Conditioning and habit Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Conditioning and habit - Research Paper Example The responses that come up if practiced elaborately lead to habits which become subconscious responses elicited by an individual. There are many instances in our life where in we acquire so many new things. These experiences form a very important part of us and also determine to a very large extent how we analyze and assimilate the new information with the existing knowledge base that we have. Examples of such instances are a child learning a new language with a help of his grandmother, or perhaps a girl who has just started to ride on a two wheeled bicycle. Another example could be that students reacting with a particular response in presence of authority. All these instances tell us that we â€Å"learn† certain things and hence we acquire the knowledge that is coming our way to benefit us in the present or in the coming future. Michael and Modell (2003) define learning in their book Active Learning in Secondary and College Science Classrooms: A Working Model for Helping the Learner to Learn as a change in behavior that results from the learner’s interaction with the environment. There are some important things that have to be understood when we talk about learning. These form the basis for a concrete understanding about the concept at hand. All kinds of learning happen on the basis of the foundation made by already acquired skills and concepts. Whatever we come across, we take in the information as a raw data and then we incorporate the data into the concepts of the innate knowledge base that we have and learn new things. We can also illustrate another fact from the aforementioned premise that if the prior knowledge base is faulty, the acquisition and assimilation of the new concepts and schemata will be compromised. This leads to learning of information that is not accurate and taking into consideration all the aspects interplaying between the stimulus and the response (Fox, 2005). Of all the things we learn, we divide the whole information int o two definitive parts. These parts can be understood in terms of â€Å"what† we learn and â€Å"how† we learn. The process of acquiring both these concepts is also different. An example to illustrate this can be a preparation of Thai cuisine recipe. In this example, we note that there is a set particular group of ingredients to be used for the recipe to taste as it really should and it also entails a set particular way to make the dish. We need to learn the ingredients as well the way to go about mixing them together, differently in order to truly do justice to the cuisine at hand. The â€Å"what† of the learning phenomena is termed as declarative learning and the â€Å"how† are termed as procedural learning. Acquiring declarative knowledge entails a sound building of mental representations or models. These models form the crux for knowing the exact constitution of the things that make up a task and hence guides us with the way to perform the task in an effective manner. The manner with which the task is to accomplished has to be learned in standard way. This standard way is exactly the way which is reliable and valid. Therefore, to acquire such a standard process, practice is very important. This practice should be coupled with timely and appropriate feedback. By feedback, we actually mean that an appropriate response should be accompanied with every action that we perform (Jarvis, 2005). If the response is painful or aversive we tend to forget the