Learning Memory: Certain Distinct Forms, Types of Learning (Essay Sample)

Learning and Memory
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The first video entitled “The Bobo Beatdown” addresses the precepts of social and observational learning. The tenets in this video seeks to expound on the social learning theory which affirms that learning is a cognitive process that transpires within a social arena and can occur via observation. According to the tenets highlighted therein, individuals can learn certain traits or behaviors via observation, copying or modeling. According to precepts in this video, individuals are more likely to observe their social figures (or models) then encode this trait and later imitate the behaviors they observed. The video is based on Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment in 1961 where children were observed as study models and were exposed to an aggressive scene as an adult meted out harshness and brutality on a Bobo doll and were later observed in a room with dolls and were seen to treat the Bobo doll with equivalence of brutality and aggressiveness as the adult they had later seen.
According to this video, there are certain distinct forms or types of learning. To begin with, social learning involves a changing one’s behavior by first observing it then imitating the observed behavior. This is an amalgamation of observational and cognitive learning which is termed as “modeling”. Modeling can as well be accomplished via vicarious reinforcement where an individual partakes in a distinct behavior for having seen someone else get rewarded. This is tied to the third mode of learning called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning involves strengthening a behavior if accompanied by a reinforcer or weakening of a behavior if accompanied by a punishment. This links voluntary behavior with stimuli.
This video also highlights classical conditioning as a mode of learning which entails connecting two or more stimuli with an expectation of a certain result. This concept can be best understood by the reflex conditioning demonstrated by Pavlov’s experiment with his dogs where he associated a distinct stimulus (anticipation for food) with some mode of involuntary response (salivating of the dog models). According to Albert Bandura’s experiment, there’s evidence that conditioning with external rewards, punishment or other forms of stimuli is not the only way to learn. This video affirms that learning doesn’t discriminate victims (study models such as rats, pigeons or humans) except sight oriented animals such as doves and pigeons which are biologically predisposed to evade certain foods by sight since that’s how they hunt for forage. This implies that different species can speedily learn associations that aid them to thrive or survive and that not all associations are learned equally.
It is further affirmed that learned associations are even more complex in humans since the precepts that we learn not only frames our behavior but also frames out attitudes. This implies that human cognition (thoughts, perspectives, and expectations) ability is paramount for learning. Besides, we unconsciously do latent learning which occurs when we bombard a stranger who seeks directions, and we guide them by giving specific key directions to where they need to go. This is so since as humans we are always developing cognitive maps or mental representations of our environments without explicitly telling ourselves to do it.
In summary, we learn through modeling by imitating certain figures (such as parents and leaders) since the behaviors we observe in others increases the likelihood that we will encode and perform the same acts (such as imitating the styles and facial expressions of those around us). Albert Bandura’s experiment expounds on social-cognitive tenets which affirm that our social learning is tied to our personality and behavior choices. This reinforces the role of parents and those around us since our surrounding models play a central role in social learning. The video also captures incidental (latent) learning which transpires unconsciously without knowledge being instantly expressed often referred to as accidental learning (which encompasses learning something in the process of another trait or behavior such as switching off a light bulb). Lastly, we learn unconsciously by having mental pictures of a certain country or place which allows humans to navigate to invisible destinations by forming cognitive maps.
The second video entitled “How We Make Memories” addresses the precepts of our memory, how we encode information and how damaging the memory part of the brain can affect us. The video highlight the case study of Clive Wearing who contracted Herpes viral Encephalitis that ravaged his central nervous system and since then he has been unable to recall his past. Memory can be defined as persistent learning over time. This video unfolds that human memory can typically be accessed via recall, recognition or re-learning. Recall implies that one has to retrieve data or information that has been learned in the past while recognition implies that one only needs to identify items learned in the past. Re-learning implies that one has to weigh the period of time saved when learning a certain data again.
According to this video, there are two types of memory, short term and long term. Short-term memory is an activated memory which holds roughly four to seven bits of information. Information is retained here up to thirty seconds. Long term memory is boundless and permanent reservoir of the memory system. The two memory modes are further broken down into sensory and working memory. Sensory memory is the immediate, initial sensory information recording in the memory structure while working memory narrows down to processing briefly stored data. This video further highlights the mechanism in which data that we are exposed to become a memory. First, information from external events is passed into the sensory memory via sensory inputs. This information is further encoded in the working memory via keep attention to critical data. This information in the working memory is further encoded into the long term memory and hence can be later retrieved. It is ...