Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 16

Psychology - Essay Example Learning can broadly be defined as ‘relatively permanent change in behaviour’ (Burns, R., 2002) through observable activities and internal processes of perception. The comparative perspective of psychology of learning primarily relies on the observation of behavioural activities of others that prompt others to improve and improvise one’s actions to optimize the performance outcome. When the observations provoke some mental processing to come to some inference, the approach is defined as cognitive approach. Thus, the varying reactions of the observations and behavioural pattern due to external objects give rise to theories to explain learning processes. The two major psychological approaches of learning are behaviourism and cognitive approach which would be compared to understand the wider implications of the approaches that are used at various levels of interaction. Theory of Behaviourism asserts that the one sees and experiences the world in its physical entirety and one responds as per the law of the nature which is constant for everyone. The principles of natural laws are based on cause and effect. Grippin and Peters claimed that this approach focuses on three vital ingredients of behaviour: observation of behaviour; environmental paradigms that influence the behaviour; and the principles of continuity and reinforcement that facilitate learning process (Grippin & Peters, 1984). Cognitive approach is basically an amalgamation of philosophical thoughts and scientific theories that try to rationalize the working of conscious and unconscious thoughts of a man and co-relate them with his subsequent actions and reactions. The theory of cognition, thereby, tries to explain why and how the events take place and subsequent pattern of behaviour of man under certain condition involving emotional and metaphysical reaction. The role of brain and conscious and unconscious activities of the mind are seen to be the responsible for the