IMPRITING IS THE SPECIAL FORM OF learning in which heredity mechanism determine the time of appeareance and general nature of the behaviour.BUT THE particular enviorment resources at the critical time determine the specific stimuls response connection that is learned.ITS NATURAL basis is unknown.IT HAS become increasingly appearent that the particular connection learned at that time has far reaching conseqences for the individual later pattern of social behaviour as an adult.THE PHENOMENON OF impriting was first described a century ago by the french naturalist,who had noticed that newly hacthed chiks follows the first moving object to which they are exposed,with resulating unmodifibale fixation of this instintive following response.LORENZ,THE FIRST to call this learning ''IMPRITING'' pointed out that it turned to be occur only during a critical time in the social and neurological development of young animals.HE ALSO pointeer to the importance of the ''REALSER'' IN SUCH LEARNING:certain aspects of an animal enviorment tend to ''RELEASE'' a response that is specific to that species.


THEORIES OF LEARNING


HISTORICALLY THEORIES of learning have generally moved from broad attempt to offers an explanation for all the phenomena of learning toward theories which attempt ot give the definate coherence to one particular subset of experimental findings in the field of learning.


HULL FORMAL THEORY OF LEARNING


THE BEST EXAMPLE of this learning is that of CLARK HULL.hull attempted to CONSTRUCT THE theortical system which:COULD account for the vast amont of emprical data that had accumalated;DERIVE many theorim from a relatively small number of the postulate;WAS specific and explict enough to permit direct translation into emprical tests:was open to revion on the basis of the new evidence,empirical proof,and further speculation;had one of its goal qualityfication throgh the use of the mathmatically stated formulas.his theory assumed as


IT ASSUMED THAT what is learned is the connection between a stimuls and response.THIS UNIT of learning an intervenable enviorment is called habit strength.IT IS represented by the symbol H ,in which H, stand for ''HABIT'' and the subscript S AND R arevsimply stands for bthe stimul and the response in question.


REINFORCEMENT IS regarded as necessary condition for the learning.FOR A RESPONSE to the increase in strength ,it must be followed immideatly by a goal substance.IT IS assumed that reinforcer gain their effectiveness by reducing the level of the exicting drive.THUS THIS theory has been called the drive reducation theory.

THE LEARNED connection between a stimuls and response is assumed to increase in magnitude grudually and continuously as a function of the reinforced practice and to represent the relatively permenant changes in behaviour.


PERFORMANCE OF the learned response is measured through its amplitude speed freqency of the occurance and resistance to the exictintion.



SKINNER APPROACH TO LEARNING


THE STRICLY FORMEL deductive system of hell contrast sharply with the approch taken by the B,F,SKINNER.HERE LITTLE use is made of concept representing events and states which are not obseravable and directed manipliable;in fact identification and measurement of hull intervening variable are regarded as unnecessary.for him the basic issue to discover what reinforcer sustain and control responding rather then which stimul evokes it REINFORCEMENT defined not theortically in terms of its drive -reducing properties but empirically reinforcement occurs when probability of response has been increased by the stimuls that has followed it.A REINFORCER is any stimuls which following the response increase its probility of occurance on the next occusion.


WATSON THEORY

BOTH HULL AND skinner approch despense with consciouness thus relay upon extensive use of animals as subjects.IN FACT hull went so far as to suggest that the tedenct to impute motives and reasons to SUBJECT IN conditioning experiments should be overcome by CONCEPTUAL use of robot model to provide the suggested the prophylaxis against anthropormorphic subjectivism.WATSON WAS the precursor of this tridation which as we seen emphatically rejected the techniqes of introspectation.HE FELT that the prevailing study of the structure of experience should be discarded in favour of the study of what organsom and do how they behave.IN PART behaviourism rested upon the foundation of the conditional reflex.IN NITS emphasizes on learning and importance of the enviorment in shaping behaviour it also challenged the concept of ''INSTINCIT''which had dominated american psychologhy in the early 1900. although he was CONNECTIONIST IN HIS CONCEPTION OF WHAT WAS LEARNED,HE DID NOT REFERE TO REINFORCEMENT AS A CONDITIONED FOR LEARNING.according to his views that response which ahve occureds more recently are most likely to occurs when the same stimul is present again.



GUTHRIC THEORY




` LIKE WATSON he emphasized the role of temporal contigity of the stimuls events and its elicited response.HE BELIEVD learning occurs regardless of whether reinforcement is given so long as the conditioned response and stimuls occurs together.WHAT IS learned is based upon the principle of recency;the response will be made and the act repeated.reward act upon only on learning only indirectly,by changing the situation and defining the termination of an act it is not essentional for learning to take place.




THORNDIKE REINFORCEMENT THEORY


WHILE E.L THORNDIKE AGREED with watson that learning involve the grudal stamping in of S.R connection,HE rejected the LAW OF EXERCISE,, in favour of the '' LAW OF EFFECT'' IN explainning how the connection are strenthened.IT IS THE conseqence of the response,the event which follow it,which are considered significant in affecting its probebility of occurance on the next trial.SATISFYING events are held to strengthened S-R connection annoying events to weaken them.PUNISHMENT,by making behaviour more varaiable,would thereby weaken learning.


COGNITIVE THEORY OF LEARNING


THE THEORTICAL approches described above are primarily analytical,stressing as they do units of learning,S,R connections,and decrect effects of reinforcers.THEY ALLOW for great percession in the analaysis of simplified learning situation,but they do not appear to the justice to the complexity involve in human learning,problem solving,reasoning and learning one`s native language.IN SHORT they ignore higher mental process.AN ALTERNATIVE approach is presented by cognitive theories of learning of the gestaultat psychologhist.THE GESTAULT PSYCHOLOGHIST were marily interest in the phenomena of human perception and thus in the experience of the subject as well as in external obserabable condition.HOWEVER, the underling principle of the perception were easily carried over to the cosideration of the learning process.COGNITAVE THEORIES are concerned with the learning of the information and generalization as well as particular response.BECAUSE OF their emphasize on the importance of the whole in shaping the parts and their use of analogies from field theory.



CURRENT TRENDS IN THE THEORIES OF LEARNINGS


THESE THEORIES HAVE generated considerable recerch,as wella sheated controvercy.ATTEMPT to perform critical experiments to prove one theory over another have repetedily failed because of the lach of the specifity of the condition necessary for refution.BECAUSE OF this and because of the vast accumlation of data pertinent to many diffcult problems areas within learning,current approches are genersally less grandoise in scope.PSYCHOLOGHIST no longer argue about how many kinds of learning there really are or whether one formulation can ever encompass all the necessary and sufficien conditions for all case of the learning.RESERCHERS ARE more likely to confine their attention to maniture system generated to answer problems arising from the subset of learning phenomena.AMONG THE MANITURE system making their appearence are mathmaticals models to account for the narrow range of phenomena,such as the work of BUSH,AND MOSTELLER,and statictial learning theories has created the MEDITATIONAL THEORY explaning facts not perdicted by single unit theory.SUCH APPROCHES promises greater percession in relationto a broder range of learning issues then has been possible in the past.


VERBAL LEARNING

IT IS HARDLY necessary to point out the importance of the verbal learning in our every day living.THERE ARE probebly few things we do in the course of the day that have not been influenced strongly by pervious verbal learning.OUR ABILITY to manipulate symbols,as in language, makes it possible for us to learn indirectly many responses that lower animals can learn only by doing if at all.VERBAL LEARNING include any case of learning to respond to or with words.IT COVERS the wide range of learning tasks from that of assoicating two nonsenses syallabus to learning how to solve problem stated in words.FOR THE sake of conveiences verbal problem solving and concept formation which often include learning .


THE EARLIEST such experiments were carried out by the german psychologhist HERMAN EBBINGHAUS and involved the learning of the list of nonsenses syallabus like giz tak baz.HE CHOSE nonsenses syallubas on the theory that he would be ''thus'' be studing ''pure'' learning uncontaminated by any influences from meaning emotional factor or differing past experiences obn the part of the learner.EXPERIMENTS in verbal learning today sometimes use nbonsenses syallabus and sometimes use meaningful materials dependind on the purpose of the experiments.SOME OF the ways in which meaningfulness can affect what is learned and how well it is remembered.


THE VERBAL LEARNING studied in the labortary has usually been verbatim memorization.EXPERIMENTS typically employ the memory drum which allow the experimenter to conbtrol the amount of the rate and exposure of the material to be learned.ONE OF TWO PATTERNS IS usually followed,IN SERIAL LEARNING,the subjedt is shown the series of the words and syallabus one at the time and on sucessive showing must learn as he sees each item to call out or write down the one that is coming next before he sees it.IN PIRED ASSOICATED LEARNING, the list contain several pairs of items.THE pair may appear in the diffcult order on each trial but the subject must learn to anticapte the second member of each pair when the first one appear.


MANY PSYCHOLOGHIST are of the opinion that verbal learning can be explained as a complex form of conditrioning.CONSIDER,FOR EXAMPLE the building of the vacaboloury in the foreign language through the use of the [COLOR="red"]FLASH CARDS[/COLOR].many STUDENTS FIND it effective to perpare cards with the english words on one side and its foreighn equilent on the other.SUCH A card may say house on one side and mkaisen on the other side.LEARNING TO say masion on every times one sees house can be viewd as operant conditioning,in which the correct response is reinforced by the subseqent knowledge and satisfaction of being right


LINK
PSYCHOLOGHY AND LIFE BY FLOYD L,RUCH

regard.

__________________
''A man is not finished if he is defeated, he is finished if he quits.''