Mystery of Learning

The book’s chapter 1 focuses on the learning, which is a continuous process including positive or negative change that happen in actions and performance because of both experience and interaction. Moreover, theory of learning deals with inputs from other sources which is a recurrent process indicating the outcomes about circumstances of learning process.

Regarding the sources of knowledge namely as empiricism, nativism and rationalism, in empiricism, nothing is innate so there is nothing to rely on and the sensory experience is prominent whereas in nativism, some of the knowledge is innate meaning that knowledge is present at birth thus, inherited. In rationalism, knowledge is based on reason meaning that mind builds knowledge with observations and sensory so the reason is linked with the process.

In term of the concepts of epistemology regarding the content of knowledge namely as skepticism, realism, idealism and pragmatism. Skepticism perceives that the world might not be knowable and therefore, knowledge cannot be connected with reality while realism indicates the opposite by stating that everything can be known. Finally, idealism includes ideas and representations about reality whereas in pragmatism knowledge cannot be known directly.

Regarding knowledge traditions namely as pragmatism, objectivism and interpretivism, objectivism is the integration of empiricism and realism while interpretivism is the combination of rationalism and idealism. Objectivism views knowledge as independent from the knower yet interpretivism supports that knowledge is based on the knower.

In terms of the some approaches to learning, regarding Ebinghaus’s verbal learning experiments, it was seen that repetition of the ideas have an essential role in retention. The term “forgetting curve” means that forgetting happens fast in the beginning and then slowly when the first learning process completed. When perceptions lead the decisions more than the memory it is called as “Ebbinghaus illusion”. Furthermore, Thorndike’s approach “Law of Effect” focuses on consequence of the action by indicating the relationship between a sensation and an impulse an animal learned. Therefore, it focuses on physical events of stimulus as well as response in operant conditioning. In addition, Pavlov’s “classical conditioning” supports that unconditioning stimulus comes up with unconditioned response. Finally, according to Gestalt, it was perceived that the whole yet not pieces form the basis for the cognitive process of learning supporting that knowledge comes from experience. 

Moreover, Gestalt’s theory has six principles, which are figure-ground, similarity, proximity, closure, continuity and order. Figure-ground is about separating figures from their background regarding variables such as color as well as size whereas similarity is related to the tendency to find similarities as well as differences in an image. Proximity supports that people group things that are familiar with each other yet closure indicates that the brain automatically fills in gaps among elements in order to get a complete picture to complete missing parts to create whole. Finally, continuity supports that human eye follows the following lines while order indicates that the brain perceives ambiguous shapes as these are simple shapes.