Learning & Cognitive theories Essay

Learning in my life is an ongoing process; one that carries on as I come across various situations, every single one of them increasing my learning experience. It is rightly said that learning starts the day one is born and continues till one’s death bed. So in this respect there have been various stimuli that have repeatedly crossed my life. I have made several associations with different kinds of objects or situations for that matter which I have remembered and used to make various inferences. Who does not remember the jingles of the ice cream man, stimulating and beckoning the kids to crave for ice cream and inquire for money from the parents? Out of the many situations, one that has truly left an indelible impression on my mind is a childhood recollection of the horrific car accident that I went through with my family. Although I came out unscathed from the accident as did my family who just suffered minor injuries, the very thought of screeches of a car just triggers a whole array of thoughts and nightmares of my accident ordeal. It was a fine day with no unusual surroundings or conditions of the highway. Our car was also going at a steady pace maintaining the speed limits. The car was functioning well with every smallest detail of the car scrutinized by my father, a perfectionist at work. But as it happened that the heavy truck two cars in front of ours carrying logs of wood, its lock that fastened the logs broke free from its bolt which sent the logs tumbling down. This is what I last remembered out of my flashbulb memory, besides the incessant screeches and the wails of the people struck by this horrific incident. It is from that moment onwards that I shudder at the slightest screech of a car so much so that I cannot even stand my friends drifting their modified cars, much to their surprise and disgust. Such a fear that I have developed is largely due to that horrific incident that I went through. This has set a feeling or a sensation at the back of my mind about staying away from fast cars on the roads. I can attribute my fear to the concept of classical conditioning wherein an unconditioned stimulus (screech of a car) has turned into a conditioned stimulus. That conditioned stimulus sets off a conditioned response (fear of an accident). The concept of classical conditioning says exactly that learning is associated with a person responding to a neutral stimulus which normally does not bring about that response. So more often that not whenever I come across and hear a screech I relate it with a fear that somebody will have an accident. If I had not experienced that accident, such a screech of a car would not have meant anything abnormal or out of the ordinary. Such a behavior of mine can also be explained by the concept operant conditioning where a person learns a voluntary response and the extent of it is strengthened or weakened depending on its positive or negative consequences. In my accident scenario, the accident is a negative consequence which I associate with a screech of a car. So the screech or a high speed develops the fear and reinforces it as well. Such reinforcement may happen if somebody in my family also has an accident on a highway or I myself get into an accident. The reinforcement has also stemmed from media which has also done a sufficient bit to sustain my fear of car accidents. One can usually see in the car chases in the movies where the bad guys being chased by the cops or police in their cars get into accidents and get busted. There are several other instances where certain programs reinforce my fear of speeding and screeching cars like the reality car shows. They show cars getting into horrific and deadly accidents as the drivers over speed their vehicles. There is another approach to learning which is called cognitive social learning. One such learning is latent learning. In this type of learning a new behavior does not get registered properly though it is acquired till one receives reinforcement encouraging one to adopt or develop a behavior. But in my accident scenario, I can largely put it down to classical conditioning. This is where I have started making associations with certain stimuli which in turn leads to the development of fear. Reference ATHERTON J S (2005) Learning and Teaching: Cognitive theories of learning http://www. learningandteaching. info/learning/cognitive. htm Accessed: 2 February 2009 Frietas, S & Neumann, T. (2009). The use of exploratory learning for supporting immersive learning in virtual environments. Computers & Education Moriyama, J & Kato, Y. (2009) Self-efficacy and learning experience of information education: in case of junior high school. AI & Society