WE ARE WHAT WE HAD LEARNT - LEARNING

Two weeks in Summer semester and this week we had learnt about learning. In my point of view, I began to see what Psychology is all about and how much our learning in our everyday lives do actually affect our behaviour through experience and practice.

Pavlov made one of the biggest discovery when he found out that dogs salivate aren't just a salivate action. However, the dog salivating is the behaviour when it came across the smell of delicious food. Therefore, Pavlov spent around 20 years of his lifetime on a research regarding to dogs digestion system where he created the term classical conditioning.

Let me share with you about one simple story on learning that happens in our everyday life: One fine day, Shazman discovered that his room was full with cockroaches; big, brown and yet too disgusting to elaborate more. However, the worst part was that there was a family of cockroaches living in his room. After awhile, Shazman thought that something must be done but he could not resist one of his bad habit which is eating in his room. So what he did was, he tried putting some fried mi on the floor and when a cockroch appeared, he sprayed it with Ridsect. Well, he did so quite for a few days. Surprisingly after a week he did the same act again by putting some food on the floor; however, no cockroach appeared, not even the smallest cockroach were in his room. To maintain the no-cockroaches, he then played the spray sound on his phone or the laptop. Now,  Shazman's room is free from the family of cockroaches. Yeay!

Well, there are five elements of classical conditioning where I'll state what those terms also meant by stating the connections between the story above:

1. Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): This term basically means 'unlearned'. In this case, the food is the unconditioned stimulus.
2. Unconditioned Response (UCR): Unconditioned response means the automatic involuntary to the unconditioned stimulus. Well in this story, the cockroach appearance in Shazman's room.
3. Conditioned stimulus (CS): This is the stimulus that becomes able to produce a learned reflex response by being paired with the unconditioned stimulus. In this case, it's the spray of the rid sect, but mostly is the sound produced by the spray.
4. Conditioned response (CR): This terms definition is the learned reflex response to a conditioned stimulus. Based on the story, the cockroach runs away especially when hearing the sound of the spray because the cockroaches knew that  the spray could actually kill them. Therefore, the flee out of the room making Shazman a happy boy. 
5. Neutral stimulus (NS): Neutral stimulus is a stimulus that on its own does not lead to any response. Well, we can take the food in the story as an example because the cockroach would eventually appear then it runs away when there is food.

Apart from classical conditioning theory, we also had learnt about Operant Conditioning. In general, operant conditioning is the learning of voluntary behaviour through the effects of pleasant and unpleasant consequences to responses. In simpler words, we can actually create someone's or some animal's behavior by having reinforcements. Those reinforcements would teach them on what should be done and vice versa. 

There are mainly two types of reinforcement:

1. Primary reinforcer: A reinforcement taken due to biological needs like hunger, thirst, or touch. For example, we drink cold water to quench our thirst on a sunny day.
2. Secondary reinforcer: A reinforcement that is being paired with a primary reinforcer. For example, to have cold drinks on a hot summer vacation needed money because nothing can be gain without money. Money is the the second reinforcer.

So for those two types of reinforcer, the reinforcement also has another two more branch:

1. Positive reinforcement: It is a reinforcement where there are pleasurable stimulus such as giving an ice-cream when our child cleans up his room.
2. Negative reinforcement: A reinforcement whereby removing, escaping, or avoiding an unpleasant stimulus. For example, we use a cool fever onto our heads when having a high fever.

Apart from that, this chapter also teaches that it is almost possible to train any living thing according to the way we want to by our own way and style. This  can actually be done by Shaping. Let's say, we want to train a monkey how to wear a shirt. Well, we can't expect to see the monkey wearing the shirt right on the spot. However, steps needed and same goes to reinforcement which is food. Perhaps at first we introduce the monkey what is a shirt then give food. Then one by one, starting from the head then it's arms to wear the shirt, then give food. You'll be amazed to see that the monkey can be able to waer the shirt on its own without any help from you. 

Many people got confused between negative reinforcement and punishment. Negative reinforcement is just the removal or avoiding an unpleasant stimulus while punishment is giving a response whereby making the action to most likely not repeated again in the future. Well, this important in our lives especially when being a leader or parents in a family. Well, there are actually ways to ave a more affective punishments:

1. Immediately punish when the bad action is taken. For example, cane our child when he or she don't want to attend classes.
2. We should make sure the punishment is consistent. So whenever our child don't attend classes, do not forget to cane him.
3. The punishment should also be paired with a reinforcement such as reward an ice-cream when our child attend classes

Apart from that, observational learning is the learning done through watching a model perform a certain behaviour. There are mainly four types of observational learning:

1. Attention
2. Memory
3. Imitation
4. Motivation

Well, that's just mainly about the topic learning. I hope that you do benefit the most from my blog :)

Written by Syazana Suraya