PSYCHOLOGY DISCUSSION 3

By pursuing your degree, you have actively sought learning; however, learning does not occur simply because you enroll in a course. Learning is much bigger than the school context, and it’s actually much smaller, too—psychologists have developed theories that break down the specific components involved in how we make links between two stimuli (classical conditioning) and between a stimulus and a response (operant conditioning). We know that we can even learn without experiencing something ourselves, but by simply watching others’ experiences (observational learning). Regardless of what your role is in society, a parent, a friend, or a manager on your job, you are probably responsible for both learning new things yourself and helping others learn and commit information to memory. As you progress through this week’s learning materials, think about the different ways in which you yourself learn, reason, problem-solve, and remember, and how you help others do the same.