Another one of my main focuses continuing through the year, is to study psychology.
Soon I will be consulting Psychology professionals in my school who will guide me and educate me on what psychological process takes place throughout the means of learning. However in the mean time, I decided to give myself a small cushion of knowledge by researching before I dove right into a topic that I have never learned about before. What I discovered was an article that explained 3 psychologically proven ways people obtain and retain information. (link included)
1. Learning Through Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning is simplified as learning through association. A neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus over time. This conditioned stimulus triggers a response that becomes automatically paired with the stimulus. This conception of learning was explained by using the classic example of "dog salivating at the tone of a bell". What happens in this experiment is every time a dog is given a treat, a tone of a bell is rang beforehand. After enough times, the dog learns that the tone of the bell is associated with a treat, which caused to dog to salivate.
I have noticed a trend of this conditioning as I review all my years in the public school system. The first thing that comes to mind is how teachers would clap at us and overtime students automatically associate this with silencing. Also, no matter how many different classes of a subject you take, it is easy to see the repetition of lessons throughout these classes. This could be a subliminal way of imprinting specific knowledge upon students more than others.
2. Learning through Operant Conditioning
Operant Learning is known as reinforcements or punishments causing learning by actions. For example, researchers say that whether an action is praised or punished, it will increase or decrease the likelihood of it happening again in the future.
Connecting this to the school system, its important to get in a habit of studying for what is going to be successful for you. You will find out which study habits work for you, based on what causes you to fail or pass. This is something we have been told all throughout school, however I did not realize it had a psychological explanation.
3. Learning through Observation
Learning through Observation occurs by observing the actions and consequences of other people’s behavior. This happens so much in our lives, we don't even realize when its happening. Everything we learn, we observe from somebody else.
This is the primary way we learn in school. We watch our teachers and even learn from our classmates. If there is something we do not understand, the easiest access to gaining that knowledge is through the knowledge of others.
