Learning
hideLearning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.
Human learning may occur as part of education or personal development. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy.
Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals and humans. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.
Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning. Children play, experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact. Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they make meaning of their environment through play.
For more information about Learning, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with learning
Professor Finally Publishes Controversial Brain Theory
Nov 19, 2008 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In the late '90s, Asim Roy, a professor of information systems at Arizona State University, began to write a paper on a new brain theory. Now, 10 years later and after several rejections and ...
Smart desks make sci-fi a reality in the classroom
Sep 17, 2008 |
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Schools are set for a Star Trek make-over thanks to the development of the world's first interactive classroom by experts at Durham University.
Virtual education... for free
Jul 31, 2009 |
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They don't offer degrees but then they don't charge tuition either.
Smart rat 'Hobbie-J' produced by over-expressing a gene that helps brain cells communicate
Oct 19, 2009 |
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Over-expressing a gene that lets brain cells communicate just a fraction of a second longer makes a smarter rat, report researchers from the Medical College of Georgia and East China Normal University.
Sleep helps people learn complicated tasks
Nov 17, 2008 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Sleep helps the mind learn complicated tasks and helps people recover learning they otherwise thought they had forgotten over the course of a day, research at the University of Chicago shows.
Giving learning a personal touch
Jul 18, 2008 |
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A learning system that adapts to the abilities and needs of students opens the way to a more personalised approach in delivering education electronically.
Psychologists reveal the un, deux, trois of learning a second language
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Mar 19, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Parlez-vous français? If you were quick at learning foreign languages at school, it could be because your brain has an enhanced ability to remember sequences.
Scientists ID gene key to Alzheimer's-like reversal
May 06, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A team led by researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has now pinpointed the exact gene responsible for a 2007 breakthrough in which mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease regained ...
Calcium channels optimize learning
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Sep 18, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Switzerland, have shown how calcium channels in the brain have a positive impact on learning. Their results have been ...
Sleep helps build long-term memories
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Jun 24, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Experts have long suspected that part of the process of turning fleeting short-term memories into lasting long-term memories occurs during sleep. Now, researchers at the RIKEN-MIT Center for ...
Pre-school age exercises can prevent dyslexia
Aug 27, 2008 |
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A typical characteristics of children's linguistic development are early signs of the risk of developing reading and writing disabilities, or dyslexia. New research points to preventive exercises as an effective means to ...
Pavlov's neurons: Researchers find brain cells that are a key to learning
Dec 08, 2008 |
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More than a century after Ivan Pavlov's dog was conditioned to salivate when it heard the sound of a tone prior to receiving food, scientists have found neurons that are critical to how people and animals learn from experience.
Researchers identify a protein critical for memory, learning
Biology /
Feb 24, 2009 |
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Researchers from the University of Toronto and The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) have made a breakthrough discovery that may eventually change the way physicians approach treatment of learning and memory defects ...
Back to (brain) basics
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Nov 03, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In his own words, MIT neuroscientist Mark Bear admits he did not "wake up one day and say 'Hey, I'm going to cure autism.'" But, after decades of painstaking basic research on how the brain ...
Personalised learning puts students in a class of their own
Oct 27, 2008 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A new learning platform is giving the traditional classroom a radical makeover. Using innovative ICT technology, iClass is putting pupils at the centre of the learning experience and providing them with more ...
