Understanding Learning: Types, Factors, and Disorders
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior that reflects an acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, and may include research, instruction, observation, or practice. Associate learning with the acquisition of a new behavior, but it also leads to a decrease or loss of behavioral factors.
Factors Influencing Behavior Change
- Fatigue: It produces a change in behavior for a short time. Learning entails a more stable change.
- Maturation: This consists of behaviors which depend on the development of certain organizational structures and the nervous system.
- The body’s physiological state is another source of temporary changes in behavior that are observed at other times.
Innate Behavior Patterns
Both animals and humans have innate behaviors that increase their adaptation to the environment. These are:
- Reflexes: A reflex is an innate response, an automatic and involuntary action that occurs as a specific stimulus. The answer is of a motor type and is manifested in a reflex of a muscle or a limb. Humans have different types of reflexes: Salivary connecting the tongue with a cake, bending your leg when you hit a certain area of the knee, or being startled by a strange noise.
- Fixed Action Patterns: They are complex functions of life, which appeared during the formation or origin of the species.
- Habituation and Sensitization: Habituation is when we become accustomed to something, following repeated stimulation. Sensitization is an increase in response to environmental events.
Types of Learning
- Social Learning: The psychologist Albert Bandura believes that not all learning is due to direct experience but also by watching or imitating the behavior of others. Observational learning occurs when the subject observes the behavior of a model.
- Cognitive Learning: Proponents of cognitive learning recognize that learning comes from experience, but it is the subject that builds knowledge of the outside world. One of their representatives is David Ausubel, who says that what we learn is the result of new information interpreted from what we already know.
Problems in Learning
Learning disabilities affect the way a person understands, remembers, and responds to any new information. Although learning problems occur in very young children, they often go unnoticed until the child reaches school age.
Specific Learning Disorders
- Asperger Syndrome: A mental disorder and behavior. The affected individual shows difficulties in social interaction and communication. The most common age of onset is often in early childhood, but it can occur at later stages. The person presenting has normal intelligence or above average, and often, special skills in restricted areas. In particular, the intuitive ability to recognize nonverbal cues emitted by other people and also for sending their own equivalent is disturbed. It is for this reason that the contact and communication behavior of those with Asperger syndrome seems so “weird” or clumsy.
- Dyslexia: A reading disorder that makes it impossible to correct understanding. In more technical terms, dyslexia is defined as a discrepancy between the potential of learning and the performance level of a subject, with no sensory impairments, physical, or other educational deficiencies. There are hereditary factors that predispose to this disorder. The signs of dyslexia may change as the child grows. At the same time, dyslexia may not be diagnosed until many years later.
- Autism: A developmental disorder that affects communication, imagination, planning, and emotional reciprocity. Symptoms include the inability of social interaction, isolation, and stereotyping. Anxiety and depression often occur in adolescents and adults with autism. It is known that the stress response is more pronounced in many autistic children, which could be a cause. There is no known treatment that will cure autism.