Psy 115W: Human Knowledge Aquisition
Dr. Lappin
Thought Paper 4
April 9, 2001
"The Equation of Learning"
In an age when many are considering the possibilities of artificial intelligence as the new wave of technological advance, the idea of human learning is easily forgotten or thought of as an exhausted topic. Indeed modern science has led to amazing discoveries in understanding the learning process, and yet we must understand that we have merely begun to fathom the depths of our own capability and understanding. Centers, such as CARLA (Center for Advanced Research of Language Acquisition) of the University of Minnesota that devote attention to certain aspects of learning, serve as today’s primary source of acquiring more insight into the complexities of learning. Perhaps, understanding our learning process should be the foundation for all of our other endeavors.
Let us first take the process of learning itself into consideration by closely examining the differences that exist between learning and acquisition. A philosophical view followed by, interestingly, a mathematical approach will help shed light on the matter. It is believed that a child’s native language is simply picked up, or in other words acquired, through submersion into his or her particular surrounding where this language is the means of communication. I, having come to America at the age of ten without knowing more than three English words, have personal experience with being submerged into a foreign surrounding. However, I can recall the language acquisition process and its stages unlike a child who does not take note of this.
As Noam Chomsky, a numerously published MIT linguistics professor, points out, it is our "need" to understand, or in this case need to communicate, that drives us to learn. Clearly it is an inherent human need to communicate. And although I acquired my native language, Farsi, in this same fashion as the English language, it was the new need to communicate in my new surroundings (America) that caused me to acquire the English language. We can better understand this model by looking at the widely believed idea that as we get older we have less of a tendency to learn a foreign language, as is the case with my parents, who do not speak as well as my sister and me. In light of Chomsky’s view, we can reason that as we become older and more experienced, we understand that we can survive even in a foreign world without quenching the "need" for a new language. We instead are likely to search for ways to use our native tongue for communication, such as dealing only with people who can speak the same language as us. This is clearly observed in larger cities where immigrants of particular ethnicities tend to live within close proximity. Such closely knit ethnic neighborhoods keep their people isolated and encourage them to go through life without extending their horizons beyond their ethnicity. On the other hand, an immigrant child who attends school with an English-speaking teacher finds a need to adopt English as a means of communication and hence learns more easily than an older person who does not feel the same need.
In a classroom, the study of a foreign language is more difficult than the acquisition of a language and takes on the form of a learning process. In learning we identify a "desire" to learn and discipline ourselves to understand certain concepts, which add to our linguistic foundation what new information we learn. Those who move to a new country and are old enough to recognize the ways they could use their native tongue, but chose to learn the new language, similarly, follow the learning process having first identified a desire to learn. Interestingly, this group of people, which includes my parents, uses their native language skills as foundation for learning the new language. Because we learn new material by referring to our prior knowledge, the process just described can easily be defined as learning. And because we feel there exists no immediate need to learn this communicative method, we are less motivated and consequently less susceptible to learning than in the acquisition model. All the steps involved in this model are voluntary and deliberate, opposed to the acquisition model.
The discipline of Behavioral Psychology has devised a mathematical equation that explains this process of learning. Having the same factors and product, this mathematical approach mirrors the previously described philosophical approach. Called the Rescorla-Wagner Model, it states that the change in learning (ΔV) is equal to the motivation to learn (a) multiplied by the saliency of the stimuli (b) multiplied by the difference between what has already been learned and what constitutes peak learning (λ - vlearned): ΔV = a b (λ - vlearned). Because learning (or the change in learning in this equation) is directly proportional to "the motivation to learn," we can justify the previous argument, which argues that we must be motivated (learning model) or have a "need" to learn (acquisition model) before we can acquire knowledge.
What is curious about the way science classes and foreign language classes are conducted in schools, is that they try to reverse the natural learning process. The answers or information are provided before the student has derived a need to use such information. Students learn to read before they want to find out the information contained in books. They learn to write before they have the genuine desire to communicate in writing. They learn history before they try to analyze current political decisions. They learn economics before they ever try to run a business.
However, the reversed process delivers education through a prerequisite-driven scheme in which curriculum planners demand that students initially learn basic knowledge they feel those students will most likely need to know later to do more advanced things or understand more advanced concepts. But two problems arise from this scheme. First, predicting which basic things different students will need to pursue their different interests is almost impossible. Second, it is hopelessly boring for a student to learn the basics when they are divorced from the context of something the student really attempts to do.
Although it would make for a lousy world if everyone attempted their interests without possessing required basic knowledge on the topic, no knowledge should be forced upon students. They must independently come to the desire or need to learn such information before they can truly learn. Hence, laboratories, which create situations that call upon students to use their understanding of a given topic, make for an ideal learning situation.
Imagine, for example, that you are an undergraduate who like many is "testing the waters" and is unsure of their major. However, you are considering majoring in political science, which means that you may eventually need to do some quantitative research. Consider the plight of the math department trying to decide what to teach you. Can the department deliver in advance the math you really will need for your eventual research? To answer this, you need to first consider the fact that they probably do not know that you are a political science major and certainly cannot be sure that you will remain one. Second, the math department faculty consists of mathematicians, not political scientists. Although an attempt to resolve this problem can be made by the mathematicians studying a course or two of introductory political science as early undergraduates, to perhaps fulfill a college requirement, they will have most likely, if not definitely, forgotten this information at the time it pertains to your academia. And even if they knew where you were headed in your studies, they are not likely to know what kind of math that direction requires, much less how to teach it in the appropriate context.
The likely outcome is that you will be taught some standard form of statistics by the math department that you will forget in a year or two due to lack of practical application. If and when you actually do conduct your quantitative research, you will probably have to relearn those parts of the math lessons you have forgotten that are now needed. You will "learn" them this time around because you have developed your own need to know them.
Conclusively, the children who learn to read earliest are those who find things they actually want to read. Hence, a parent’s primary job is to cause the child to want to read something, to motivate him or her to care, so that the natural order of learning can take place. An educator's job, similarly, is to provide the one item which today's education system leaves out: motivation. No matter how we approach the idea of learning nor what example we may use in describing this process, it is apparent that without either a "need" or "motivation" one cannot truly learn.
Works cited in this paper:
1.) Carl Wenning, Illinois State University,
http://www.phy.ilstu.edu/~wenning/ptefiles/311content/effective/animalhuman.html
2.) Christian Asseburg, St. Andrews University, http://www.chez.com/phiallfish/und_essays/SLA.html
3.) The Noam Chomsky Archives http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/