Learning

We mean by learning those activities or conditions whereby a cue acquires instigative potency. Learning is typically a redintegrative phenomenon; it is the process in which a detail becomes effective in place of the antecedent context of which it has been a constituent but partial feature. The essential fact in learning may, therefore, be described as the reduction of the stimulus leading to a response. The more complete the learning, the further does the reduction of the stimulus proceed. In time the requisite stimulus may be so slight or subtle a cue or detail that its precise identification may be difficult.

This is especially true, in as much as various reduced stimuli may become effective, now one and now another being involved in the production of a given response. Moreover, in some cases the effectiveness of a given predetermined cue may be set as the goal or criterion of learning. Before this point of reduction is reached, then, progress in learning may be shown by the increasing frequency, ease, or certainty with which the predetermined cue operates. Since the study of learning is thus the investigation of certain special aspects or conditions of redintegrative sequences, it is clear that throughout our previous chapters we have been referring to acts of learning. The neurotic soldier feared sudden sounds, sharp weapons, and the uniforms of officers, because he had learned to do so.

That a single episode on the battlefield should suffice to establish the instigative potency of such details makes this a rather spectacular case. Unfortunately for our leisure, most learning is more tedious and time-consuming than this, since ordinary situations lack the vividness of battle contexts, and must be oft repeated. A more familiar sort of learning is that illustrated by the "conditioning" of the salivary and pupillary reflexes, the training of the terrier to obey verbal commands, the slow acquisition of the understanding and use of language by the child, and the long process whereby spatial cues become effective. On the one hand, we have seen in these cases that many repetitions of a type of sequence are often required for the redintegrative potency of the details to become established.

On the other hand, we have clearly seen, as in reading and in space perception, how weaker, subtler, and sometimes concurrent or artificially introduced details do in time become effective cues for a given consequent. A more detailed study of learning therefore introduces no new phenomena. It consists, instead, of a more careful analysis, and, where possible, a quantitative description, of the conditions of redintegrative instigation. We begin with special consequents and inquire into the way in which the reduction of the effective antecedents proceeds. Learning may be defined briefly as the mastery of something once done. But brevity of definition should not be used to conceal the actual complexity of many learning processes.