Active learning methods and applications

Psychology

Active Learning

Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understandings. Simple forms of learning involve a single stimulus. A stimulus is anything detectable to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. Simple stimulus learning can take on the form of habituation or sensitization. The simplest type of response to a direct stimulus is a direct response. A change in the environment is the stimulus and the reaction of the organism to it is the response (Learning, 2008).

Habituation is one of the simplest types of learning. It is the tendency of a person to become familiar with a stimulus after repeated exposure to it (Learning, 2008).

For example, a person who moves into a house that is right beside a railroad track may initially be distracted every time a loud train goes by the house. They will hear it every time and have a reaction to it.

But after living in the house for some period of time, the same person will no longer be distracted by the train because the person has become habituated to it.

At that point they no longer hear it and it no long illicit a reaction from them.

In spite of the fact that this is a simple type of learning, habituation is a very useful type of learning.

Because our environments are full of sights and sounds, we would waste a tremendous amount of time and energy if we paid attention to every sight and sound each time we came across it.

Habituation allows us to ignore the repetitive, unimportant stimuli that we encounter every day. "Habituation occurs in nearly all organisms, from human beings to animals with very simple nervous systems.

Even some one-celled organisms will habituate to a light, sound, or chemical stimulus that is presented repeatedly" (Learning, 2008).

Sensitization is another simple form of learning. It is the increase that occurs in an organism's responsiveness to stimuli following an especially intense or irritating stimulus.

For example, if a person were to receive an intense electrical shock on their hand, they would afterward withdraw their hand more strongly than usual in response to a simple touch because they would be expecting the strong electrical shock.

Depending on the intensity and duration of the original stimulus, the period of increased responsiveness can last from several seconds to several days (Learning, 2008).

Another example of sensitization would be the repeated stimulation of peripheral nerves that would occur if a person continuously rubs their arm. After a period of rubbing, this stimulation would create a warm sensation that would eventually turn painful.

The pain is the result of the increasingly amplified response of the peripheral nerves that would be trying to warn the person that the stimulation was harmful.

The body uses sensitization to help protect a person from things that could turn out to be harmful.

Perceptual learning in humans occurs when a person is repeatedly exposed to specific stimuli over and over again. Perceptual learning involves long lasting and amazing changes to the human perceptual system that incredibly improve one's ability to respond to the environment.

The mechanisms of perceptual learning include attention weighting, imprinting, differentiation, and unitization. With attention weighting, perception becomes adapted to tasks by increasing the attention paid to important dimensions and features.

With imprinting, special receptors are developed that are specialized for specific stimuli.

With differentiation, stimuli that were once indistinguishable become psychologically separated.

With unitization, tasks that originally required detection of several components are accomplished by detecting a single construct (How Perpetual Learning Works, n.d.).

There have been several studies done that have shown that the effects of stimulus exposure time on reaction time. It has been shown that simple reaction time became shorter with increased exposure time. In other words, the longer that someone is exposed to a stimulus the shorter that their reaction time to the stimulus will be. It has also been shown that just being exposed to a stimulus one time increases the reaction to it when exposed to it again. Once exposed to something if you are put into that same situation again you expect to have the same thing happen and thus you are expecting a reaction (Learning, 2008).