This simple stimulus learning paper will analyze the forms of simple stimulus learning

Stimulus learning somewhat changes behavior permanently, or it can somewhat change the behavior repertoire that arises due to experiences (Terry, 2008). There is no exact way on observing knowledge, so in result behaviors are the only way a person has the capability of observing what has occurred in learning. This simple stimulus learning paper will analyze the forms of simple stimulus learning. The analysis will explain the concept of habituation, while analyzing the factors that affect perceptual learning, and examining the effects of stimulus exposure. This paper will also discuss how simple stimulus learning is applied to two real life scenarios.

Habituation

Habituation is defined as being a psychological learning process where the response to the stimulus is decreased after being exposed to it repeatedly (Terry, 2008). This means that a person or an animal can learn to ignore a stimulus because of it being repeatedly exposed to it. Habituation is seen as being a basic process of the systems that are biologically based. If we didn’t have this we would not be able to know the difference from the changing and meaningful information from irrelevant and stagnant ones.

Habituation is also known for being present in animal species, even human beings. There are several elements that enhance habituation emerging inside an organism. One element that is very important is the inter-stimulus interval, which is defined for being the amount of time that is in between the presentation that is first presented which of the stimulus to the organism going up to the next presentation (Terry, 2008). The second important element is stimulus duration, where it is the amount of time where the stimulus has presented.

A very interesting fact about habituation is the fact that it decreases in response due to the stimulus which is where the habit was created. When using an example, if the taste of strawberry ice cream has habituated you, your degree to responding to butter pecan ice cream will greatly inflate due to the person not developing an actual habit of it at the time.

Factors affecting Perceptual Learning

With perceptual learning there are many factors that affect its impact. Some factors consist of the presentation of stimuli being contrasted, transfer from easy to hard stimuli, along with feedback and attention. When contrasting stimuli is presented, perceived learning needs to be identified on which elements are deemed admissible for discriminatory issues. Both negative and positive stimuli need to be given so that the dependent can determine the difference from one stimulus and an alternative stimulus. Going from easy to hard stimuli is not easy at all. Initially with easy discrimination, sometimes it can cause the discrimination to be more difficult. For instance, there were two experiments conducted by Ashby and Shiering where in both experiments the participants accepted one out of three different forms of training based on a level that was difficult (Kellman & Garrigan, 2009).

One group began with examples that were easy and slowly worked their way to intermediate, and finally finished with examples that were more difficult. In the second portion it was done the complete opposite beginning from most difficult, to intermediate, and then the easiest. The examples that were viewed by the third group were viewed as being in random order. In result from the different training it was discovered that the outcome depended upon the actual category that the participants were learning. It was discovered that each of the three procedures were all affective when they were learned through explicit reasoning. Although, once the categorization rule became verbally hard to describe, those participating that initially began with the hardest examples first performed far better than those that were in the other groups.

Effects of Stimulus Exposure cesspool

There are times when a dependent prefers a certain stimuli. Sometimes disclosure of a certain stimulus can lead to an emotional or effective change in the stimulus’s presence. There was a study conducted by Abraham Maslow where participants were asked to perform a different tasks ranging from reading lists or copying sentences, or reading foreign names off of a list in a setting in a laboratory (Maslow, 1970). There were alternative duties used to deter the individuals from learning the experiments purpose. Those that participated were later asked to have their preferences judged by having subjects designate duties that were familiar, the lab that was familiar, along with the pictures that appeared to be familiar on the wall.

In this examination it appears that the participants in the study like for things to be more familiar to them instead of having things be unfamiliar to them. Primary facilitation is another form of stimulus exposure. Priming is something that happens when there is a presentation of a stimulus that facilitates the process of a repetition that follows closely of the related stimulus or that of the same. For instance, if there were pictures shown to a person in a series, there could be a dog in one picture that would allow the individual to observe and identify to another picture of a dog in a faster manner. The process that is necessary to perceive, emit, and identify the picture has been activated already, causing the stimulus to be primed. Experiments that are primed identify the fact that a participant is more capable of recognizing the image that has been primed along with new images in a shorter amount of time. Their reaction time is quicker to the pictures that they have already primed (Maslow, 1970).

Real Life Situations

An example of habituation in a real life scenario could be when an individual puts on their clothing. There is a stimulus that is created when a person puts on their clothes, and it is not there long before we are not aware of it anymore and it rapidly disappears from the nervous system. You can feel the clothing as you first put them on and you gain skin contact, but after a moment has passed and the clothing has been on, it becomes not as stimulating and it becomes a less unusual feeling for the person putting on the clothes. For perceptual learning, a real life example could occur when a child has to learn to differentiate sounds in one’s language. For instance, within the Hindi language there are t sounds that are in their language that are able to be differentiated by Hindi’s, but they are sounds that are hard for a person who speaks English to differentiate. A researcher named Cutler (2012) studies the perceptual organization in infants, to discover that a baby that is six months old living in an environment around English speaking people is able to differentiate the difference in the tones, but soon after lose this capability around eight-twelve months of age.

Everyone is different, causing them to learn in different manners. There are some who learn through perception and there are others that learn through habit forming behaviors. There are also many different stimuli that reside in us that we are aware of and others that we are unaware of, though they both equally affect the learning process in individuals. The process of learning can be affected by our amount of attention placed on certain information and the way the information is presented. Through adequate research it is a possibility that people can better understand the many aspects that are within the process of learning.