Chapter 13

 Without learning, we would be less than an empty jar. The learnings that we accumulate across life represent our content, which we need to survive and improve, enabling us to adapt and reproduce repetitive behaviors according to the situations we have to face or enjoy, like recognizations, reading, singing a song, etc. 

There are different types of learning, and all they contribute to form experiences that become consolidated as memories. The first one is stimulus-response learning,  the most basic learning because it is always connected to a stimulus, leading us to behave in a specific way every time we are exposed to it.  Small children became conditioned to a sleep routine during the night when they took them to their rooms, turned off the light, and gave their blankets.  In the same way, adults become conditioned to the alarm clock to wake up. Both behaviors happen as the response to the different stimuli.

In the operational condition, learning will flourish through reinforcement, which can be positive ( reward) or negative ( punishment )  that will influence the likelihood of a determined behavior to happen. This kind of learning is a little more demanding because its consequences must be analyzed first. It is not impulsive or automatic.  Children use to be very vulnerable to this kind of learning and prevent them from getting something that they really want users to be very efficient to convince them to organize their rooms. Although teaching animals to behave through this method looks easier and more interesting. Skinner already has shown that. Depending on the kind of reinforcement, the expected behavior will occur more efficiently in strength and easiness.  Internal mechanisms of reinforcement are great motivators of learning. Our neurons liberate dopamine, and we feel good and capable. Based on beneficial associations, we tend to act to always get the best reward and avoid the nasty consequences.

Motor learning is the second type. Very important and specific, it equips us to interact with the environment in many possible ways. It depends on a series of neuronal processes triggered by the constant training and repetition of a certain movement, resulting in improved techniques that allow us to execute perfect skills such as climbing a tree or painting a landscape.

Perceptual learning reflects our capacity to understand different categories of the same information but in the distinct dimensions of information that it contains. For example, if somebody plays an instrument, we can differentiate the notes and tones. Or we can recognize that it is sand or an enthusiastic song as well.  This kind of perception derives from our capacity to connect many areas of our sensory cortex and produce a coherent understanding of what we are absorbed in a given moment. 

The last kind of learning is the relational one. It relies on the interactions among individual stimuli. A good example is when we are talking on the phone with someone explaining how to get in a place where we never have been before, we will probably have to use this learning to combine all the information that we are getting at that moment with the others that we already know to get to the right spot just on time.