Professional Documents
Culture Documents
of Music
MUE733
LEARNING PROCESSES OF
MUSIC
Week 8
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Learning Theories
Learning can be defined as the process leading to relatively
permanent behavioral change or potential behavioral change. As we
learn, we alter the way we perceive our environment, the way we
interpret the incoming stimuli, and therefore the way we interact, or
behave.
Learning is the process by which we receive and process sensory
data, encode such data as memories within the neural structures of
our brain, and retrieve those memories for subsequent use.
Learning Theories are an organized set of principles explaining how
individuals acquire, retain and recall knowledge. They allow us to
understand how learning occurs.
There are many labels used to describe the many theories, there are
many theorists associated with each approach.
The spectrum of learning theories consists of many approaches or
ways of explaining how humans learn.
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Behaviorism
According to behaviorists, learning can be defined
as the relatively permanent change in behavior
brought about as a result of experience or practice.
The focus is on how the environment impacts
overt behavior.
Learning occurs when new behaviors or changes in
behaviors are acquired as the result of an
individuals response to stimuli.
Principles: 1. The influence of the external
environment contributes to the shaping of the
individuals behavior; 2. The environment presents
an antecedent that prompts a behavior; 3. Whether
the behavior occurs again is dependent on the
Behaviorism
As a teaching approach, behaviorism is often referred to as directed
instruction (teacher providing the knowledge to the students either
directly or through the set up of contingencies) or an objectivist
theory of learning. The use of exams to measure observable behavior
of learning, the use of rewards and punishments in our school system
is examples of the Behaviorist influence.
CAI, computer-assisted instruction is an effective way of learning from
a behaviorist perspective as it uses the drill and practice approach to
learning new concepts or skills. The question acting as the stimulus,
elicits a response from the user. Based on the response a reward may
be provided in terms of rewarding the user to a different level.
Applications for instruction: 1. State objectives and break them down
into steps; 2. Provide hints or cues that guide students to desired
behavior; 3. Use consequences to reinforce the desired behavior.
Pavlov began pairing a bell sound with the meat powder and
found that even when the meat powder was not presented, the
dog would eventually begin to salivate after hearing the bell.
Since the meat powder naturally results in salivation, these two
variables are called unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the
unconditioned response (UCR) respectively. The bell and
salivation are not naturally occurring; the dog was conditioned
to respond to the bell. Therefore, the bell is considered the
conditioned stimulus (CS), and the salivation to the bell, the
conditioned response (CR).
Association of stimuli (an antecedent [a stimulus occurring
before a response] stimulus will reflexively [involuntary] elicit
[causes] an innate [inborn] emotional or physiological response;
another stimulus will elicit an orienting response) [S-R Link]
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Stimulus generalization
Response to a stimulus that is similar to but
different from a conditioned stimulus; the
more similar the two stimuli, the more likely
generalization is to occur. E.g. fear of rats
fear of furry animals.
Stimulus discrimination
The process by which an organism learns to
differentiate among stimuli, restricting its
response to one in particular. E.g. red and
green traffic light.
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1904-1990.
Skinner expanded on the foundation of behaviorism, established
by Watson, and on the work of Thorndike, by focusing on operant
conditioning. But he believed that internal states could influence
behavior just as external stimuli.
The term operant refers to how an organism operates on the
environment to produce some desirable result, and hence,
operant conditioning comes from how we respond to what is
presented to us in our environment. It can be thought of as
learning due to the natural consequences of our actions. Eg., OC
is at work when we learn that studying hard results in good
grades.
Learning in which a voluntary response is strengthened or
weakened, depending on its positive or negative consequences.
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Operant Conditioning
In Classical Conditioning, the original behaviors are the
natural, biological responses to the presence of some
stimulus such as food, water, or pain. Operant conditioning
applies to voluntary responses, which an organism performs
deliberately, in order to produce a desirable outcome.
Thorndikes Cat in the box goal was to get his cats to learn
to obtain food by leaving the box; freedom as the
reinforcer, learns through natural consequences, how to
gain the reinforcing freedom and receive food.
Animals in a Skinner Box learn to obtain food by operating
on their environment within the box.
Learning by mistakes learn to act differently based on the
natural consequences of your previous actions.
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Reinforcement
Term means to strengthen, refers to any stimulus
which strengthens or increases the probability of a
specific response (Skinner 1938).
Punishment is an unpleasant or painful stimulus
that is added to the environment after a certain
behavior occurs; decreases likelihood of behavior
occurring again.
Reinforcement increases behavior; punishment
decreases behavior.
There are four types of reinforcement: positive,
negative, punishment and extinction.
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Reinforcement
1. Positive reinforcement adding stimuli to the environment in order
to increase a response. For example, adding a treat to increase the
response. The most common types of positive reinforcement are
praise and rewards.
2. Negative reinforcement taking something negative away/stimuli
whose removal from the environment, in order to increase a
response. Involves the elimination of a negative stimulus e.g.
nagging.
3. Punishment refers to adding something aversive following a
response in order to decrease a behavior. Eg. disciplining (spanking)
a child for misbehaving. The punishment is not liked and therefore
to avoid it, he or she will stop behaving in that manner. Punishment
can also be characterized by the removal of a positive reinforcer.
4. Extinction When you remove something in order to decrease
behavior. You take something away so that a response is decreased.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
Refers to the frequency and timing of reinforcement following
desired behavior. Schedules and patterns of reinforcement affect
the strength and duration of learning.
Behavior that is reinforced every time it occurs is said to be a
continuous reinforcement schedule.
Behavior that is reinforced some but not all of the time is on a
partial reinforcement schedule. Generally, partial reinforcement
schedules produce stronger and longer lasting learning than
continuous reinforcement schedules.
There are many different partial reinforcement schedules that have
been examined, and can be put into two categories: schedules that
consider the number of responses made before reinforcement is
given, called fixed-ratio and variable-ratio schedules, and those that
consider the amount of time that elapses before reinforcement is
provided, called fixed-interval and variable interval schedules.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
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Knowledge
Knowledge is the outcome of learning. It also guides new
knowledge.
One of the most important elements in the learning process is
what the individual brings to the learning situation. What we
already know determines to a great extent what we will pay
attention to, perceive, learn, remember, and forget.
Knowledge has been found to be important in understanding
and remembering new information (Recht & Leslie, 1988).
The cognitive perspective on knowledge emphasizes
understanding of concepts and theories in different subject
matter domains and general cognitive abilities, such as
reasoning, planning, solving problems and comprehending
language.
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Knowledge
There are different kinds of knowledge:
Domain specific knowledge that pertains to a particular task or
subject.
General knowledge applies to many different situations, for
example, how to read or write.
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Sensory Memory
Information from the environment we receive through the
senses.
SM is the initial processing that identifies these incoming
stimuli so that we can make sense of it.
STSS is affiliated with the transduction of energy (change
from one energy to another). The environment makes
available a variety of sources of information (light, sounds,
smell, hear, cold, etc.) but the brain only understands
electrical energy. The body has special sensory receptor
cells that transduce this external energy to something the
brain can understand. In the process of transduction, a
memory is created. This memory is very short (less than
second for vision; about 3 seconds for hearing).
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Sensory Memory
The capacity is very large but the vast amount of sensory
information is fragile in duration.
Sensory memory contains a brief but accurate
representation of physical stimuli to which a person is
exposed. Each representation is constantly being
replaced with a new one.
In order for the learner to transfer the information to the
next stage (STM), it is important that the learner attends
to the information at this initial stage.
There are two major concepts for getting information into
STM:
Stimulus has an interesting feature.
Stimulus activates a known pattern.
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Forgetting
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Perception
Gestalt principles of perception explain how we see patterns
in the world around us. It refers to the process of detecting a
stimulus and assigning meaning to it [interpretation of
sensory information]. The meaning is constructed based on
both objective reality and our existing knowledge.
Some of our present day understanding of perception is based
on studies conducted in Germany early in this century by
psychologists called Gestalt theorists.
Gestalt means something like pattern or configuration in
German, and refers to peoples tendency to organize sensory
information into patterns of relationships.
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Perception
Instead of perceiving bits and pieces of unrelated information, we
perceive organized, meaningful wholes.
Figure-ground, Proximity, Similarity, Closure
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Concept Formation
A concept is a set of rules to define the categories by
which we group similar events, ideas or objects [a
general category of ideas, objects, people, or
experiences whose members share certain properties].
Principles that lend themselves to concept
development:
Name and define concept to be learned (advance organizer)
Identify relevant and irrelevant attributes (guided discovery)
Give examples and non-examples (tie to what is already
known elaboration)
Use both inductive (example/experience - -> definition) and
deductive reasoning (definition - -> examples)
Name distinctive attributes (guided discovery)
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Schemas
Abstract knowledge structures that organize vast
amounts of information. A schema is a pattern or guide
for understanding an event, concept or skill. The
schema tells you what features are typical of a
category, what to expect. It is like a pattern, specifying
the standard relationships in an object or situation
and has slots which are filled with specific information
as we apply the schema in a particular situation.
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