Chapter 6

Learning

Nature of Learning
Learning is any relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential
produced by experience.
Changes due to practice and experience, which are relatively permanent, are
illustrative of learning.

Features of Learning
The process of learning has certain distinctive characteristics.
● The first feature is that learning always involves some kinds of experience.
For example, one learns that if the bell rings in the hostel after sunset, then
dinner is ready to be served.
- Repeated experience of satisfaction after doing something in a specified
manner leads to the formation of habit.
- Sometimes a single experience can lead to learning.
● The second feature of learning states that behavioural changes that occur due
to learning are relatively permanent.
- They must be distinguished from the behavioural changes that are neither
permanent nor learned. For example, changes in behaviour often occur due to
the effects of fatigue, habituation, and drugs.
- A behavioural change due to fatigue, habituation or drugs is temporary and
won’t be considered learning.
● Orienting reflex is an organism's immediate response to a change in its
environment, when that change is not sudden enough to elicit the startle
reflex. An orienting reflex occurs when someone is confronted with a
personally significant stimulus. Example - A loud noise distracts us from
studying.
● Habituation is when response/reflexes to stimuli become weaker and weaker
over time. This change is due to continuous exposure to stimuli. Such
changes are temporary in nature and disappear, as the effect wears out.
Example - People who are on sedatives or drugs or alcohol, their behaviour
changes as it affects physiological functions.

● Learning involves a sequence of psychological events.

● A typical learning experiment is described below:
Suppose psychologists are interested in understanding how a list of words is
learned. They will go through the following sequence :
(i) Do a pre-test to know how much the person knows before learning.
(ii) Present the list of words to be remembered for a fixed time.
 (iii) During this time the list of words is processed towards acquiring new
knowledge.
(iv) After processing is complete, new knowledge is acquired (this is learning).
(v) After some time elapses, the processed information is recalled by the
person.
● By comparing the number of words which a person now knows as compared
to what she/he knew in the pre-test, one infers that learning did take place.
● Learning is an inferred process and is different from performance.
● Performance is a person’s observed behaviour or response or action.
● Performance shows how much an individual has learned. For example, a
poem is said to be learned by a child only after he recites it to the teacher.
Here reading the poem a number of times is learning while reciting the poem
to the teacher is performance.

Paradigms of Learning
Learning takes place in many ways. There are some methods that are used in
acquisition of simple responses while other methods are used in the acquisition of
complex responses. The simplest kind of learning is called conditioning.

Classical Conditioning
● This type of learning was first investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov.
● He was primarily interested in the physiology of digestion.
The experiment -
● During his studies he noticed that dogs, on whom he was doing his
experiments, started secreting saliva as soon as they saw the empty plate in
which food was served.
● Pavlov designed an experiment to understand this process in detail in which
dogs were used once again.
● In the first phase, a dog was placed in a box and harnessed.
● The dog was left in the box for some time. This was repeated a number of
times on different days.
● In the meantime, a simple surgery was conducted, and one end of a tube was
inserted in the dog’s jaw and the other end of the tube was put in a measuring
glass.
● In the second phase of the experiment, the dog was kept hungry and placed
in harness with one end of the tube ending in the jaw and the other end in the
glass jar.
● A bell was sounded and immediately thereafter food (meat powder) was
served to the dog. The dog was allowed to eat it.
● For the next few days, everytime the meat powder was presented, it was
preceded by the sound of a bell.
 ● After a number of such trials, a test trial was introduced in which everything
was the same as the previous trials except that no food followed the sounding
of the bell.
● The dog still salivated at the sound of the bell, expecting presentation of the
meat powder as the sound of the bell had come to be connected with it.
● This association between the bell and food resulted in acquisition of a new
response by the dog, i.e. salivation to the sound of the bell.
● This has been termed as conditioning.

Stimulus and Responses -

● You may have noticed that all dogs salivate when they are presented with
food.
● Food is thus an Unconditioned Stimulus (US) and salivation which follows it,
an Unconditioned Response (UR).
● After conditioning, salivation started to occur in the presence of the sound of
the bell. The bell becomes a Conditioned Stimulus (CS) and saliva secretion
a Conditioned Response (CR).
● This kind of conditioning is called classical conditioning.
● The learning situation in classical conditioning is one of S–S learning in which
one stimulus (e.g., sound of bell) becomes a signal for another stimulus (e.g.,
food).
● Here, one stimulus signifies the possible occurrence of another stimulus.

Examples of classical conditioning -

● Imagine you have just finished your lunch and you are feeling satisfied. Then
you see some sweet dish served on the adjoining table. This signals its taste
in your mouth, and triggers the secretion of saliva. You feel like eating it. This
is a conditioned response (CR).
● In the early stages of childhood, one is naturally afraid of any loud noise.
Suppose a small child catches an inflated balloon which bursts in her/his
hands making a loud noise. The child becomes afraid. Now the next time s/he
is made to hold a balloon, it becomes a signal or cue for noise and elicits fear
response. This happens because of the contiguous presentation of the
balloon as a conditioned stimulus (CS) and loud noise as an unconditioned
stimulus (US).

Determinants of Classical Conditioning -

How quickly and strongly acquisition of a response occurs in classical conditioning
depends on several factors. Some of the major factors influencing learning a CR are
described below :
1. Time Relations between Stimuli : The classical conditioning procedures, discussed
below, are basically of four types based on the time relations between the onset of
conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US). The first three are called
forward conditioning procedures, and the fourth one is called backward conditioning
procedures. The basic experimental arrangements of these procedures are as
follows:
a) When the CS and US are presented together, it is called simultaneous
conditioning.
b) In delayed conditioning the CS is presented before the US and it (CS) stays on
until the US is presented.
c) In trace conditioning the CS is presented before US and it (CS) ends before US
is presented.
d) In backward conditioning the US is presented before CS.
2. Type of Unconditioned Stimuli :
● The unconditioned stimuli used in studies of classical conditioning are
basically of two types, i.e. appetitive and aversive.
● Appetitive unconditioned stimuli elicit responses that give satisfaction and
pleasure.
● Aversive unconditioned stimuli are painful, harmful, and elicit avoidance and
escape responses.
3. Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli :
● More intense conditioned stimuli are more effective in accelerating the
acquisition of conditioned responses.
● It means that the more intense the conditioned stimulus, the fewer are the
number of acquisition trials needed for conditioning.

Operant/Instrumental Conditioning
● This type of conditioning was first investigated by B.F. Skinner.
● Skinner studied occurrences of voluntary responses when an organism
operates on the environment. He called them operants.
● Operants are those behaviours or responses, which are emitted by animals
and human beings voluntarily and are under their control.
● The term operant is used because the organism operates on the environment.
● Conditioning of operant behaviour is called operant conditioning.

The experiment -
● Skinner conducted his studies on rats and pigeons in specially made boxes,
called the Skinner Box
● A hungry rat (one at a time) is placed in the chamber, which was so built that
the rat could move inside but could not come out.
● In the chamber there was a lever, which was connected to a food container
kept on the top of the chamber.
● When the lever is pressed, a food pellet drops on the plate placed close to the
lever.
● While moving around and pawing the walls (exploratory behaviour), the
hungry rat accidentally presses the lever and a food pellet drops on the plate.
The hungry rat eats it.
 ● As the number of trials increases, the rat takes less and less time to press the
lever for food.
● Conditioning is complete when the rat presses the lever immediately after it is
placed in the chamber.
● It is obvious that lever pressing is an operant response and getting food is its
consequence.
● This type of learning is also called instrumental conditioning.

Determinants of Operant Conditioning

● Operant or instrumental conditioning is a form of learning in which behaviour
is learned, maintained or changed through its consequences.
● Such consequences are called reinforcers. A reinforcer is defined as any
stimulus or event, which increases the probability of the occurrence of a
(desired) response.
● A reinforcer has numerous features, which affect the course and strength of a
response. They include its types – positive or negative, number or frequency,
quality – superior or inferior, and schedule – continuous or intermittent
(partial).
● Another factor that influences this type of learning is the nature of the
response or behaviour that is to be conditioned.
● The interval or length of time that lapses between occurrence of response and
reinforcement also influences operant learning.

Types of Reinforcement
● Positive reinforcement involves stimuli that have pleasant consequences.
They strengthen and maintain the responses that have caused them to occur.
● Positive reinforcers satisfy needs, which include food, water, medals, praise,
money, status, information, etc.
● Negative reinforcers involve unpleasant and painful stimuli.
● Responses that lead organisms to get rid of painful stimuli or avoid and
escape from them provide negative reinforcement.
● Thus, negative reinforcement leads to learning of avoidance and escape
responses.
● Negative reinforcement is not punishment.
● Use of punishment reduces or suppresses the response while a negative
reinforcer increases the probability of avoidance or escape response.
● It should be understood that no punishment suppresses a response
permanently. Mild and delayed punishment has no effect. The stronger the
punishment, the more lasting is the suppression effect but it is not permanent.
● Sometimes punishment has no effect irrespective of its intensity. On the
contrary, the punished person may develop dislike and hatred for the
punishing agent or the person who administers the punishment.
Number of Reinforcement and other Features
● It refers to the number of trials on which an organism has been reinforced or
rewarded.
● Quality of reinforcement refers to the kind of reinforcer.
● The course of operant conditioning is usually accelerated to an extent as the
number, amount, and quality of reinforcement increases.

Schedules of Reinforcement
● A reinforcement schedule is the arrangement of the delivery of reinforcement
during conditioning trials.
● The reinforcement may be continuous or intermittent.
● When a desired response is reinforced every time it occurs we call it
continuous reinforcement.
● In intermittent schedules responses are sometimes reinforced, sometimes
not. It is known as partial reinforcement and has been found to produce
greater resistance to extinction – than is found with continuous
reinforcement.

Delayed Reinforcement
● The effectiveness of reinforcement is dramatically altered by delay in the
occurrence of reinforcement.
● It is found that delay in the delivery of reinforcement leads to poorer level of
performance.

Difference between Classical and Operant Conditioning -

Classical Conditioning Operant Conditioning

The responses are under the control of In instrumental conditioning, responses

some stimulus because they are are under the control of the organism
reflexes, automatically elicited by the and are voluntary responses or
appropriate stimuli. ‘operants’.

The CS and US are well-defined. CS is not defined.

The experimenter controls the The occurrence of the reinforcer is

occurrence of US. under the control of the organism that is
learning.
● In the two forms of conditioning, the technical terms used to characterise the
experimental proceedings are different.
● Moreover what is called reinforcer in operant conditioning is called US in
classical conditioning.
Learned Helplessness -
● It is a phenomenon, which is a result of an interaction between the two forms
of conditioning.
● Learned helplessness underlies psychological cases of depression.
● It has been found that continuous failure in a set of tasks shows the
occurrence of learned helplessness.
● Learned helplessness is often measured in terms of the one’s ability and
persistence before he gives up on a task.
● Continuous failure leads to little persistence and poor performance. This
shows helplessness.
● There are numerous studies that demonstrate that persistent depression is
often caused by learned helplessness.

Key Learning Processes

Reinforcement
● Reinforcement is the operation of administering a reinforcer by the
experimenter.
● Reinforcers are stimuli that increase the rate or probability of the responses
that precede.
● A primary reinforcer is biologically important since it determines the
organism’s survival (e.g., food for a hungry organism).
● A secondary reinforcer is one which has acquired characteristics of the
reinforcer because of the organism’s experience with the environment (e.g.,
money, grades, etc.).
● Systematic use of reinforcers can lead to the desired response.

Extinction
● Extinction means disappearance of a learned response due to removal of
reinforcement from the situation in which the response used to occur.
● Learning shows resistance to extinction. It means that even though the
learned response is now not reinforced, it would continue to occur for some
time.
● However, with increasing number of trials without reinforcement, the response
strength gradually diminishes and ultimately it stops occurring.
● Resistance to extinction increases with increasing number of reinforcements
during acquisition trials, beyond that any increase in number of reinforcement
reduces the resistance to extinction.
● Studies have also indicated that as the amount of reinforcement increases
during the acquisition trials, resistance to extinction decreases.
● Reinforcement in every acquisition trial makes the learned response to be
less resistant to extinction.
● In contrast, intermittent or partial reinforcement during acquisition trials makes
a learned response more resistant to extinction.
Generalisation and Discrimination
● The phenomenon of responding similarly to similar stimuli is known as
generalisation.
● When a learned response occurs or is elicited by a new stimulus, it is called
generalisation.
● Generalisation is due to similarity while discrimination is a response due to
difference.
● Occurrence of generalisation means failure of discrimination.
● Discriminative response depends on the discrimination capacity or
discrimination learning of the organism.

Spontaneous Recovery
● Spontaneous recovery occurs after a learned response is extinguished.
● It has been demonstrated that after lapse of considerable time, the learned or
CR recovers and occurs to the CS.
● The amount of spontaneous recovery depends on the duration of the time
lapsed after the extinction session.
● The longer the duration of time lapsed, the greater is the recovery of learned
response.

Observational Learning
● Earlier this form of learning was called imitation.
● Bandura and his colleagues in a series of experimental studies investigated
observational learning in detail. In this kind of learning, human beings learn
social behaviours, therefore, it is sometimes called social learning.
● In many situations individuals do not know how to behave. They observe
others and emulate their behaviour. This form of learning is called modeling.

The experiment -
● Bandura showed a film of five minutes duration to children.
● The film shows that in a large room there are numerous toys including a large
sized ‘Bobo’ doll.
● Now a grown-up boy enters the room and looks around. The boy starts
showing aggressive behaviour towards the toys in general and the bobo doll
in particular.
● This film has three versions.
● In one version a group of children see the boy (model) being rewarded and
praised by an adult for being aggressive to the doll.
● In the second version another group of children see the boy being punished
for his aggressive behaviour.
● In the third version the third group of children are not shown the boy being
either rewarded or punished.
 ● After viewing a specific version of the film all the three groups of children were
placed in an experimental room in which similar toys were placed around.
● These groups were secretly observed and their behaviours noted.
● It was found that those children who saw aggressive behaviour being
rewarded were most aggressive; children who had seen the aggressive model
being punished were least aggressive.
● Thus, in observational learning observers acquire knowledge by observing the
model’s behaviour, but performance is influenced by the model's behaviour
being rewarded or punished.

Cognitive Learning
● Some psychologists view learning in terms of cognitive processes that
underlie it.
● They have developed approaches that focus on such processes that occur
during learning rather than concentrating solely on S-R and S-S connections.
● Thus, in cognitive learning, there is a change in what the learner knows rather
than what s/he does.

Insight Learning
● Kohler demonstrated a model of learning which could not be readily explained
by conditioning.
● He placed chimpanzees in an enclosed play area where food was kept out of
their reach.
● Tools such as poles and boxes were placed in the enclosure. The
chimpanzees rapidly learned how to use a box to stand on or a pole to move
the food in their direction.
● In this experiment, learning did not occur as a result of trial and error and
reinforcement, but came about in sudden flashes of insight.
● The chimpanzee exhibited what Kohler called insight learning – the process
by which the solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear.
● In a normal experiment on insight learning, a problem is presented, followed
by a period of time when no apparent progress is made and finally a solution
suddenly emerges.
● In insight learning, sudden solution is the rule
● Once the solution has appeared, it can be repeated immediately the next time
the problem is confronted.
● Thus, it is clear that what is learned is not a specific set of conditioned
associations between stimuli and responses but a cognitive relationship
between a means and an end.

Latent Learning
● In latent learning, a new behaviour is learned but not demonstrated until
reinforcement is provided for displaying it.
● Tolman made an early contribution to the concept of latent learning.
 ● Tolman put two groups of rats in a maze and gave them an opportunity to
explore. In one group, rats found food at the end of the maze and soon
learned to make their way rapidly through the maze.
● On the other hand, rats in the second group were not rewarded and showed
no apparent signs of learning. But later, when these rats were reinforced, they
ran through the maze as efficiently as the rewarded group.
● Tolman contended that the unrewarded rats had learned the layout of the
maze early in their explorations.
● They just never displayed their latent learning until the reinforcement was
provided. Instead, the rats developed a cognitive map of the maze, i.e. a
mental representation of the spatial locations and directions, which they
needed to reach their goal.

Verbal Learning
● Verbal learning is different from conditioning and is limited to human beings.
● Human beings acquire knowledge about objects, events, and their features
largely in terms of words.
● Words then come to be associated with one another.

Methods used in Studying Verbal Learning

1. Paired-Associates Learning :
● First, a list of paired-associates is prepared.
● The first word of the pair is used as the stimulus, and the second word
as the response.
● Members of each pair may be from the same language or two different
languages.
● The first members of the pairs (stimulus term) are nonsense syllables
(consonant-vowel-consonant), and the second are English nouns
(response term).
● The learner is first shown both the stimulus-response pairs together,
and is instructed to remember and recall the response after the
presentation of each stimulus term.
● After that a learning trial begins.
● One by one the stimulus words are presented and the participant tries
to give the correct response term. In case of failure, s/he is shown the
response word.
● In one trial all the stimulus terms are shown. Trials continue until the
participant gives all the response words without a single error.
● The total number of trials taken to reach the criterion becomes the
measure of paired-associates learning.

2. Serial Learning :
● This method of verbal learning is used to find out how participants learn
the lists of verbal items, and what processes are involved in it.
 ● First, lists of verbal items, i.e. nonsense syllables, most familiar or least
familiar words, interrelated words, etc. are prepared.
● The participant is presented the entire list and is required to produce
the items in the same serial order as in the list.
● In the first trial, the first item of the list is shown, and the participant has
to produce the second item.
● If s/he fails to do so within the prescribed time, the experimenter
presents the second item.
● Now this item becomes the stimulus and the participant has to produce
the third item that is the response word.
● If s/he fails, the experimenter gives the correct item, which becomes
the stimulus item for the fourth word.
● This procedure is called serial anticipation method.
● Learning trials continue until the participant correctly anticipates all the
items in the given order.

3. Free Recall :
● In this method, participants are presented with a list of words, which
they read and speak out.
● Each word is shown at a fixed rate of exposure duration.
● Immediately after the presentation of the list, the participants are
required to recall the words in any order they can.
● Words in the list may be interrelated or unrelated.
● More than ten words are included in the list.
● The presentation order of words varies from trial to trial.
● This method is used to study how participants organise words for
storage in memory.
● Studies indicate that the items placed in the beginning or end of the
lists are easier to recall than those placed in the middle, which are
more difficult to recall.

Determinants of Verbal Learning

● The most important determinants are the different features of the verbal
material to be learned.
● They include length of the list to be learned and meaningfulness of the
material.
● The number of associations elicited in a fixed time, familiarity of the material
and frequency of usage, relations among the words in the list, and sequential
dependence of each word of the list on the preceding words, are used for
assessing meaningfulness.
● Learning time increases with increase in length of the list, occurrence of
words with low association values or lack of relations among the items in the
list.
● The more time it takes to learn the list, the stronger the learning will be.
 ● In this respect psychologists have found that the total time principle operates.
This principle states that a fixed amount of time is necessary to learn a fixed
amount of material, regardless of the number of trials into which that time is
divided.
● The more time it takes to learn, the stronger the learning becomes.
● Bousfield made a list of 60 words that consisted of 15 words drawn from each
of the four semantic categories, i.e. names, animals, professions, and
vegetables.
● These words were presented to participants one by one in random order. The
participants were required to make a free recall of the words.
● However, they recalled the words of each category together. He called it
category clustering.
● Though the words were presented randomly the participants organised them
category-wise in recall.
● Category clustering is basically recalling words by categorising them based on
their properties.

Skill Learning
Nature of Skills
● A skill is defined as the ability to perform some complex task smoothly and
efficiently.
● Skills are learned by practice and exercise.
● A skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor responses or as a sequence of
S-R associations.

Phases of Skill Acquisition

● One of the most influential accounts of the phases of skill acquisition is
presented by Fitts.
● According to him, skill learning passes through three phases, viz. cognitive,
associative and autonomous.
● In the cognitive phase of skill learning, the learner has to understand and
memorise the instructions, and also understand how the task has to be
performed.
● The second phase is associative. In this phase, different sensory inputs or
stimuli are linked with appropriate responses. As the practice increases,
errors decrease, performance improves and time taken is also reduced.
● The learner has to be attentive to all the sensory inputs and maintain
concentration on the task.
● Then the third phase, i.e. autonomous phase, begins. In this phase, two
important changes take place in performance: the attentional demands of
the associative phase decrease, and interference created by external factors
reduces.
● Finally, skilled performance attains automaticity with minimal demands on
conscious effort.
Factors Facilitating Learning
Continuous vs Partial Reinforcement
● In the context of learning, two kinds of schedules namely continuous and
partial have been found very important.
● In continuous reinforcement the participant is given reinforcement after each
target response.
● This kind of schedule of reinforcement produces a high rate of responding.
However, once the reinforcement is withheld, response rates decrease very
quickly, and the responses acquired under this schedule tend to extinguish.
● In partial reinforcement reinforcement is not continuous, some responses are
not reinforced.
● It has been found that partial reinforcement schedules often produce very high
rates of responding, particularly when responses are reinforced according to
ratio.
● In this kind of schedule, an organism often makes several responses that are
not reinforced.
● Therefore, it becomes difficult to tell when a reinforcement has been
discontinued completely and when it has merely been delayed. When
reinforcement is continuous it is easier to tell when it has been discontinued.
● It has been found that extinction of a response is more difficult following
partial reinforcement than following continuous reinforcement.
● The fact that the responses acquired under partial reinforcement are highly
resistant to extinction is called partial reinforcement effect.

Motivation
● Motivation is a mental as well as a physiological state, which arouses an
organism to act for fulfilling the current need.
● Motivation energises an organism to act vigorously for attaining some goal.
Such acts persist until the goal is attained and the need is satisfied.
● You learn many things because you enjoy them (intrinsic motivation) or they
provide you the means for attaining some other goal (extrinsic motivation).

Preparedness for Learning

● The members of different species are very different from one another in their
sensory capacities and response abilities.
● The mechanisms necessary for establishing associations, such as S-S or
S-R, also vary from species to species.
● It can be said that species have biological constraints on their learning
capacities.
● The kinds of S-S or S-R learning an organism can easily acquire depends on
the associative mechanism it is genetically endowed with or prepared for.
● Preparedness for learning implies that one can learn only those associations
for which one is genetically prepared.
Learning Disabilities
● Learning disabilities are neurodevelopmental disorders that affect the brain's
ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information.
● It is presumed that these difficulties originate from problems with the
functioning of the central nervous system.
● It may occur in conjunction with physical handicaps, sensory impairment,
intellectual disability or without them.

Symptoms of Learning Disabilities

● Difficulties in writing letters, words and phrases, reading out text, and
speaking appear quite frequently.
● Learning-disabled children have disorders of attention. They get easily
distracted and cannot sustain attention on one point for long.
● Poor space orientation and inadequate sense of time are common symptoms.
Such children do not get easily oriented to new surroundings and get lost.
● Learning-disabled children have poor motor coordination and poor manual
dexterity.
● These children fail to understand and follow oral directions for doing things.
● They misjudge relationships as to which classmates are friendly and which
ones are indifferent.
● Learning-disabled children usually show perceptual disorders. These may
include visual, auditory, tactual, and kinesthetic misperception.
● Fairly large number of learning-disabled children have dyslexia.
● Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects reading skills. Individuals with
dyslexia may have difficulty recognizing and decoding words, and may
struggle with reading comprehension.

❖ It must be noted that learning disabilities are not incurable.

❖ Remedial teaching methods go a long way in helping them to learn and
become like other students.
❖ Educational psychologists have developed appropriate techniques for
correcting most of the symptoms related to learning disabilities.

Applications of Learning Principles

● Rewards are given to people for a desirable response/behaviour to occur. This
can be considered as positive reinforcement.
● Based on the principles of learning, a number of therapeutic procedures have
been developed to modify maladaptive and socially incapacitating habits and
behaviours. In these procedures, the principle of extinction is employed.
● Implosive therapy and flooding are used to treat people with irrational fears.
● Implosive therapy starts with the person imagining their most feared form of
contact with the feared object, accompanied by vivid verbal descriptions by
the therapist. The therapist functions as a coach.
● On the other hand, flooding is exposure that takes place in vivo (e.g., with an
actual feared object) and is considered to be the most effective of all
treatments for fear.
● To help those suffering from excessive anxieties and fears, the technique of
systematic desensitisation is used. It is a form of behaviour therapy used to
reduce phobic patients’ anxiety responses through counterconditioning, i.e. an
attempt to reverse the process of classical conditioning by associating the
crucial stimulus with a new conditioned response.
● In order to eliminate habits that are undesirable and injurious for health and
happiness, aversion therapy is used. The therapist arranges things in such a
way that occurrence of maladjustive habits generates painful experiences and
to avoid them clients learn to give them up.
● Modeling and systematic use of reinforcement for shaping and developing
competence are extensively used.
● Persons suffering from excessive shyness and having difficulties in
interpersonal interactions are subjected to assertive learning.
● There are persons who lose mental peace with accelerated rate of breathing,
loss of appetite, and rise in blood pressure at the slightest provocation. In
such cases psychotherapists give biofeedback treatment.
● In biofeedback, a bodily function (such as heart rate or blood pressure) is
monitored and information about the function is fed back to the person to
facilitate improved control of the physiological process.
● Students are told what they have to learn and appropriate practice conditions
are provided.
● Students are made active participants in the acquisition of information,
meaning, and correct responses.
● Teachers act as models and mentors for students to emulate them with a
view to promote appropriate social behaviours and personal habits.