Learning
Human lifestyle is made of continuous learning procedures. People mistakable associate learning to the school performances or specific training programs. Good illustration of this misconception involve acceptance of change within the work environments.
Most people will avoid change for fear of losing a certain identity, or finding it objectionable since they perceive new training as unnecessary.
This is often due to their vast experiences and knowledge of how to implement the latest technology at the work places. The learning process is inevitable even when people attempt to react against forceful participation, discussion or control.
Learning to Rides a Bicycle
Learning to ride bicycle is an instrumental conditioning on its own since the act of balancing is an important life skill closely related to childhood walking and running abilities. Besides learning the balancing, riding a bicycle is an excellent exercising procedure that provides improvement in-terms of time management since one can travel in an eco-friendly manner.
It is also the most effective and safe way of enhancing short-distance movement especially among young people such as students, who have not attained the legal age of driving. Cycling promotes independence of movement, provides pleasurable form of exercise for the children and enhances their morale and joy to perform other related tasks.
The success to balance on a bicycle by themselves without stabilizers enables children to believe in their abilities. They have courage to face similar challenges that may come their ways such as performance skills, particularly situations that require them to try hard and persistently over long periods.
Learning to ride a bicycle requires the learner to first practice through several sessions with the assistance of stabilizers such as side wheels or the physical help such as parental support.
Overtime, the learner gains skills and confidence the stabilizer wheels are positioned closer to the main wheels or the supporter tries to let go short distances. The activity is also a skill that assists coordination of the feet and hands due to peddling, steering control and breaking.
Ability to achieve such an activity triggers praise from parents and strengthens reinforcement. The event of learning to cycle is thus favorable in the sense that the learner anticipates the outcome such as praise or direct rewards. The instrumentation conditioning therefore increases the desire to achieve more and therefore the training increases to a boosted perfection.
Styles of Learning
According to Pessiglione et al, attempting to change behavior is not possible unless in the first place, the learner is in a position to learn how the conduct emerging situations (2008).
In accordance with Pessiglione et al, operant/instrumental conditioning of learning occurs when the learner does best due to influence by a reward or punishment (2008).
The theory also emphasizes that the internal thought and incentives cannot influence or explain emergence or consequences of behavior but control occurs form the external or observable causes of human behavior. The active behaviors are the operant since they occurs due to influence form a behavior and leads to consequences.
There are therefore three main styles of influencing change or behavior during learning. Kinesthetic learning requires physical involvement since it involves touching and learning concepts through sense of touch.
The auditory learning relies on audio senses for instance hearing and remembering concepts lastly, visual learning is concern with graphical representation.
The styles however depend on situational and environmental involvements for instance the formal learning in schools is quite different from the informal activities such as learning how to ride a bicycle.
The uniqueness of learning among individual learners is based on a variety of factors. Considering the act of learning how to ride a bicycle, the learner may practice the behavior or memorize some acts through observation.
Either way, the learning suffers from various influences such as cultural differences, believes, practices, social status, age, family influences, personal traits and related performance abilities.
Behavior Vs Learning
In line with Balleine et al, there is a close link between behavior and learning. Successful learning process often influences behavior and causes change or modification of personal conduct (2009).
Human behavior goes beyond additional learning capabilities for instance in learning how to ride a bicycle, human behaviors intertwines the ability to achieve. The potential learner first observes others and either out of inquisitiveness, necessity or desire, acquires the urge to learn.
The procedure involves rotating the pedals with the feet to propel forward, but balance is an essential aspect as well as the main determinant in the learning process. Falling severally is common, since the learner may pedal but forget or fail to coordinate the movement with balancing.
The falling is a negative reinforcement that often causes an increase of the behavior since one is motivated to continue practicing to overcome the falls. In relation to Balleine et al writing, falling is the unfavorable event or outcome that emerges from a display of behavior (2009).
The learner shows a strengthened response due to the urge for removal of the unpleasant cases of falling. The consequences (falling) cause the learner to learn better on ways of catering for all the aspects required to learn the procedure. Falling is thus a negative reinforce.
When learning how to ride a bicycle, the learner uses the trial and error method of finding the balancing act. The act of remaining upright emerges through personal feeling of balance and other motivating factors.
The positive reinforcement is mainly the pride of being in a position to cycle through the streets in a perfect balance and being able to learn related behavioral precedents. These additional learnt concepts therefore assist in modification of behavior and progress.
Effective Form of Instrumental Conditioning
A behavior is easily associated to a reward that one receives for an action. The reward (knowing how to ride the bicycle in this case) is a form of reinforcement such as generally attributing good performance to a continual practice.
Most learners will think that there are high chances of forgetting to ride once they stop practicing thus the behavior remains highly dependent on reinforcing through rewards. The parent may as well reward a child for good efforts placed in learning an activity like how to ride the bicycle.
In this case, the reward acts as a motivator for persuading continuation of the behavior until full achievement, regardless of the stumbling factors like minor injuries due to the falls. Contrary, punishment decreases the likelihood of continuation since the act is voluntary and not something that is critically a lifetime requirement or inevitable.
Both the positive and negative forms of reinforcement are important for the activity since the positive reward that the parent promises the child learner adds the chances of continual occurrence of the behavior regardless of the possible negative effects.
The negative reinforcement on the other hand also increases the possibility of continued behavioral increase, for instance continual riding practices deprives the learner energy but at the same time motivates them to ensure consistency until the skills are achieved.
The falls are so annoying that any learner will work extremely harder to ensure ability to balance to overcome the occurrences.
According to Maier and Seligman, Skinner’s theory of instrumental conditioning is exceptionally influential particularly within a learning circumstance (1976). Learning and instilling of discipline activities in learning institutions have utilized the punishment and rewarding procedures.
In the theory, Skinner wrote, “a good educational program needed to have clear directions, tasks broken into small steps, immediate feedback, and positive reinforcement (Maier and Seligman, 1976).”
The learners are thus able to achieve good results through the shaping concept, where the reinforcement of the behaviour involves an act of guiding the learner towards achievement of the right and desired behaviour.
Conclusion
When a person wants to learn how to ride a bicycle, it is essential to begin with the basic requirements of knowing how to coordinate various activities such as steering, braking and peddling.
The task must be broken into simpler learning steps and reinforced positively whenever possible besides shaping to enable learners especially the young learners to maintain the practice until achievement of the desired performance.
When supporting the learner, the support must be enforced fully during the initial trials, but the adjusted gradually consistent with achievement.
A good guider uses the encouraging statements during practice such as “you are doing well”, as a way of encouraging better performance through support of continual behavioral practice. Good rewards are thus dynamic and harder to achieve since the learner is compelled to put more efforts to accomplish the set goals.
References
Balleine, B. W., Lijeholm, M., & Ostlund, S. B. (2009). The integrative function of the basal ganglia in instrumental condition.
Behavioral Brain Research. 199(1), Pp 43-52. Web.
Maier, S. F. & Seligman, M. E. (1976). Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 105(1). Web.
Pessiglione, M., Petrovic, P., Daunizeau, J., Palminteri, S., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2008). Subliminal instrumental conditioning demonstrated in the human brain. 59(4), Pp 561-567. London, UK: Elsevier Inc. Web.