Characteristics of Learning
Let us now examine an everyday learning situation in order to see what happens when we learn. Consider the case of a person le2rning to drive an automobile.' Despite his desire to drive, he does not have the necessary skill, so he sets out to change his behavior. At first his efforts are only partially successful. He starts wi~h a violent jerk or stalls the engine. Once he is under way, steering becomes a problem as he cuts the corners too sharply or is unable to stay on the right side of the road. Abrupt stopping may occur because of inappropriate braking action. The driver displays many responses, some right and some wrong. Those which he perceives as wrong are gradually eliminated in favor of the responses which are right in that they lead him toward the goal of driving the car in the proper way. He repeats the right responses over and over again and they become smoother. more precise, and better timed. Eventually, driving an automobile is added to his repertoire of behavior. And in one way, at least, the individual is a different person from his former self. He is now an automobile driver, whereas before he was not.
The Learning Goal
Certain elements common to most learning situations are present in the driving task. In the first place there is a goal. This meclnS that the learner wants something. He has a need or desire to learn. If such an urge is not present, he will never get under way. Before a man can be taught to operate a lathe, he must want to learn to be a lathe operator. You won't learn about psychology or tennis or calculus or typing unless you want to acquire this knowledge or learn these skills. Why a person would want to drive an automobile is perhaps obvious, but in this analysis the reason is of no consequence. The point to be remembered is that he did have the desire.
Often we fail to appreciate the importance of the learner's goal in teaching or training because the goal as the teacher perceives it may be different from the learner's perception of the goal. If the eacher's goal is to get the student to learn as much as possible about the subject matter in the available length of time, he may be disappointed when the student's performance falls far below the teacher's expectations. The reason for the mediocre peIiormance may lie in the student's goal. Perhaps his goal wa$ to learn just enough to get by or 'ust enough to make a C grade. There will be a difference in what is earned in an industrial training program if the trainer's goal is to get 'he employee to learn to produce the maximum number of units of a given quality in a given time and the employee's goal is to produce just enough to keep the foreman off his back and the time-study man from tting his rate.
Responses Are Necessary
After the individual has a desire or need to learn, so that there is a :lear-cut goal in his own mind, wha.t else is necessary if learning is to :ake place? The old adage that "we learn by doing" provides the answer. Thus, the second factor common to all learning is some kind activity, or response. The learner himself must do something-ake responses. This activity may be overt, e.g., arm, leg, or hand activity in playing tennis, or it may be internal, as when he manipulates ideas in solving a problem. Trying to teach a person anything by giving him a verbal description of what you want him to do, or ::emonstrating to him how the task should be done, or showing him by -eans of a film the nature of the skilled performance, is of little use unless it leads to active doing by the learner himself. The person who earned to drive the automobile not only had the desire to learn but he ::id something about it by resorting to many responses-arm, leg, ~ger, reading, judging responses-all of which were a part of his natural equipment.
Of course, the necessary responses for attaining a goal must be Potentially available to the would-be learner. A feebleminded person annot get through school because the intellectual responses necessary for schoolwork are not available to him. The very young child not learn to write until his nervous and muscular system are efficiently developed to enable him to make the fine coordinations necessary for handwriting. The responses necessary for learning a new task may also be limited by previous learning. Learning may be or impossible in an advanced course in mathematics if a prequisite is a basic course in algebra and the learner has never taken such a course. In the automobile driving situation the necessary responses are available to most people. In some cases, however, poor coordination, slow reaction speed, faulty vision, or some physical or mental defect may make it impossible to learn to drive.
Reinforcement
How now do we account for the fact that tbe learner with a goal, and making many responses, selects certain of these responses-the right ones-and eliminates the wrong ones? This question brings us to the third basic characteristic of learning: reinforcement. The learner selects from all the responses he is making those that are reinforced. The responses that are not reinforce:! are eliminated or not learned.
You can easily understand the nature of reinforcement if you keep in mind that the person trying to -learn is, in a sense, out or balance with his environment. He sets out to restore himself to a balanced state by learning some adjustive act. The consequences of any act-reduction of pain, avoidance of- distress or punishment, recognition, success, reward, pleasure-which lead the rearner toward his goal are reinforcing. The satisfaction which accompanies a successful outcome reinforces the success-getting response, so the learner tends to repeat such responses. The unreinforced responses, since they are not successful in leading to the goal, are weakened. Our automobile driver -resorted JO many responses, some of which he eventually discovered were successful; others were unsuccessful. The former were repeated over and over again, each time receiving added reinforcement; the latter were not repeated because of lack of reinforcement, and hence were not learned.
The effect of knowing how one is doing-whether his reponses are right or wrong-provides the clearest and simplest illustration of reinforcement as a learning principle. In learning situations like playing tennis, bowling, casting for trout, or typewriting, the correct or successful response is usually apparent to the learner. When one makes a strike in bowling, the visual cues from the falling pins tell him immediately that the way he rolled the ball was the right way, and the ensuing reinforcement causes him to try to rall the ball the same way the next time. But suppose the learner has no way of knowing whether his response is correct. In a situation like this, reinforcement cannot occur, or is minimized, and hence learning should at least be retarded.
Lack of Reinforcement
A striking illustration of how the lack of reinforcement impedes learning progress is a wartime study in which men were being trained to track airplanes with a tracking apparatus. Two groups of equal tracking ability, as determined by previous performance, were obs·erved. One group was given knowledge of results in the form of a buzzer which was sounded by the trainer whenever the trainee was off the ttacking point by more than 2 miles. In other words, reinforcement was present in the form of feedback to the learner as to the correct and, incorrect tracking responses. The other training group received no information at all and hence no reinforcement. After only sixty-eight minutes of practice, the group trained with the buzzer was found to be off target only 32 percent of the time, whereas the group trained without the buzzer was off 58 percent of the time. Reinforcement really works!
Classes of Reinforcers
Because of earlier discussions of perceptual principles you should not be surprised to know that the effect of reinforcement will depend on the pe1'ception of the individual who is learning. An outcome that is reinforcing to one person may not be reinforcing to another. \\'hat one person re'gards as a rewarding experience may be regarded as a neutral or even as a punishing experience by another. However, in general, one can count on an allnost universal acceptance of certain classes of reinforcers such as money, food, status recognition, and companionship.
Reinforcement often occurs automatically, without the learner's being aware of the effect at the moment. Suppose that you have been playing mediocre golf for a couple of years and decide to improve your game with the help of a professional instructor. The instructor watches you play and criticizes your habit of gripping the club like a baseball bat. He says, "That is no way to hold a golf club. How on earth did you pick up that habit? You will probably reply that when you first took up golf, you simply picked up the club and tried to hit the ball. But why did you learn to grip the club in the wrong way? The wrong way must have been reinforced, otherwise it would not have been learned. The important point is that you did not perceive it to be the wrong way. Very likely you gave little thought to the grip, but concentrated on hitting the ball. The reinforcement that was responsible for your bad habit was probably the natural or comfortable feel of the baseball grip. You failed to grip the club the proper way because, to the novice, this way feels awkw.ard and strained. Much human learning occurs and persists under conditions of reinforcement which were never specifically identL'. 3d by the learnE., or if once identified, were later forgotten. Since so much of our learning comes about through association, let us look briefly at this process, which we call "conditioning."
Conditioning
Day-by-day we run into many ways of associating things, For exam· pIe, the normal stimulus to start a flow of saliva is the taste of food. But how often our mouth waters at the mere sight of some favorite food. This happens because the sight of food has been associated in the past with its actual taste. This involves what we call conditioning: a given response (salivating) comes to be evoked br a previously neutral stimulus (sight) when this stimulus is combined several times with the stimulus which naturally elicits the response. In this Jilustration the flow of saliva is an unlearned response; that is, an unconditional response is a conditioned response. Thus sight has been substituted for tq.ste in eliciting the response of mouth watering.
The more nearly alike a new stimulus is to the original stimulus, the better it will.substitute for it. Sometimes we become conditioned to avoid things. A very unpleasant tasting medicine may be taken in a solution of orange juice. Weeks later the mere sight of an orange may make us shudder.
Through conditioning we often learn to attach value to things that have no intrinsic value. Let us illustrate by a study. In one experiment, secondary rewards ("poker chips") of certain colors were given to chimpanzees. Primary reward values (food, water, and play privileges) were assigned to different chips. The animals were placed in different cages that contained food and water vending machines, and a work apparatus requiring them to lift weights ir! order to get chips that would "buy" food, water, and play privileges. The chimps readily learned to operate the work apparatus, but they would not work for chips that would not buy them anything. They learned not only to manipulate the chip!i iri obtaining rewards but to discriminate between chips (by color) that wduld buy food, water, or activity. And they learned to weed out working for chips that would not buy anything. If the animals had a large number of chips, they would not work very ha~d to secure additional ones. Some the animals even learned to trade "food chips" for '''play chips."
Sometimes the "chimp-o-mat," as the vending machine was caIled, did not work. Yes, you guessed it-the animals banged it on the side! Both animals and humans behave in accord with many ways we have been conditioned. Here is where motivation becomes so important to us in our learning.
