Learning Lessons For Everyday Life

Robert Fettgather has served as Special Consultant in psychometrics to the Departments of Education and Developmental Disabilities for the State of California. Moreover, Robert Fettgather holds a specialist credential in learning handicapped and community college credentials in both learning and developmental disabilities. Learning and cognition are among Robert Fettgather's key interests.

Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience or practice.  For example, think about children. Do they seem to learn more efficiently through verbal instruction or experience?  According to Jennifer Zosh "toddlers learn new words more effectively by using their knowledge about the world to infer the label of an object, rather than by simply being instructed and told which word goes with which object" (emphasis added).  In this comparison, "using" is experiential and means "involvement". Besides toddlers, for many of us, being told or being instructed may be less effective for learning than immersion and total involvement.

Consider ths well known quotation:‘Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.’ Interestingly, there hve been various attributuons for this saying including Benjamin Franklin and the ancient Confucian philosopher Xunzi. Regardless of its origin, there is significance to the act of doing as it applies to learning processes. 

Learning theory has its roots in the work of Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, and many others. Let's think about an applied example of behaviorism-- and that is just how terrible many of us are at applying these principles in our own lives! For example, sometimes I fail to voice appreciation for the behaviors I like from loved ones, friends, and colleagues-that amounts to an extinction intervention. In other words, I am making those wonderful actions less likely to occur in the future. 

And in frustration, I have been known to give a lot of attention to behavior I don't like from these very same folks. That can take the form of exasperation, complaining or a frown. With a child, it can be a scolding that provides attention and thus reinforces an undesired behavior. And of course, sometimes we resort to scolding friends and lovers too!