Latest Psychology NCERT Notes, Solutions and Extra Q & A (Class 11th & 12th)
11th										12th

Class 11th Chapters
1. What Is Psychology?	2. Methods Of Enquiry In Psychology	3. Human Development
4. Sensory, Attentional And Perceptual Processes	5. Learning	6. Human Memory
7. Thinking	8. Motivation And Emotion

Chapter 5 Learning

Introduction

At birth, humans possess a limited set of reflexive responses. As individuals grow and mature, they acquire the capacity for a wide variety of behaviours. These range from basic actions like identifying parents and using utensils to complex skills like driving a car, communicating effectively, and solving problems. This ability to acquire new behaviours and adapt is fundamental to human functioning and is known as learning.

Learning allows individuals to manage their lives, gain skills, acquire knowledge, and interact with the world effectively. This chapter explores various aspects of learning, including its definition, characteristics, different types or methods of learning (from simple conditioning to complex cognitive and skill learning), key psychological processes involved, factors influencing learning speed and extent, and common learning difficulties.

Nature Of Learning

Learning is a central process in human behaviour, referring to changes that occur as a result of experience. Formally, learning can be defined as "any relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by experience".

It is important to differentiate learning from temporary behavioural changes caused by factors such as drugs, fatigue, or illness. Changes due to practice and experience that are relatively permanent are considered learning.

Features Of Learning

Learning has several key characteristics:

Learning always involves experience: It occurs through interaction with the environment or events. Repeated experience of certain sequences or consequences can lead to learning (e.g., associating a bell sound with dinner). A single intense experience can also lead to learning (e.g., getting burned from a matchstick teaches caution).
Behavioural changes are relatively permanent: The changes in behaviour or behavioural potential resulting from learning are not fleeting. This distinguishes learning from temporary changes like those caused by fatigue (feeling tired after studying), habituation (reduced response to repeated stimuli like noise), or the effects of drugs or alcohol, which disappear when the causal factor is removed.
Learning is an inferred process: Learning itself is not directly observed. Instead, it is inferred from performance, which is a person's observable behaviour or response. For example, a teacher infers that a student has learned a poem based on their ability to recite it (performance).
Learning is different from performance: Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or a new potential for behaviour, which may not always be immediately demonstrated in performance. Performance is the actual execution of the learned behaviour.

Paradigms Of Learning

Learning takes place through various processes, ranging from the acquisition of simple reflexive or voluntary responses to complex cognitive processes. Different methods account for different types of learning. The simplest forms are called conditioning.

Classical Conditioning

This type of learning was first systematically studied by Russian physiologist Ivan P. Pavlov during his research on digestion in dogs. Pavlov observed that dogs began to salivate not just when food was in their mouth, but also when they saw the empty plate or the person who usually fed them. This led him to investigate how this association was learned.

In his classic experiment, Pavlov paired a neutral stimulus (a bell, which initially caused only alertness) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) (food powder, which naturally elicited salivation - an unconditioned response or UR). The bell was sounded immediately before presenting the food. After repeated pairings, the dog began to salivate merely at the sound of the bell, even without food. The bell became a conditioned stimulus (CS), and salivation to the bell became a conditioned response (CR).

Classical conditioning is thus a form of S–S learning, where one stimulus (CS) becomes a signal for the impending occurrence of another stimulus (US). The organism learns to associate the CS with the US, and consequently, the CS comes to elicit a response (CR) similar to the UR.

Diagram showing Pavlov's experimental setup for classical conditioning with a dog

(An image illustrating Pavlov's experiment with a dog harnessed, a tube collecting saliva, and a mechanism to present a bell sound (CS) and food (US).)

Everyday examples of classical conditioning include salivating when seeing a favourite food (seeing the food is CS signaling the food itself as US, leading to salivation CR), or a child becoming afraid of a balloon after one burst and made a loud noise (balloon is CS paired with loud noise US, leading to fear CR).

Determinants Of Classical Conditioning

Several factors influence how quickly and strongly a conditioned response (CR) is acquired in classical conditioning:

Time Relations between Stimuli: The timing of the CS and US presentation affects conditioning. There are four main procedures:
- Simultaneous conditioning: CS and US are presented and end at the same time.
- Delayed conditioning: CS onset precedes US onset, with the CS continuing until the US ends. This is generally the most effective procedure for acquiring a CR.
- Trace conditioning: CS onset and end precede US onset, with a time gap between the two. Less effective than delayed conditioning.
- Backward conditioning: US precedes CS onset. Rarely leads to CR acquisition.
Type of Unconditioned Stimuli (US): US can be appetitive (pleasant, eliciting approach responses like eating, drinking, which give satisfaction) or aversive (unpleasant/painful, eliciting avoidance/escape responses like noise, shock). Appetitive conditioning is typically slower and requires more trials than aversive conditioning, which can be established in just a few trials if the US is intense.
Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli (CS): A more intense CS (whether in appetitive or aversive conditioning) is more effective in speeding up the acquisition of the CR. Fewer trials are needed with an intense CS.

Operant/Instrumental Conditioning

Also known as Instrumental Conditioning, this type of learning was extensively studied by B.F. Skinner. It focuses on voluntary behaviours, called operants, emitted by an organism that operate on the environment and are under the organism's control. Operant conditioning is the process of learning these voluntary responses through their consequences.

Skinner's experiments, often using rats or pigeons in a Skinner Box, demonstrated this. A hungry rat in the box would explore and accidentally press a lever, resulting in a food pellet (reinforcer). The rat would eat it. With repeated accidental presses followed by food, the rat learned to associate pressing the lever with getting food. Soon, it would intentionally press the lever to obtain food. In this situation, the response (lever pressing) is instrumental in obtaining the reinforcement (food).

Diagram of a Skinner Box used for operant conditioning

(An image illustrating a Skinner Box, a chamber containing a lever or key, a food dispenser, and sometimes a light or speaker, used to study operant conditioning.)

Everyday life is full of instrumental conditioning examples: children learning to find hidden sweets, being polite to get favours, or learning to operate gadgets like TVs based on getting the desired outcome (seeing a channel). Humans learn means to achieve goals through this process.

Determinants Of Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is influenced by the consequences of behaviour, called reinforcers. A reinforcer is any stimulus or event that increases the likelihood of the preceding desired response occurring again. The effectiveness of a reinforcer depends on its type, number (frequency), quality (superior vs. inferior), and schedule (continuous vs. intermittent). The nature of the response being conditioned and the delay between response and reinforcement also play a role.

Types Of Reinforcement

Positive Reinforcement: Involves pleasant consequences that strengthen and maintain the response that caused them. Positive reinforcers satisfy needs and desires (food, water, praise, money, status, information).
Negative Reinforcement: Involves unpleasant or painful stimuli. Responses that lead to the removal, avoidance, or escape from these stimuli are negatively reinforced, increasing the probability of such avoidance/escape responses. For example, wearing warm clothes to avoid cold or wearing seat belts to avoid injury/fines are negatively reinforced behaviours. Negative reinforcement is different from punishment.

Punishment: An event that decreases or suppresses the likelihood of a response. While negative reinforcement *increases* the probability of avoidance/escape (removing an unpleasant stimulus), punishment *decreases* or *suppresses* a response. Punishment does not suppress responses permanently. Its effectiveness depends on intensity and immediacy. Stronger punishment may suppress more but can also lead to negative feelings (dislike/hatred) towards the punisher.

Number Of Reinforcement And Other Features

The number of trials where reinforcement is given influences learning; generally, more reinforced trials lead to stronger learning and stabilised performance. Amount of reinforcement refers to the quantity of the reinforcing stimulus received per trial. Quality of reinforcement refers to how desirable the reinforcer is. Increased number, amount, and quality of reinforcement can accelerate operant conditioning.

Schedules Of Reinforcement

A reinforcement schedule determines when and how reinforcement is delivered. Schedules can be continuous (reinforcement after every target response) or intermittent/partial (reinforcement only sometimes). Continuous reinforcement leads to fast learning but also fast extinction when reinforcement stops. Partial reinforcement leads to slower learning but greater resistance to extinction – the partial reinforcement effect – because it's harder to detect when reinforcement has been completely discontinued.

Delayed Reinforcement

Delaying reinforcement after a response significantly reduces its effectiveness. Immediate reinforcement leads to better learning than delayed reinforcement. Smaller, immediate rewards are often preferred over larger, delayed ones, illustrating this principle.

Key Learning Processes

Regardless of the type of conditioning (classical or operant), certain key processes occur during learning:

Reinforcement
Extinction
Generalisation
Discrimination
Spontaneous Recovery

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is the act of delivering a reinforcer, a stimulus that increases the rate or probability of the preceding response. Positive reinforcers increase response rates when presented; negative reinforcers increase response rates when removed. Reinforcers can be primary (biologically important for survival, e.g., food) or secondary (acquire reinforcing properties through association, e.g., money, praise, grades). Shaping is a technique where successive approximations to a desired response are reinforced to gradually build the target behaviour.

Extinction

Extinction is the gradual weakening and disappearance of a learned response when reinforcement is removed from the situation where the response previously occurred (e.g., if the CS is no longer followed by US, or the operant response no longer gets reinforcement). Learning shows resistance to extinction, meaning the learned response continues for some time even without reinforcement. Resistance increases with more reinforced trials up to a point. Increasing amount of reinforcement can decrease resistance. Delayed reinforcement and partial reinforcement schedules increase resistance to extinction compared to immediate or continuous reinforcement.

Generalisation And Discrimination

Generalisation is the tendency to respond similarly to stimuli that are similar to the original conditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or to perform a learned operant response in the presence of similar stimuli. (e.g., fear of a person with a moustache generalising to another person with a beard). Discrimination is the complementary process of learning to respond differently to stimuli that are different from the original stimulus or to perform the learned response only in the presence of the specific reinforcing stimulus while inhibiting it in the presence of similar non-reinforcing stimuli. Discrimination depends on the organism's capacity for discrimination learning.

Spontaneous Recovery

Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of a weakened or extinguished learned response after a period of rest or lapse in time since extinction. Even if a response seems completely extinguished, presenting the CS (in classical conditioning) after some time can elicit the CR again. The amount of recovery can depend on the duration of the time lapse.

(A graph illustrating the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery, showing response strength increasing during acquisition, decreasing during extinction, and then partially recovering after a rest period when the stimulus is presented again.)

Classical And Operant Conditioning : Differences

Feature	Classical Conditioning	Operant Conditioning
Nature of Response	Involves reflexive or involuntary responses (respondents) elicited by specific stimuli (US).	Involves voluntary responses (operants) controlled by the organism.
Stimulus Control	Response is under the control of a clearly defined CS associated with a US. S–S learning.	Response is under the organism's control; the reinforcing stimulus (consequence) is crucial, not a preceding CS (though discriminative stimuli can exist).
Role of Organism	Organism is passive, response is automatically elicited by the US.	Organism is active, must emit the response to receive reinforcement.
Consequences	US elicits the UR and also serves as a reinforcer for the CS-CR association. Response is associated with a stimulus.	Reinforcer is the consequence that strengthens the response. Response is associated with its outcome.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is a phenomenon where an organism, after experiencing inescapable aversive stimuli, learns to be helpless and fails to escape or avoid subsequent aversive stimuli, even when escape is possible. This concept is linked to psychological depression.

Seligman and Maier's study with dogs demonstrated this: dogs subjected to inescapable shock (classical conditioning) later failed to learn to escape shock in an operant conditioning setup where escape was possible, passively enduring the shock instead. This behaviour was termed learned helplessness.

This phenomenon is also observed in humans. Continuous failure experiences can lead to learned helplessness, resulting in reduced persistence and poor performance on subsequent tasks, even when capable. Persistent depression is often associated with learned helplessness.

Observational Learning

Also known as imitation, social learning, or modeling, this form of learning occurs by observing and emulating the behaviour of others (models). Humans learn many social behaviours this way. In situations where individuals don't know how to act, they watch others and copy their behaviour.

Bandura's experiments, notably the Bobo doll study, demonstrated observational learning. Children watched films of an adult model behaving aggressively towards a Bobo doll. Different groups saw the model being rewarded, punished, or neither. When placed in a room with the doll, children who saw the model rewarded were most aggressive, while those who saw the model punished were least aggressive. This shows that while observation leads to acquiring knowledge of the behaviour, performance depends on the observed consequences for the model (reinforcement or punishment).

Children extensively learn social behaviours, roles (playing house, police), and personality characteristics (aggressiveness, politeness, diligence) by observing and imitating adults and peers at home and in social settings.

Cognitive Learning

Some psychological perspectives view learning as involving central cognitive processes, focusing on changes in the learner's knowledge or understanding rather than just stimulus-response connections. This approach manifests in forms like insight learning and latent learning.

Insight Learning

Demonstrated by Köhler's experiments with chimpanzees solving complex problems (reaching food using poles or boxes), insight learning is the process where the solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear, often described as a "flash of insight," rather than through gradual trial and error or conditioning. Once insight occurs, the solution can be applied immediately in similar problem situations, indicating the learning of a cognitive relationship between means and ends.

Latent Learning

Latent learning is learning that occurs without immediate outward demonstration or reinforcement, but which can be recalled and used when reinforcement is provided later. Tolman's experiments with rats in a maze showed that unrewarded rats still learned the maze layout, forming a cognitive map (a mental representation of spatial locations and directions), which was only demonstrated when food (reinforcement) was introduced at the end of the maze.

Verbal Learning

Unique to human beings, verbal learning involves acquiring knowledge and making associations primarily through words. Psychologists use various laboratory methods to study how words are learned and associated, using materials like nonsense syllables, familiar/unfamiliar words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Methods Used In Studying Verbal Learning

Paired-Associates Learning: Participants learn pairs of words (stimulus-response, e.g., nonsense syllable + English word) and recall the response word when presented with the stimulus word. Trials continue until errorless recall.
Serial Learning: Participants learn lists of verbal items (words, syllables) in a specific serial order, often using the serial anticipation method where they anticipate the next item in the list.
Free Recall: Participants are presented with a list of words and asked to recall them in any order immediately after presentation. This method is used to study how people organise words in memory. Items at the beginning and end of the list are typically recalled better than those in the middle.

Determinants Of Verbal Learning

Verbal learning is influenced by factors related to the material itself, such as the length of the list (longer lists take more time to learn) and meaningfulness. Meaningfulness can be assessed by the number of associations a word elicits, its familiarity, frequency of use, and relationships among words in the list. Lists with low association values or lack of relations are harder to learn.

The total time principle suggests that a fixed amount of time is needed to learn a fixed amount of material, regardless of how that time is distributed across trials; more learning time generally leads to stronger learning.

In free recall, verbal learning is often organisational. Participants recall words in organised clusters (e.g., by semantic category - category clustering) or in their own subjective order, even if the words were presented randomly. This shows learners actively organise information.

Verbal learning can be intentional (deliberate effort to learn) or incidental (unintentional learning of features like rhymes or letter patterns while engaged in another task).

Skill Learning

A skill is the ability to perform a complex task smoothly and efficiently, such as driving, piloting, or writing. Skills are learned through practice and involve coordinating perceptual-motor responses or sequences of S-R associations.

Nature Of Skills

Skills are complex abilities acquired through practice. Examples include driving a car, piloting a plane, navigation, writing, reading, and playing musical instruments. These involve integrating sequences of movements and perceptions into a coordinated, efficient performance.

Phases Of Skill Acquisition

Skill learning progresses through distinct phases with practice, performance improving in each. Fitts proposed three phases:

Cognitive Phase: Learner understands instructions, memorises procedures, and keeps task demands in conscious awareness. Performance is often error-prone and requires significant mental effort.
Associative Phase: Sensory inputs become linked with appropriate responses. Errors decrease, performance improves, and time taken reduces with practice. Concentration is still required.
Autonomous Phase: Performance becomes automatic with minimal conscious effort. Attentional demands and interference from external factors decrease. Errorless performance becomes characteristic.

Practice is essential for skill learning, leading to improved performance and automaticity over time.

Factors Facilitating Learning

Beyond the specific determinants of different learning types, several general factors can facilitate learning:

Continuous Vs Partial Reinforcement

As discussed, the schedule of reinforcement affects learning speed and resistance to extinction. Continuous reinforcement (reinforcing every desired response) leads to rapid learning but also rapid extinction when reinforcement stops. Partial or intermittent reinforcement (reinforcing only some responses) leads to slower learning but much greater resistance to extinction (partial reinforcement effect).

Motivation

Motivation is a state that energises and directs an organism towards a goal, arising from needs. It is a prerequisite for learning, driving the organism to act until the need is satisfied and the goal is attained. Motivation can be intrinsic (learning for enjoyment) or extrinsic (learning for external rewards or goals). Higher motivation generally leads to greater effort and faster/better learning.

Preparedness For Learning

Species have biological constraints on their learning capacities. Preparedness refers to the genetic predisposition to easily learn certain associations (S-S or S-R) that are adaptive for the species. Some learning tasks are easy for one species but extremely difficult or impossible for another. Preparedness exists on a continuum, from tasks an organism is biologically prepared for (easy to learn) to those it is unprepared for (difficult or impossible to learn). Organisms are neither prepared nor unprepared for tasks in the middle of the continuum, which can be learned but with difficulty.

Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities are disorders that significantly hinder the acquisition of academic knowledge and skills. They are a heterogeneous group of intrinsic disorders presumed to originate from central nervous system functioning problems, affecting abilities like listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, and mathematics. Learning disabilities can occur in children of average to superior intelligence and adequate sensory-motor systems, distinguishing them from difficulties caused by sensory impairment, intellectual disability, or environmental factors. If not addressed, they can impact various aspects of life.

Symptoms Of Learning Disabilities

Common symptoms of learning disabilities include:

Difficulties in writing, reading text, and speaking.
Listening problems despite normal hearing.
Difficulty developing learning strategies and plans.
Attention disorders (easily distracted, difficulty sustaining attention) and often hyperactivity (excessive movement).
Poor space orientation and inadequate sense of time (getting lost, difficulty with routine, confusing directions).
Poor motor coordination and manual dexterity (lack of balance, difficulty handling small objects/tasks like sharpening a pencil or riding a bicycle).
Failure to understand and follow oral instructions.
Difficulty understanding social relationships and body language.
Perceptual disorders (visual, auditory, tactual, kinesthetic misperception, e.g., confusing sounds). Sensory acuity may be normal, but its use in performance is impaired.
Dyslexia: A common learning disability involving difficulty with reading and writing, often confusing letters (b/d, p/q), numbers, or words (was/saw). Difficulty organising verbal material.

Learning disabilities are not incurable. Remedial teaching techniques are developed to help children learn and overcome these difficulties, enabling them to progress academically.

Key Terms

Associative learning, Biofeedback, Cognitive map, Conditioned response, Conditioned stimulus, Conditioning, Discrimination, Dyslexia, Extinction, Free recall, Generalisation, Insight, Learning disabilities, Mental set, Modeling, Negative reinforcement, Operant or instrumental conditioning, Positive reinforcement, Punishment, Reinforcement, Serial learning, Spontaneous recovery, Unconditioned response, Unconditioned stimulus, Verbal learning

Summary

Learning is a relatively permanent behavioural change or potential produced by experience, inferred from performance. It differs from temporary changes (fatigue, habituation, drugs).

Learning types: classical (S–S association, CS predicts US eliciting CR), operant (voluntary response strengthened by consequences/reinforcement), observational (learning by observing models), cognitive (change in knowledge, e.g., insight, latent learning), verbal (human, word associations), skill (efficient complex task ability acquired by practice).

Conditioning depends on stimulus timing/type/intensity (classical) and reinforcer type/number/schedule/delay, response nature (operant).

Key processes: reinforcement (increasing response rate), extinction (decreasing response rate without reinforcement), generalisation (responding to similar stimuli), discrimination (responding differently to different stimuli), spontaneous recovery (reappearance after extinction).

Observational learning involves acquiring knowledge by observing, performance affected by observed consequence for model. Verbal learning uses methods like paired-associates, serial learning, free recall, influenced by material meaningfulness, organisation, maybe incidental.

Skill learning passes cognitive, associative, autonomous phases via practice. Facilitating factors: motivation, preparedness, reinforcement schedules (partial reinforcement effect).

Learning disabilities (dyslexia, attention, motor, perceptual issues) hinder learning, require remedial teaching.