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This article throws light upon the behavioural changes that are excluded from learning. The behavioural changes are: 1. Native Response Tendencies versus Learning 2. Maturation versus Learning 3. Fatigue and Habituation versus Learning 4. Performance versus Learning Factors.
Behavioural Change # 1. Native Response Tendencies:
The native responses are those responses which are characteristically unlearned activities and do not need outside help for acquisition of such behaviour.
They are innate behaviours of organisms included in reflexes (physiological responses to stimulus), the tropism (the innate movement operation for performing an act) and the biological instincts (such as birds’s nest building).
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These behaviours are innate and unlearned. These behaviours are characteristics of various species and those more nearly idiosyncratic to one species are called “species-specific” by Hilgard. The concept of instinct has been the most controversial of these terms, partly because of a vagueness of connotation, partly because of a tendency to use the word as explanatory.
Such species-specific behaviours are called innate, because their forms are believed to be set down in the nervous system of all the members of the species independent of learning or experience of some sort. But gradually it turned out to be very difficult to classify behaviours as altogether innate or altogether learned.
Later animal psychologists like Hinde and others found that expression of some so-called instinctive behaviour depends very much upon variations in experience and learning.
The research on imprinting by Professor Lorenz also illustrates the in-between nature of behaviour with large instinctive components. Hess also provided support to the above contention. Similarly, the ethologists who study natural behaviour of species in their natural habitats have discarded the “innate” versus “learned” standpoint of behaviour because they are not seen to be so exclusively either—or affair.
Behavioural Change # 2. Maturation:
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Maturation is the natural growth process independent of training. Learning cannot take place until maturation reaches respective stages. Relatively pure cases such as swimming of tadpoles and flying of birds can be attributed primarily to maturation.
Maturation refers to the general processes of development which occur in the normal individual from birth— rather—from conception to the point of psychological and physiological maturity. These processes which include the development of body organs and the cerebral cortex, follow near-identical lines in all members of a particular species and they proceed more or less independently of external influences of learning.
Maturation also brings in changes in behaviour as a result of physiological or anatomical changes but they occur irrespective of learning and is more systematic and methodical than the changes of behaviour as an effect of learning. Maturational changes occur apart from any specific stimulation from the environment, whereas the changes or modifications of behaviour that are associated with specific stimulation are said to be learned.
Depending on a specific situation, the above distinction is not clear-cut always, but develop through a complex interplay of maturation and learning. This is illustrated aptly in the development of language in a child. The child does not learn to talk until old enough, but that development depends upon appropriate stimulation from his verbal community at the critical time.
The language the child picks up when he is able to talk is obviously the language of a specific environment and thus, a specific language is learned.
Therefore, maturation and learning are not exclusively independent of each other. Even while maturing normally, the factors in the embryonic stage, needs proper and nourishing environment inside the mother’s womb. Normal growth and behavioural changes can only occur under a specific environmental influence to bring in permanent change at each stage of development, and to be recognized as the effect of learning.
Behavioural Change # 3. Fatigue and Habituation:
Similarly, motor fatigue and sensory habituation are distinguished from learning proper. The motor fatigue occurs when a motor act is repeated in rapid success and for a relatively long period resulting in loss of efficiency—it becomes slower and weaker in amplitude until eventually the subject may refuse to perform it. The response in this case is said to be suffered “fatigue” or that its performance shows “work decrement”.
The fatigue occurs faster the greater the effort of the response. Recovery from fatigue occurs mainly as a simple function of “rest time”. When interpreted in the form of performance curve, the fatigue and recovery curves look very much like curves of experimental extinction and spontaneous recovery giving it an appearance of learning experience.
However, common practice has been to apply the “learning’ label to the spontaneous recovery and not to experimental extinction.
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Because fatigue, unlike extinction of a conditioned reflex, is presumed not to induce enduring and relatively “permanent” changes in the behaviour. But this is not correct, because extinction effects can also be reversed, an extinguished response can be trained.
Therefore, we can say that there is no crucial difference between fatigue and learning or rather fatigue can be a product of learning when considered solely at the behavioural level of measuring the elicited response.
The second kind of change is called “sensory habituation” which means that “presentation of a stimulus produces a certain perceptual reaction (what Pavlov called the orienting reflex or OR). This reaction can be recorded electrically throughout the nervous system.
If the stimulus is repeated over and over in a monotonous series, the OR aroused by each presentation becomes less and less, eventually declining to an almost undetectable level %”. Habituation is not sensory adaptation. In habituation the reduced or altered responsiveness can be traced directly to ‘changes’ at the receptor surface.
The subject becomes habituated with the stimulus, i.e. he gets used to it. It is not a reflex like adaptation but exhibits many of the same functional properties we ascribe to learning or (to extinction). It dissipates with time—like forgetting it is easily disrupted or dishabituated by interpolation of a novel or interfering event.
It can be rehabituated again and again like relearning and even generalize to other similar stimuli, displaying all the trends of learning and follow the principles of dynamic laws of learning.
This can lead us to assume habituation as learning. Habituation in reality depends on the complexity of the stimulus to which the habituation occurs, requiring higher brain centers for its discrimination, and consequently, is similar to learning.
It takes place from some kind of development of an internal representation of the stimulus event or of its general class (or some kind of ‘stimulus recognition’). This had either been learned by the organism or stored a replica or model of the habituated stimulus. Stimulus recognition in cortical habituation is the result of learning.
Behavioural Change # 4. Performance:
Learning is always inferred from performance, but performance is not identical with learning. It is like the difference between knowledge and action, where action takes place from knowledge. “The concept of learning versus actualization, of knowing to do something versus actually doing it”.
Performance does presume learning, but performance in many cases fail (in spite of learning) due to some other intervening factors, like lack of motivation or drive or effect of drugs etc. All these will be discussed comprehensively in later sections.
All the above factors are documented briefly to ascertain the fact that learning is involved integrally in such a large range of activities, it is very difficult to include some in defining learning and eliminate all those we wish to exclude from the preview of learning.
Taking for granted the all inclusive nature of learning, different learning theorists had put forward their own points of view not disregarding the definition of learning but emphasizing certain factors and eliminating others. The controversy between the theorists is not over definition, but over ‘fact and interpretation’.