the objective consequence themselves. The influence of models is key to the social learning process. The following four processes are vital to determine the influence that a model will have on an individual.

i) Attention Process: People learn from a model only when they recognize and pay attention to its critical features. People tend to be most influenced by models that are attractive, repeatedly available similar to us in our estimation.

ii) Retention Process: A model’s influence will depend on how well the individual remembers the model’s action after the model is no longer readily available.

iii) Motor Reproduction Process: After a person has seen a new behavior by observing the model, the watching must be converted to doing. This process then demonstrates that the individual can perform the modeled activities.

iv) Reinforcement Process: Individual will be motivated to exhibit they modeled behavior if positive incentives or rewards are provided. Behavior that is positively reinforced will be given more attention, learned better and performed more often.