Remember Anything

Classical conditioning is the process of teaching a subject to respond to a certain stimulus. Pavlov’s dogs would salivate when they smelled food. He rang a bell each time he fed them, so they would hear the bell, smell the food, their mouths would water and they were fed. The animals learned to associate not only the smell of food with its arrival, but also the sound of the bell. Soon Pavlov could ring the bell and the dogs’ mouths would water, even though there was no smell of food or any food for them to eat. There are positive conditioned responses and negative conditioned responses, sometimes thought of as “the carrot and the stick.” Subjects can learn that desired behaviors are rewarded, or that undesired behaviors are punished or not rewarded (which is itself a modest form of punishment).

Classical conditioning elicits only a learned response. The animals do not stop to reason out that food will arrive when they hear the bell. It is simply an association they make, over time, because of repeated observation. In many ways, the very basics of human learning are the same. We see a certain symbol and hear a certain sound made by the teacher. Over and over we are exposed to those symbols—letters or numbers—and hear those sounds, until we associate the symbol with the sound. Then we see the letter or the number and we say the name or produce the phonic. To some extent, this process continues as we learn to spell words. C-A-T spells “cat.” We are shown pictures of cats with the word, we are told the phrase over and over. If a person begins the phrase “C-A-T spells….” Our minds instantly supply the word cat. It is a conditioned response based on praise we earned as children for recognizing the word.

A subtly different approach to learning, but one which many experts believe is far superior, is to teach only the most basic information by classical methods, and then to teach higher tiers of learning on reasoning methodology. For example, teach children the basics of the names of the letters and the sounds of the letters, but then teach them to sound out each letter in the word “cat,” slowly at first and then more rapidly until the word is formed. It may seem that there is little difference to these methods at this stage, but the difference becomes apparent as the progression is made to larger and more complex words. It is the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching a man to fish. One method teaches only the word being taught, while the other method teaches children how to learn for themselves.

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