Role of learning and its

approaches to
communication
 Role of learning:

• Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skill through

education and experience
• Learning plays its pivotal role in the following domains
• Personality development
• Skills development
• Memory
• Social development
• Cognition
• Motivation
• Growth
 Role of learning

• Behavior modification
• Emotions
• Language learning through imitation
 Communication

• Communication requires a sender a message and a

recipient although the receive need not be present or
aware of the sender’s intent to communicate at the
time of communication
• Communication is the activity of conveying
information through the exchange of thoughts
message or information as by speech visuals signals
writing or behavior.
 Types of communication
• Verbal communication
• Non verbal communication
Communication process
Receiver
decodes Start with a
the message
message

Transmitter
Encoded
encodes
message is
the
received
message

Encoded
message is
transmitted
Learning approaches in communication:

• “Most human behavior is learned observationally

through modeling; from observing others, one forms
an idea of how new behavior are performed and on
later this coded information serves as a guide for
action( Bandura).”
 Behaviorist and communication

• In 1957, skinner published his book verbal behavior

in which he attempted to apply his form of operant
conditioning to language learning.
• A basic assumption of his was that all language
including private internal discourse was a behavior
that developed in the same manner as other skills.
• Skinner believed that a sentence is merely a part of a
behavior chain each element of which provide a
conditional response
• The probability of a verbal response was contingent on four
things
1. Reinforcement
2. Stimulus control
3. Deprivation
4. Aversive

• The interaction of these things in a child’s environment

would lead to particular association, the basis of all
languages
• The language could be categorize by the way it was
reinforced
• According to them there are four general types of speech
echoic behavior, mand, tact, interverbals & autoclitic.
• Mand is a term that B.F. Skinner used to describe a
verbal operant in which the response is reinforced by
a characteristic consequence and is therefore under
the functional control of relevant conditions of
deprivation or aversive stimulation
• Tact is a term that B.F. Skinner used to describe a
verbal operant which is controlled by a nonverbal
stimulus (such as an object, event, or property of an
object) and is maintained by nonspecific social
reinforcement (praise).
The intraverbal is a form of verbal behavior where the
speaker responds to another's verbal behavior (e.g. like
in a conversation). Intraverbal behavior is the most
complex verbal behavior to teach.
An autoclitic is a verbal behavior that modifies the
functions of other verbal behaviors. For example, "I
think it is raining" possesses the autoclitic "I think,"
which moderates the strength of the statement "it is
raining."
 Cognitive learning theory and
communication:
• Meaningful verbal learning
• Advance Organizers:

• New material is presented in a

systematic way, and is connected to
existing cognitive structures in a
meaningful way.
 Cognitive learning theory and
communication:

• Meaningful verbal learning

• When learners have difficulty with
new material, go back to the concrete
anchors (Advance Organizers).
Provide a Discovery approach, and
they’ll learn
Cognitive theory of communication and
cognitive dissonance:

• Developed by Leon Festinger in 1975

• He published his work on human behavior and decision making

process

• The idea behind the theory is that people do not like to have
dissonant cognition
• Desire to have a consonant cognition is as strong as our basic
desire for food and shelter
• The theory suggest that:
• Dissonance is a psychologically uncomfortable enough to
motivate people to achieve consonance.
• In a state of dissonance, people will avoid information and
situation that might increase the dissonance
• How dissonance arises is easy to imagine, it may be
unavoidable in information rich society. How people deal
with it is more difficult
• Cognitive dissonance
It refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes,
beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental
discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the
attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort
and restore balance.
THANK YOU