Readiness to learn. Learning occurs more efficiently if a person is ready to learn. This readiness results from a combination of growth and experience. Children cannot learn to read until their eyes and nervous systems are mature enough. They also must have a sufficient background of spoken words and prereading experience with letters and pictures.
Motivation. Psychologists and educators also recognize that learning is best when the learner is motivated to learn. External rewards are often used to increase motivation to learn. Motivation aroused by external rewards is called extrinsic motivation. In other cases, people are motivated simply by the satisfaction of learning. Motivation that results from such satisfaction is called intrinsic motivation. This type of motivation can be even more powerful than extrinsic motivation. Punishment, particularly the threat of punishment, is also used to control learning. Experiments have shown that intrinsic and extrinsic rewards serve as more effective aids to learning than punishment does. This is due largely to two factors: (1) learners can recognize the direct effects of reward more easily than they can the effects of punishment; and (2) the by-products of reward are more favorable. For example, reward leads to liking the rewarded task, but punishment leads to dislike of the punished deed.
Psychologists also look at the motivation of learning from the point of view of the learner. They tend to talk about success and failure, rather than reward and punishment. Success consists of reaching a goal that learners set for themselves. Failure consists of not reaching the goal. An ideal learning situation is one in which learners set progressively more difficult goals for themselves, and keep at the task until they succeed.
Skill learning and verbal learning. Through research, psychologists have discovered some general rules designed to help a person learn. The following rules apply particularly to learning skills. (1) Within a given amount of practice time, you can usually learn a task more easily if you work in short practice sessions spaced widely apart, instead of longer sessions held closer together. (2) You can learn many tasks best by imitating experts. (3) You should perform a new activity yourself, rather than merely watch or listen to someone. (4) You learn better if you know immediately how good your performance was. (5) You should practice difficult parts of a task separately and then try to incorporate them into the task as a whole.
Two additional rules apply mainly to verbal learning. (1) The more meaningful the task, the more easily it is learned. You will find a task easier to learn if you can relate it to other things you have learned. (2) A part of a task is learned faster when it is distinctive. When studying a book, for example, underlining a difficult passage in red makes the passage distinctive and easier to learn.
Transfer of training. Psychologists and educators recognize that new learning can profit from old learning because learning one thing helps in learning something else. This process is called transfer of training. Transfer of training can be either positive or negative. Suppose a person learns two tasks. After learning Task 1, the person might find Task 2 easier or harder. If Task 2 is easier, then the old learning has been a help and positive transfer of training has occurred. If Task 2 is harder, the old learning is a hindrance and negative transfer has occurred.
Whether transfer is positive or negative depends on the relationship between the two tasks. Positive transfer occurs when the two tasks have similar stimuli and both stimuli elicit the same response. For example, if we know the German word gross, it is easier to learn the French word gros because both words mean large. In this case, similar stimuli (gross and gros) elicit the same response (large).
MEMORY
Memory experts believe that people can, with practice, increase their ability to remember. One of the most important means of improving memory is the use of mental aids called mnemonic devices. Other techniques can also be used to help people improve their memory.
Mnemonic devices include rhymes, clues, mental pictures, and other methods. One of the simplest ways is to put the information into a rhyme. Many people remember the number of days in each month by using a verse that begins, "Thirty days hath September. . . ."
Another method provides clues by means of an acronym, a word formed from the first letters or syllables of other words. For example, the acronym homes could help a person remember the names of the Great Lakes--Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. A mental picture can be provided by the key-word method, which is particularly useful in learning foreign words. Suppose you want to remember that the German word Gabel (pronounced GAH behl) means fork. First, you think of a key word in English that sounds like the foreign word--for example, gobble. Next, you connect the two words through a mental image, such as that of a person gobbling food with a fork. From then on, to recall the meaning of Gabel, you would remember gobble and the stored image linking it to fork. Mental pictures can also be used to remember names. When you meet a person for the first time, pick out a physical feature of the individual and relate it to his or her name. For example, if you meet a very tall man named Mr. Shackley, imagine his bumping his head on the roof of a shack. In the future, this image will help you remember his name when you see or think of him.
Mnemonic techniques work best for remembering lists of specific items, such as words or objects. They do not work well for learning complex materials, such as stories and poems. For this reason, many psychologists favor more general strategies for improving memory.
Other ways to improve memory. A good way to help remember a piece of information is to rehearse (repeat) it a number of times. You can rehearse aloud or quietly to yourself. The more you rehearse, the more lasting the memory will be. In addition to repeating the information over and over, rehearsal also can involve elaborating upon the information. For example, suppose you want to remember the year that the telephone was invented--1876. You might elaborate upon this information by reminding yourself that the Declaration of Independence was signed 100 years earlier.
Another memory aid involves making the surroundings in which you remember material similar to those in which you learned the material. For this reason, football coaches often require players to practice under conditions similar to those of an actual game.
Exceptionally good memory. You sometimes hear of someone who has a "photographic memory," which supposedly works like a camera taking a picture. A person with such a memory would be able to take a quick mental picture of a textbook page or a scene. Later, the person could describe the page or scene perfectly by causing the image to reappear in his or her mind.
No one actually has a photographic memory. However, some people have a similar ability called eidetic imagery. An eidetic image is a picture that remains in a person's mind for a few seconds after a scene has disappeared. People who have eidetic imagery can look at a scene briefly and then give a thorough description of the scene based on a mental image. But the image fades quickly and may be inaccurate. Eidetic imagery is rare. Only 5 to 10 percent of all children have this ability, and most of them lose it as they grow up. Certain people possess an exceptionally good memory. They may be able to memorize the names of all the state capitals or hundreds of names and numbers from a telephone book. When such exceptional memory occurs in people with mental handicaps, psychologists refer to this condition as savant syndrome.
Deja vu is the feeling of having already experienced a situation that is actually happening for the first time. For example, a person who goes to a restaurant in a foreign city for the first time may have the overwhelming sensation of having been there before. Episodes of deja vu occur most often in people who have epilepsy. Deja vu is a French term meaning already seen.