Simple Learning
Stimulus Learning Paper
Introduction
Learning is an on going process and is considered the one of most important mental functions humans endure. Learning itself relies on acquiring different types of knowledge. Learning will result in a person developing new abilities, skills, values, preferences as well as developing new understanding and personal preferences. Learning ranges from simple forms of learning such as habituation and conditioning. When a stimulus is introduced as part of the learning process, this is referred to as stimulus learning. Stimulus learning is accomplished when stimuli is introduced as part of the learning process to manipulate behavior. A stimulus is part of the stimulus-response relationship of behavioral learning theory.
Habituation
One of the simplest forms of learning is habituation. Habituation occurs with repeated exposure to a conditioned stimulus. This constant repeated exposure to a stimulus causes a decline of a conditioned response. Habituation is another way of saying “getting used to”. If you adapt to something in your environment and except it as a norm, you have undergone habituation. Let’s say that you are driving down a road in a truck that you are using to haul junk to the dump. Half way through the trip you hear a tapping noise that progressively gets louder. You pull over to see where the noise is coming from and you discover that it is a piece of debris from the stuff you are hauling. Your thoughts are put at ease that it is nothing mechanical and you continue on with your trip without the tapping noise bothering you.
The presence of habituation can be seen early on during the stage of development. It has been seen in infants as young as two months old. These babies like to focus and inspect visual stimuli. When presented with pairs of pictures that always include a familiar and a new scene, the infants will fixate the new picture (C, Naseem, H.T. Paavo –...
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