LEARNING PROCESS UNIT I

 

 

 

The learning process deals with Attention, sensation, perception and  concept formation

ATTENTION

The word ‘attention' gets very familiar when called in a public place like railway station, bus stand, airport, and classroom etc.

It is to make our mind to get alert on something that we need at the particular time of process. In general if we attempt to learn or know a thing, we should focus our attention on that particular thing.

The verb ‘attending' in the learning process involves the act of listening, looking at or concentrating on a topic or concept.

When we look at a thing our sense organs get stimulated by a stimulus among many stimuli present in our environment and generate corresponding sensation which would reach our brain. In the brain, it gets interpreted according to the past experiences so that we perceive meaning of that particular stimulus or object.

Hence, 'Attention' is the first step of an individual to make readiness of mind in the process called ‘cognition'.

DEFINITION

Dumville (1938) - “Attention is the concentration of consciousness upon one subject rather than upon another.”

J. S. Ross (1951) -“Attention is the process of getting an object of thought clearly before the mind.”

Attention - Characteristics:

Attention is a process that helps in responsiveness to our environment.

It is a selective and shifting mental process that moves from one object to another.

It is attracted by only one new object or thing at a particular time.

It increases one's efficiency in acquiring new skills or knowledge.

It involves the special adjustment of sense organs in understanding a particular stimulus or object involved.

It involves the entire mental (cognition) and physical activity (sensory) by stimulus – response behavior to make the mind alert or prepared in the cognition process

 

Factors of Attention:

As attention is a process of selection of stimuli, we need to know on basis that we select that Actually there are many factors that determine the process of attending. Two types of factors that bring about attention towards an object are

1.     ‘External factors'/ ‘objective factors'

2.     and ‘Internal factors'/ ‘subjective factors'.

 

External factors

The factors that operate on an individual from outside the individual to capture their attention are known as ‘External factors.

External factors are those factors which compel an individual to attend to an object or stimulus though he /she is not interested to attend to it.

Particular stimulus among many stimuli present around us in the environment that we are. They are nature, intensity, change, contrast, novelty, movement, repetition, systematic form of a stimulus.

Internal factors'

The factors that operate within an individual to make them attend to objects are known as ‘Internal factors'.

The internal physiological factors such as interest, motive or need, mental set, mood and the conditions present in a person to fulfil his desires, urges etc.

Sensation

In general, it is necessary that our brain should recognise and interpret what has been happening around us in the environment where we live. It would make us to experience and feel the surrounding around us.

Sensation is the process which allows our brain to take in information from the environment through our sensory system which can be then experienced and interpreted by the brain. It is the first step in the acquisition of knowledge in a conscious mind.

 

Definition

Kowalski & Western (2009) “Sensation is defined as the “process by which sense organs gather information about the environment and transmit it to the brain for initial processing”

Sensation occurs through our sense organs.

Stimuli	Sense Organ(s)	Sensation	Sense
Visual Stimuli	Eyes	Aural/Visual sensation	Seeing
Auditory Stimuli	Ears	Auditory sensation	Hearing
Fragrance/odour Stimuli	Nose	Olfactory	Smelling
Taste Stimuli	Tongue	Gustatory sensation	Tasting
Tactile Stimuli	Skin	Tactile sensation	Feeling or touch

 

 

    In the learning process, the stimuli given through the sense organs would be interpreted in the brain to perceive or realize the information given. Hence the sense organs are the receptors of external stimuli.

 These sense receptors have specialized cells that respond to environmental stimuli into neural impulse that can be understood by the brain in a process  known as transduction.

This is the reason for the effectiveness of instructional process in the classroom through sensory learning style.

 

 

 

 

 

Perception

The knowledge or information that we got from our sensory system, make us to become aware of that particular thing or object or information. The process of getting aware or meaning of those thing or object or information is known as ‘Perception'.

 Perception = sensation+ meaning making

Simply saying, the process of detecting a stimulus and assigning meaning to it is called ‘perception'. This meaning is constructed based on both physical representations from the environment and our existing knowledge.

For example, the sound we hear or experience from a distance could be sensed as sound made by a speeding bus not a motorbike. The sound would be sensed by auditory sensation but interpreted as the sound made by a bus is our perception. We should also know that this perception could be made only if we had experienced the same sense before and retained it in our memory.

Perception - Definition:

 

“Perception is the process of getting to know objects and objective facts by the use of the senses” – R.S. Woodworth and D.G. Marquis (1949).

“Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment” – Stephen. P. Robbins (2010).

PERCEPTION - CHARACTERISTICS:

 

Perception is a meaningful interpretation of received stimuli through sensation.

It is objective and needs retention of past experiences.

It involves selection of particular stimuli received through sensation.

It last as long as the sensory stimulus is present and makes an experience.

Analysis and synthesis of sensory stimulus takes place in the process of perception.

CONCEPT FORMATION

 

The ability of our brain to identify a thing and make it as concepts even enables us to divide things into classes. Ex: ‘Red'. 'Table', 'Door', 'Animal' etc. are concepts

Meaning :

The process by which we discover the feature or features which are ‘common’ to a large number of objects and associate these with a symbol which thereafter may be applied to other similar objects is called ‘Concept formation’.

Stages / Steps

The process of formation of concepts involves four elements. 

Experience (exploration),

abstraction,

generalization

and analysis.

Experience is the process of direct participation in an action.

Abstraction is the process of discovering the common elements in a large number of situations after experiencing them.  One observes that two or more objects are alike or similar in some respects and different in other respects. 

 For example, in acquiring the concept ‘dog’, a child may hear the word ‘dog’ over and over in different situations and learns to apply the word to any object that has the same general characteristics as a dog.  Thus in the early stages of the development of the concept, the child may apply the word to cats or four-legged animals, because upto that time he has observed only one ‘common’ element in his experience, namely, four-leggedness.  Additional observations and finer discrimination will ‘define’ the concept to the point where the word will be applied ‘only’ to dogs.

Generalization is the process of extending the concept to include objects which possess a quality in common with other objects but which have not been experienced as any of the objects in the abstracting process.  

    Quite obviously, a concept is learned through trial and error reaction to objects, situations or events. 

     This refinement and enrichment of a concept depends upon the number and variety of trial and error reactions of experiences involved in the development of the concept

Analysis is the systematic procedure applying techniques for analysis of academic content which are similar in intent to those employed by task analysis in designing sequences for a job.