Learning

**Learning** is the way people gain new knowledge, skills, behaviors, or ways of thinking. It can happen through experience, practice, or being taught by someone else. Inside the body, especially the brain, learning changes how brain cells connect and work together. At the same time, learning is also affected by a person’s emotions, surroundings, culture, and social life. This means learning is both a brain-based and a life-based experience. In the brain, learning involves tiny changes in the strength of synapses. This is part of a process called neuroplasticity, which means the brain can change and adapt over time. The hippocampus helps form new memories, and the prefrontal cortex helps with attention and making decisions. Chemicals in the brain, called neurotransmitters, like dopamine and acetylcholine, help control motivation, focus, and how we respond to rewards and challenges. These brain parts and chemicals all work together when we learn something new.

There are different types of learning. One type is classical conditioning, where someone learns by connecting two things together, like Pavlov’s dogs learning to expect food when they heard a bell. Another is operant conditioning, where behavior changes based on rewards or punishments, like in B.F. Skinner’s experiments. Observational learning happens by watching others, such as in Bandura’s famous Bobo doll study. There is also latent learning, where someone learns something but does not show it until there is a reason to use it. Some scientists focus on the mental side of learning, like how we remember, think, or understand things. These ideas come from cognitive theories. Piaget believed that people go through stages as they grow and think in more complex ways. Vygotsky said that learning improves when we get help from others, especially when working in our “Zone of Proximal Development”, tasks we can do with guidance but not alone. This shows that learning often depends on talking, working together, and getting support.

Many things affect how well someone learns. These include how motivated they are, what they already know, how they feel, and the way information is taught. Some helpful methods include spaced repetition (reviewing over time) and retrieval practice (trying to recall information), which are more effective than just rereading notes. In the past, people thought learning styles, like being a “visual” or “auditory” learner, were very important, but newer studies show that the way material is organized and how challenging it is matters much more than someone’s preferred learning style. Learning does not only happen in school. Formal learning happens in places like schools and universities. Informal learning happens naturally in everyday life, like when talking to friends or trying a new hobby. Non-formal learning takes place in settings like workshops or online classes, which are structured but not part of traditional school. Adults often learn differently from children. According to Malcolm Knowles’ theory of andragogy, adults prefer learning that is practical, based on their own experiences, and more self-directed.

Technology is also changing how we learn. Tools like educational games, smart tutoring programs, and apps that adjust to your level help make learning more personal and fun. Some programs use ideas from neuroscience, though not all of these are fully proven. Some are based on “neuromyths” or misunderstandings of how the brain works. Also, where and how people grow up affects learning. In group-focused (collectivist) cultures, memorizing facts and respecting teachers might be more common. In more individual-focused cultures, asking questions and thinking critically may be encouraged. Finally, learning is not just something humans do. Many animals also learn. For example, bees can understand the idea of “same” and “different,” and octopuses can solve puzzles.

### Prehistory

Learning in human history started long before writing was invented. Early humans learned by watching others, copying what they did, and trying things out until they worked. This helped them survive by learning skills such as making tools, using fire, and hunting together in groups. Archaeologists have found evidence that knowledge was passed on mainly by showing and doing, not by formal teaching. For example, the making of stone tools like the Acheulean hand-axe shows that people built on the skills of earlier generations.

Cave paintings and carvings, such as those at Lascaux in France and Blombos Cave in South Africa, suggest that humans also learned through stories and rituals. These artworks may have carried both practical knowledge, like how to hunt animals, and spiritual ideas about life. Anthropologists point out that this kind of learning was communal, meaning it happened in groups. Skills were learned by taking part in shared activities rather than by studying alone.

### Ancient civilization

When human groups changed from living as hunters and gatherers to building farming societies, learning started to become more organized. Special people such as teachers, scribes, and priests took on the role of passing down knowledge. In Mesopotamia, clay tablets from about 2000 BCE show that there were schools for scribes called edubba. In these schools, students practiced writing in cuneiform, learned mathematics, and studied law codes. These skills were important for running governments and for trade.

In Ancient Egypt, priests taught in temple schools. They trained students in hieroglyphic writing, astronomy, and medicine. This shows that learning was closely connected to religion as well as to the needs of government. In China, the thinker Confucius (551–479 BCE) taught that learning should focus on good behavior, respect for tradition, and keeping society peaceful. His ideas shaped Chinese education for centuries and later led to the imperial examination system, where people could earn government positions through study.

In India, knowledge from the Vedic tradition was first remembered and spoken aloud for many generations before being written in Sanskrit. Buddhist monasteries also became important places of learning, where monks studied philosophy, logic, and meditation. In Greece, learning became more systematic. Socrates used questions and dialogue to teach. Plato opened the Academy around 387 BCE, and Aristotle, his student, founded the Lyceum in 335 BCE. These schools created structured ways of learning that strongly influenced Western education for thousands of years.

### Behaviorist Perspectives

Behaviorism is one of the earliest ways that scientists tried to understand how people and animals learn. It became popular in the early 1900s and focused only on what could be seen, behavior. Behaviorists believed that learning happens because of things in the environment, not because of thoughts or feelings inside the brain. According to this idea, if something happens around you, it can cause you to act in a certain way. Over time, you learn to respond to these events based on what happens next, whether something good or bad follows your action.

One of the first scientists to study this was Ivan Pavlov, who worked with dogs in the 1890s. He discovered something called classical conditioning. He rang a bell every time he fed the dogs. At first, the dogs only drooled when they saw the food. But after a while, they began to drool just when they heard the bell, even if there was no food. That is because they had learned to connect the bell with the food. This showed that animals (and people) can learn to react to things that used to mean nothing to them, just by forming associations.

Later, a scientist named B. F. Skinner took behaviorism even further with a different idea called operant conditioning. He believed that people and animals learn from what happens after they do something. If something good happens, like getting a treat, the behavior is more likely to happen again. If something bad happens, like a punishment, the behavior is less likely to happen. Skinner used special boxes (called “Skinner boxes”) with rats and pigeons to show how they learned to press levers or peck buttons to get food or avoid a shock. He also studied how the timing of rewards could change how strong the behavior was. For example, rewarding behavior every time is different from rewarding it only once in a while.

Behaviorism became a big influence in education and therapy. Teachers used its ideas to create learning programs where students got rewards for correct answers, and therapists used it to help people change problem behaviors. Even today, behaviorism helps in areas like animal training, parenting strategies, and even teaching computers how to learn. But behaviorism is not perfect. Some scientists did not agree with ignoring what goes on inside the brain. For example, people can sometimes learn without any rewards, just by watching others or thinking things through. This is called latent learning or insight learning, and behaviorism had trouble explaining it.

## Types

There are a number of different types of learning:
1. Classical conditioning: where two stimuli come together, the organism learns they are related.
1. Operant conditioning: an organism changes its behaviour when behaviour has consequences.
1. Play: an inherited mechanism whereby mammals speed up learning in the young.
1. Gestalt learning: learning by insight
1. Imitation, emulation or observational learning: mimicking the behaviour of others
1. Implicit learning or unconscious learning: learning which is done without conscious awareness of the learning process.
1. Imprinting: a very rapid type of early learning.
Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early in development. According to James Zull, Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at Case Western University, "Learn­ing is phys­i­cal. Learn­ing means the mod­i­fi­ca­tion, growth, and prun­ing of our neu­rons, connectionscalled synapsesand neu­ronal net­works, through expe­ri­ence".

## Related pages

- e-learning
- Pedagogy

## Other websites

- Explorations in Learning & Instruction: The Theory Into Practice Database
- Articles about Natural Learning  from Natural Life magazine
- Interview with James Zull, Ph.D.