Ability to learn

The ability to learn is understood as the willingness and ability to take up training content independently and in the long term, to organize it logically, to process it and to learn from one's own mistakes. In a broader sense, the ability to learn is the ability of an organism to store information and use it for its own purposes.

In addition to differentiating between several storage systems ( memory ), strictly speaking, several learning abilities assigned to them must also be differentiated. Neuropsychologists , for example, consider the division into declarative (= explicit, conscious) and non-declarative (= implicit , unconscious) memory systems to be necessary. Because these not only correspond to their own forms of learning, but they can also be assigned to different brain structures. The declarative memory system is in turn subdivided into semantic and anecdotal (= episodic) memory, the non-declarative memory system into habituation , priming , procedural memory and memory for conditioned learning. The ability to learn therefore affects different memory systems.

It is also influenced by various factors, e.g. B. Motivation , level of aspiration, self-confidence , type of learner , learning blocks , etc. Therefore, the more precise use of the term usually requires more detailed information on what it refers to.

Cognitions or cognitive processes ( cognitive psychology ) are processes through which an organism gains knowledge of its environment. This learning is not directly observable, but must be inferred from the behavior of the learner, since learning always relates to the change in behavior or in the behavioral potential of an organism. The whole complex process includes various sub-processes such as understanding, storing and retrieving. Depending on how information is recorded, processed, stored, accessed and thus used, the learning process is successful. Important learning and memory strategies are repeating, organizing, elaborating and illustrating. In the course of the learning process, knowledge structures are built up and changed. Learning and memory therefore always belong together.

In memory research, a distinction is made between several types of retention tests:

Free remembering (regardless of the order of presentation), serial remembering (list learning) and recognition.

Depending on how long information is stored in the memory, a distinction is made between sensory memory , short-term storage and long-term storage .

Jean Piaget

The basic constructivist assumptions of Jean Piaget state that man depicts a totality of his experiences in the form of ordered schemes. So he creates a repertoire of behavioral and thought patterns that he uses and with which he generalizes things. Much happens through observation. According to Piaget, humans can expand their structures through adaptation through observation . Depending on the stage of development the learner is in, he is able to draw formal-logical conclusions based on his previous knowledge by possibly already thinking beyond the given information and linking different schemes with one another.

literature

• Endel Tulving , Daniel L. Schacter : Primary and Human Memory Systems. In: Science. 247, 1990, pp. 301-306.
• C. Paulus: The multidimensional learning profile. To diagnose learning ability. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-631-35106-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Appendix 3 ARSozVerw, AllMBl. 2015 p. 513.