2. Psychology of human learning

Learning is a type of activity having as its goal the acquisition of knowledge, skills and automatisms. It can be organized and held at special educational institutions. It can also be unorganized and take place involuntarily (involuntary, subconscious learning) as a by-product of other activities, their additional result. Involuntary learning is not infrequently more effective than voluntary learning since it requires much less efforts and provides better retention. Learning of adults often has the form of self-education.

Learning always has a developing effect developing the psychic processes of an individual (such as attention, perception, imagination, memory, thinking, speech and others) without which learning, just like any other activity, is impossible. Conscious voluntary learning also develops moral qualities such as assiduity, responsibility, etc.

Learning can happen in several ways:

1. Learning through the mechanism of imprinting – fast, automatic, almost momentary, in comparison with the long process of conscious learning, adaptations to the conditions of life using the forms of behaviour practically ready from birth. Imprinting is characteristic of both animal and human learning and is mostly based on instincts.

2. Classical conditioning learning is connected with the emergence of new forms of behaviour as a conditioned reaction to a stimulus that was originally neutral but became linked with something important for an organism (e.g., if for a certain period of time giving food to an animal is preceded by ringing of a bell, afterwards that ringing will evoke the same reaction as the actual sight of food).

3. Operant conditioning learning implemented by way of trial and errors that finally lead to a desired result.

The mechanisms of learning above characterize both animals and humans. But humans also have two other types of learning that animals rarely do:

1. Vicarious learning through direct observation of the behaviour of other people. As a result, a human acquires the forms of behaviour observed by him/her. Besides humans, only supreme animals, like primates, can infrequently demonstrate this type of learning. In humans, it is very developed, especially in the early stages of ontogenesis.

2. Verbal learning through language and communication – characteristic of human beings only.

The process of human learning as an activity is implemented through the following learning-intellectual mechanisms:

1. Forming associations with the already known, the past experience.

2. Imitation.

3. Differentiation and generalization.

4. Insight.

5. Creativity (the most efficient, fruitful and productive mechanism of learning).

3. Perception

Learning starts with sensing the external objects and phenomena acting on our senses. Perception, characterizing only humans, as distinct from animals, is an ability to integrate the sensory input into integral images of objects and phenomena existing outside and independently of us in external reality which is not us. An integral image consisting of a complex of interconnected senses is the result of perception. Perception is the second (after sensing) and very important stage of learning since its results depend on how a human being perceives what is to be learned.

The principal characteristics of the image that is the result of perception are objectivity, integrity, constancy and categoriality (generalized character so that an image can be defined by a word-notion referring that image to a certain class).