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Chapter 5 on ‘Learning’ in the Class 11 NCERT Psychology textbook introduces you to several key concepts related to the learning process, its nature and types, the various psychological processes that affect it, and the determinants of learning. This blog provides unit exercises along with their solutions to help you understand the concepts more easily.
Contents
Explore Notes of Class 11 Psychology
NCERT Solutions Class 11 Psychology Chapter 5: Learning
Below, we have provided you with exercises mentioned in the NCERT Class 11 Chapter 5: Learning Unit, along with their solutions.
Exercises
- What is learning? What are its distinguishing features?
- How does classical conditioning demonstrate learning by association?
- Define operant conditioning. Discuss the factors that influence the course of operant conditioning.
- A good role model is very important for a growing child. Discuss the kind of learning that supports it.
- Explain the procedures for studying verbal learning.
- What is a skill? What are the stages through which skill learning develops?
- How can you distinguish between generalisation and discrimination?
- Why is motivation a prerequisite for learning?
- What does the notion of preparedness for learning mean?
- Explain the different forms of cognitive learning.
- How can we identify students with learning disabilities?
Also Read: NCERT CBSE History Chapter 3 Class 10 Notes “The Making of a Global World”
Solutions
- Learning is defined as “any relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by experience.” It refers to a spectrum of changes that take place as a result of one’s experience. The behavioural changes due to learning are relatively permanent and must be distinguished from temporary changes caused by fatigue, habituation, or drug use.
Distinguishing features of learning include:
- Experience-based: Learning always involves experience, such as events occurring in sequence, e.g., a bell indicating dinner time.
- Relatively permanent change: Unlike fatigue or drug effects, changes due to learning are enduring.
- Inferred from behaviour: Learning is not directly observable. It is inferred through performance (e.g., reciting a memorized poem).
- Different from performance: Performance is the observed behaviour, while learning is the underlying process inferred from it.
- Classical conditioning, first investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov, demonstrates learning through the association of stimuli. In his experiments on dogs, Pavlov noticed that the animals began to salivate not only at food but also at the sight of the empty plate or the sound associated with food. He formalized this into a procedure:
- Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Food, which naturally causes salivation.
- Unconditioned Response (UR): Salivation, which occurs naturally to food.
- Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A previously neutral stimulus, like a bell.
- Conditioned Response (CR): Salivation in response to the bell, after repeated pairings with the US.
This association between the CS and US leads to a learned response (CR), even when the US is absent. It is an example of S–S learning, where one stimulus signals the occurrence of another.
- Operant conditioning, investigated by B.F. Skinner is a type of learning where voluntary responses are controlled by their consequences. Skinner used a Skinner Box with rats to demonstrate that pressing a lever (operant response) resulted in a food pellet (reinforcer), and with repeated trials, the rat learned to press the lever quickly.
Factors influencing operant conditioning include:
- Type of reinforcement:
- Positive reinforcement (e.g., praise, food) strengthens a response by presenting a pleasant stimulus.
- Negative reinforcement (e.g., escaping pain or cold) strengthens behaviour by removing an unpleasant stimulus.
- Number and amount of reinforcement: More frequent or larger reinforcements accelerate learning.
- Quality of reinforcement: Higher-quality reinforcers (e.g., cake vs. bread) are more effective.
- Schedules of reinforcement:
- Continuous reinforcement is effective for initial learning but leads to quick extinction.
- Partial (intermittent) reinforcement leads to stronger resistance to extinction.
- Delay of reinforcement: Immediate reinforcement is more effective than delayed reinforcement.
- Nature of response: Voluntary, purposeful responses are more easily conditioned.
- The type of learning that supports the importance of a good role model is observational learning, also known as modeling or social learning. In this type of learning, individuals acquire new behaviours by observing others, especially role models.
- Albert Bandura’s experiments showed that children who observed an adult behaving aggressively towards a ‘Bobo’ doll and being rewarded, imitated that aggression. Children who saw the model being punished were less aggressive.
- Observational learning plays a key role in social behaviours. Children imitate adults during play and social situations such as marriage ceremonies or birthdays.
- Behaviours such as politeness, courtesy, diligence, and even aggression are learned through this method.
- Verbal learning focuses on how human beings learn words, sentences, and paragraphs. It is distinct from conditioning and limited to humans. It can be intentional or incidental, and it is influenced by the meaningfulness of material, familiarity, and the number of associations. The procedures used to study verbal learning in experimental settings include:
- Paired-Associates Learning:
- Stimulus-response pairs (e.g., GEN–LOOT) are shown to the learner.
- The learner is asked to recall the response word after seeing the stimulus word.
- Learning is measured by how many trials are needed for errorless recall.
- Serial Learning:
- Lists of verbal items are presented, and participants must recall them in the same order.
- Uses the serial anticipation method, where one word prompts the next in sequence.
- Free Recall:
- A list of unrelated or related words is presented.
- Participants are asked to recall them in any order.
- Reveals patterns like category clustering and subjective organization.
- A skill is defined as the ability to perform a complex task smoothly and efficiently. Examples include car driving, shorthand writing, and piloting. Skills are learned through practice and exercise and involve chains of perceptual-motor responses or S-R sequences.
According to Fitts, skill acquisition passes through three phases:
- Cognitive Phase:
- Understanding instructions and how the task must be performed.
- Requires attention to every cue and response outcome.
- Associative Phase:
- Sensory inputs are linked to appropriate responses.
- Errors reduce, performance improves, and time taken decreases.
- Autonomous Phase:
- The task becomes automatic with minimal conscious effort.
- External distractions no longer interfere with performance.
The transition from one phase to the next is marked by performance plateaus, and improvement continues with consistent practice.
- Generalisation is when a learned response is elicited by a new but similar stimulus.
Example: A child learns to be afraid of a man with a black coat and moustache. When meeting another man with a beard and black clothes, the child also shows fear. Discrimination is when an organism differentiates between similar stimuli and responds only to the specific one associated with reinforcement. Example: The same child does not react fearfully to a clean-shaven man in grey clothes. Generalisation occurs due to similarity, while discrimination depends on learning to detect differences between stimuli. Both are complementary learning processes. - Motivation is considered a crucial prerequisite for learning because it energises and activates an individual to act in order to fulfill a current need or attain a specific goal. It is both a mental and physiological state that drives behaviour, and such behaviour persists until the goal is achieved and the need is satisfied. For example, a child who wants to eat sweets in the absence of their mother may forage through the kitchen to find the jar in which sweets are stored. In this process, the child learns the location of the jar. Similarly, a hungry rat placed in a Skinner box explores the environment and learns to press a lever to get food.
- Preparedness for learning refers to the idea that different species, including humans, vary in their ability to form certain associations because of biological constraints and inherited neural mechanisms. Each species has particular sensory capacities and response abilities that determine what it can learn easily and what it cannot. This concept implies that organisms are biologically predisposed or “prepared” to learn some associations more readily than others. For instance, a certain kind of associative learning may be very easy for human beings or apes but might be extremely difficult or impossible for animals like cats or rats.
- Cognitive learning focuses on the mental processes involved in learning rather than just stimulus-response associations. Two major forms include:
- Insight Learning:
- Introduced by Kohler through experiments with chimpanzees.
- Learning occurs suddenly after a period of inactivity (e.g., using a pole and a box to reach a banana).
- It involves cognitive understanding of the means-end relationship.
- Latent Learning
- Discovered by Tolman using rats in a maze.
- Rats that were not rewarded initially still learned the maze layout.
- When rewards were introduced later, these rats performed as well as the consistently rewarded group.
- Indicates the formation of a cognitive map, a mental representation of spatial information.
- Students with learning disabilities face difficulty in acquiring skills like reading, writing, reasoning, and mathematics, despite having average or above-average intelligence and adequate opportunities. These difficulties are linked to problems in the central nervous system.
Symptoms include:
- Writing and reading problems: Difficulty with letters, spelling, and speaking, despite no sensory defects.
- Attention disorders: Easily distracted and often hyperactive.
- Poor spatial and time orientation: Trouble navigating new surroundings, poor time sense.
- Motor coordination issues: Difficulty with balance, fine motor tasks (e.g., sharpening pencils).
- Inability to follow oral instructions.
- Social misjudgment: Difficulty identifying friendly vs. indifferent classmates.
- Perceptual disorders: Trouble differentiating sensory inputs (e.g., bell vs. telephone).
- Dyslexia: Letter reversals, confusion in word recognition (e.g., “b” vs. “d”, “was” vs. “saw”).
With remedial teaching, many of these symptoms can be corrected, helping students to progress like their peers.
Also Read: NCERT Solutions Class 11 English Snapshots Chapter: 3 Mother’s Day (Free PDF)
Download NCERT Solutions Class 11 Psychology Chapter 5: Learning
Download the Solutions of Other Chapters of Class 11 Psychology
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