Human Learning Process Research Articles

Innovative Approaches to Nontraditional Teaching and Learning: An Australian Perspective

As societies and cultures change, educators have been rethinking their understanding of the nature of knowledge and human learning processes, and coming to a realisation that they cannot rely on tools of the past to meet the educational demands of the future. Thus, educators need to redefine objectives and re-evaluate alternative types of learning that previously were considered to have little value. For instance, informal learning is no longer dismissed as appropriate only for extracurricular activities; rather, it can be fundamental to all learning. In fact, it is rarely necessary to distinguish between informal and formal learning.

Correspondence Between Instructions, Performance, and Self-Descriptions in A Conditional Discrimination Task: The Effects of Feedback and Type of Matching Response

Four experiments were designed to evaluate the functional correspondence of effective performance with correct or incorrect instructions and correct or incorrect self-descriptions in a first-order matching-to-sample task. These studies included verbal or nonverbal matching responses and provided feedback or not after the participants described their matching performance. The results point to three possible discrimination learning processes in humans: (1) learning through instructions, with a possible insensitivity to consequences unless the correspondence between instructions and feedback breaks down; (2) learning through feedback, with an inability of participants to describe their own behavior; and (3) a genuine “rule-governed” behavior consisting of successful task performance and explicit verbal behavior describing the actual contingencies effective for such performance.

Analysis of Human Learning Process in Operating a Speech Recognition System Based on Error Classification and NGOMSL Model.

Analysis of Human Learning Process in Operating a Speech Recognition System Based on Error Classification and NGOMSL Model.

Self-tuning controller with fuzzy filtered-X algorithm

A fuzzy filtered-X algorithm is proposed which has self-tuning organisation under active noise control. By imitating human learning processes, the fuzzy control algorithm does not require a plant model to make its control rules. Instead, rules are generated by using the history of the input-output noise pairs. The new approach not only provides better performance than the conventional filtered-X algorithm but also leads to a reduction in the complexity of the active noise control system.

Artificial neural networks

This article points out some very serious misconceptions about the brain in connectionism and artificial neural networks. Some of the connectionist ideas have been shown to have logical flaws, while others are inconsistent with some commonly observed human learning processes and behavior. For example, the connectionist ideas have absolutely no provision for learning from stored information, something that humans do all the time. The article also argues that there is definitely a need for some new ideas about the internal mechanisms of the brain. It points out that a very convincing argument can be made for a "control theoretic" approach to understanding the brain. A "control theoretic" approach is actually used in all connectionist and neural network algorithms and it can also be justified from recent neurobiological evidence. A control theoretic approach proposes that there are subsystems within the brain that control other subsystems. Hence a similar approach can be taken in constructing learning algorithms and other intelligent systems.

تقويم مسار التربية الفکرية بالمرحلة المتوسطة بالطائف في ضوء معايير النموذج التنظيمي للجودة والاعتماد المدرسي

هدفت الدراسة الحالية إلى تقويم جودة مسار التربية الفکرية بالمرحلة المتوسطة في ضوء معايير النموذج التنظيمي للجودة والاعتماد المدرسي من وجهة نظر معلمي ومعلمات التربية الفکرية بمدينة الطائف، حيث تم استخدام المنهج الوصفي التحليلي، واختير عينة الدراسة بطريقة عشوائية بسيطة؛ حيث بلغت (93) معلما ومعلمة، ولتحقق هدف الدراسة أعدت بطاقة تقويم تضمنت (96) مؤشرا موزعة على (14) بعدا. وتوصلت الدراسة إلى النتائج الآتية: أن جودة تطبيق معايير النموذج التنظيمي للجودة والاعتماد المدرسي في مسار التربية الفکرية لدى المرحلة المتوسطة في الطائف من وجهة نظر المعلمين متحقق بدرجة کبيرة، حيث بلغ المتوسط الحسابي (2.64) درجة، وتبين أن بعد (القيادة التربوية الفعالة للمدرسة) احتل المرتبة الأولى بمتوسط (2.97)، وجاء في الترتيب الأخير بعد المکتبات ومصادر التعلم بمتوسط (2.22). وقد تراوحت الأبعاد الأخرى ما بين (2.28– 2.95). وأشارت النتائج إلى وجود فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية عند مستوى (0.05) في تقييم معايير الموارد البشرية وعمليات التعليم والتعلم والمرافق والتجهيزات المدرسية بالنسبة لمتغير المؤهل العلمي ولصالح حملة الماجستير، ووجود فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية لصالح حملة البکالوريوس في تقييم معيار الإدارة المالية والتمويل، ووجود فروق جوهرية ذات دلالة إحصائية عند (0.05) في درجات المعايير (الرسالة والقيم والأهداف، الموارد البشرية، عمليات التعليم والتعلم، تقويم تعلم الطلاب وتحسين أدائهم، تعليم ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة، المرافق والتجهيزات المدرسية، المکتبات ومصادر التعليم، التعامل مع الطلبة والمجتمع المحلي، الإدارة المالية والتمويل، تخطيط للجودة والتحسين المستمر) من وجهة نظر المعلمين والمعلمات بالنسبة لسنوات الخبرة (أقل من 5 سنوات، 5-10 سنوات، 10-15 سنة، 15 سنة فأکثر) لصالح من لديهم خبرة أقل من 5 سنوات لتقويم مسار التربية الفکرية بالمرحلة المتوسطة بالطائف في ضوء معايير النموذج التنظيمي للجودة والاعتماد المدرسي. وأوصت الدراسة بضرورة تحسين مستوى الخدمات التربوية والتعليمية المقدمة لطلبة مسار التربية الفکرية من خلال تطبيق معايير النموذج التنظيمي للجودة والاعتماد المدرسي. The current study aimed to evaluate the quality of the intellectual education track at the intermediate stage in light of the standards of the organizational model for quality and school accreditation from the point of view of intellectual education teachers in Taif city, where the descriptive analytical approach was used, and the study sample was chosen in a simple random way. As it reached (93) male and female teachers, and to achieve the goal of the study, a calendar card was prepared that included (96) indicators distributed over (14) dimensions. The study found the following results: The quality of implementing the standards of the organizational model for quality and school accreditation in the intellectual education track at the middle stage in Taif from the teachers ’point of view is largely achieved, with the arithmetic average reaching (2.64) degrees, and it was found that the (effective educational leadership of the school) dimension ranked first with an average. 2.97), and the last ranking is for libraries and learning resources with an average (2.22). The other dimensions ranged between (2.28 - 2.95). The results indicated that there are statistically significant differences at the level of (0.05) in the evaluation of human resources standards, teaching and learning processes, school facilities and equipment in relation to the scientific qualification variable and in favor of master's holders, and the existence of statistically significant differences in favor of bachelor’s holders in evaluating the financial management and financing standard, and the existence of substantial differences. Statistical significance of (0.05) in the degrees of standards (mission, values ​​and goals, human resources, teaching and learning processes, evaluation of student learning and improvement of their performance, education of people with special needs, school facilities and equipment, libraries and educational resources, dealing with students and the local community, financial management and finance. Planning for quality and continuous improvement) From the teachers 'and female teachers' point of view, “With regard to years of experience (less than 5 years, 5-10 years, 10-15 years, 15 years and more) For the benefit of those with less than 5 years of experience to evaluate the course of intellectual education in the middle stage in Taif in light of the standards of the organizational model for quality and school accreditation. The study recommended the need to improve the level of educational services provided to students of the intellectual education track by applying the standards of the organizational model for quality and school accreditation.

Measuring motivation in a learning organization

Motivation constitutes a central element when going through the process of human learning. If the organization does not possess the ability to motivate its employees, the knowledge within the organization is not practically used to a maximum. Therefore, it becomes the aim of every successful learning organization to find the factors that enable it to motivate its employees to continuous learning and to take advantage of this knowledge to ensure its living. Many motivational theories have been constructed to find these motivational factors, but the values of the employees in the specific organization are seldom included in the theories. Since a suitable combination of motivational factors only can be created through an understanding of the values in the measured object (i.e. employees), this can be seen as a risk for validity problems in the measuring instrument. A closer survey of the measured object, where such factors as society, organizational culture and personality of the employee are taken into account, is required. To respond to this requirement a dynamic model for the application of existing motivational theories based on needs is created in this article. In the model the shortcomings, which result from an often non‐existing dialogue between the examiner and the examined, are removed.

Developing hypertext-based learning courseware for computer networks: the macro and micro stages

In order to design and develop hypertext-based learning courseware for computer networks, one needs to know human learning processes and how hypertext can be used to facilitate learning, to be aware of appropriate instructional theories and models to guide design processes, and to consider pedagogical issues. The instructional systems development approach and the elaboration theory of instruction are introduced as the macro and micro stages of designing hypertext learning courses. The development of a sample course is reported. Discussions and a conclusion are provided.

Praxis and Addiction: A Reply to Galliher

Galliher suggests my paper is guilty of four failings: (1) it is an attack on Alfred Lindesmith that is ideologically consistent with those mounted by Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, (2) it misleadingly casts the intimate between physical reactions and human learning [in Lindesmith's theory of addiction] as a [mindbody] dualism, (3) it ignores the variable impact of drugs on the human actor depending on the cultural and symbolic context, and (4) it erroneously asserts that Lindesmith's commitment to the Blumerian position that humans are . .. free from psychological determinism is theoretically irreconcilable with Lindesmith's policy position that addicts' actions and interpretations are beyond their control. Let me rebut each of these claims in turn. Harry Anslinger was an early and active proponent of a federal war on drugs, and his attacks on Lindesmith were based on his commitment to prosecuting drug users as criminals rather than providing addicts with therapy. My article does not even vaguely imply an endorsement of this policy or the federal war on drugs. As did Lindesmith in his day, I abhor the prosecutorial frenzy embodied in the war on drugs and its transparently repressive, racist, and classist consequences. I favor socially sensitive modalities over strictly medical modalities of addiction treatment and feel that a praxiological understanding of human learning offers sounder theoretical grounding for such modalities than does Lindesmith's exclusively symbolic understanding of human learning. No doubt, Lindesmith's theory of addiction was a watershed achievement in American sociology. By demonstrating the centrality of meaning and social learning to the addiction process, Lindesmith took enormous theoretical strides beyond the biologically and psychologically reductionist theories that had hitherto held the day. Unfortunately, however, Lindesmith's Blumerian social psychology prevented his making conceptually rigorous sociological contributions to our understanding of the visceral, or prereflective and nonsyvmnlbolic, features of drug use, druginduced experience, and addiction. Galliher acknowledges that Lindesmith's theory of addiction posits an intimate between physical reactions and human but, oddly enough, he rejects my assertion that Lindesmith's presumption of such a relationship logically requires a categorical distinction between brute physical reactions and human learning processes. To argue that Lindesmith never explicitly endorsed a mind-body dualism in the abstract is irrelevant. Lindesmith's theory of addiction is logically incoherent unless one accepts the view that human experience consists in two categorically distinct forms of perceptionbodily perception and mental perception. According to this view, bodily perception consists in brute sensations that arise as unmediated outcomes of physical stimuli and are pristinely immune to social influence. Conversely, mental perception consists in the voluntary projection of linguistic categories onto brute sensations and is the sole medium for the meaning, social learning, and practical relevance we find in human experience. This is

Configural processes in human associative learning.

Configural processes in human associative learning.

Configural processes in human associative learning.

The extent to which human discrimination learning is based on elemental or configural stimulus representations was examined in 7 experiments. In Experiments la and Ib, participants were able to learn nonlinear discrimination problems in a food-allergy task. In unique-cue theories, such learning is explained by individual stimulus elements acquiring independent connections with the outcome and also combining to form unique cues that function elementally. In Stage 1 of Experiments 2, 3, and 4a-c, Food A signaled an allergy outcome (O) (A --> O) when presented alone but signaled no allergy (AB --> no O) when paired with Food B. In Stage 2, Food B was paired with the allergy (B --> O). In a test phase, the original discrimination between A and AB was found to be intact, at variance with the unique-cue theory. By contrast, in Experiments 5a, 5b, and 6, an effect of the B --> O trials on the A-AB discrimination was observed with training procedures previously found by D. A. Williams (1995) to encourage elemental processing. Experiment 7 showed that the influence of B --> O trials on the A-AB discrimination was unaffected by pretreatments designed to foster an elemental processing strategy. Overall, these results are problematic for unique-cue theories and instead imply that, by default, configurations of elements form the representational basis of simple discrimination learning in humans.

Progress towards the development of a model for predicting human reliability

A methodology for predicting the probability of human task reliability during a task sequence is described. The method is based on a probabilistic performance requirement–resource consumption model. This enables error-promoting conditions in accident scenarios to be modelled explicitly and a time-dependent probability of error to be estimated. Particular attention is paid to modelling success arising from underlying human learning processes and the impact of limited resources. The paper describes the principles of the method together with an example related to safety and risk of a diver in the wreck scenario. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Neural network applications in naval architecture and marine engineering

Neural nets have recently become the focus of much attention, largely because of their wide range of applicability and the ease with which they can handle complicated problems. Neural nets can identify and learn correlated patterns between sets of input data and corresponding target values. After training, such nets can be used to predict the outcomes from new input data. Neural nets mimic the human learning process and can handle problems involving highly nonlinear and complex data even if the data are imprecise and noisy. They are ideally suited for pattern recognition and do not require a prior fundamental understanding of the process or phenomenon being modelled. These features make neural nets rightly suited for solving problems in the area of ship design, marine engineering, marine hydrodynamics and as such in all the spheres of ocean engineering where the current methods rely on statistical and empirical correlations. The present study is restricted to the use of a back propagation network model which undergoes supervised training. This paper briefly outlines the structure of the neural nets and its method of implementation. Two case studies have been taken up to illustrate its capabilities. The example problems include the prediction of the container capacity of a ship and the estimation of added mass coefficients for asymmetric bodies of revolution.

Classical conditioning of the human flexion reflex

The eyeblink conditioning paradigm is a well established model for studying learning processes in humans and animals. In this study a flexion reflex conditioning paradigm was established using the standard delay paradigm. The flexion reflex was elicited in 10 young, healthy subjects by a train of electrical pulses (100 ms, 100 Hz, 0.65 ms) applied to the medial plantar nerve (unconditioned stimulus, US). A tone (1000 Hz, 550 ms) was presented via headphones as the conditioning stimulus and which coterminated with the US. Responses were recorded from the anterior tibial muscles. Subjects were conditioned within one session of 120 trials of paired stimuli. This was established statistically via the continuous change in characteristic parameters of the responses throughout the experiment. Although the process of limb muscle conditioning takes longer than eyeblink conditioning, this type of flexion-reflex conditioning may possibly serve as a further model for the study of plastic changes within the nervous system. Moreover, the considerable versatility of limb movements offers the advantage of greater possibilities for testing the conditioning result.

Dynamically focused fuzzy learning control

A "learning system" possesses the capability to improve its performance over time by interacting with its environment. A learning control system is designed so that its "learning controller" has the ability to improve the performance of the closed-loop system by generating command inputs to the plant and utilizing feedback information from the plant. Learning controllers are often designed to mimic the manner in which a human in the control loop would learn how to control a system while it operates. Some characteristics of this human learning process may include: (i) a natural tendency for the human to focus their learning by paying particular attention to the current operating conditions of the system since these may be most relevant to determining how to enhance performance; (ii) after learning how to control the plant for some operating condition, if the operating conditions change, then the best way to control the system may have to be re-learned; and (iii) a human with a significant amount of experience at controlling the system in one operating region should not forget this experience if the operating condition changes. To mimic these types of human learning behavior, we introduce three strategies that can be used to dynamically focus a learning controller onto the current operating region of the system. We show how the subsequent "dynamically focused learning" (DFL) can be used to enhance the performance of the "fuzzy model reference learning controller" (FMRLC) and furthermore we perform comparative analysis with a conventional adaptive control technique. A magnetic ball suspension system is used throughout the paper to perform the comparative analyses, and to illustrate the concept of dynamically focused fuzzy learning control.

A successive learning neuro GA control system shooting an irregular moving object

A successive learning control system based on a neural network technique with a genetic algorithm has been developed to simulate a human real-time learning process. As an application experiment, a 3-freedom arm robot shoots a ball equipped with a CCD camera at an irregular moving ring, where the success rate of shooting is improved by the successive learning control and the final value was 23% in average, 40% in maximum.

Role of glucose in regulating the brain and cognition

Extensive evidence indicates that relatively modest increases in circulating glucose concentrations enhance learning and memory processes in rodents and humans. In rats, systemic injections of glucose enhance learning and memory under many conditions. When microinjected into specific brain sites, glucose has selective behavioral and pharmacological effects, with behavioral effects that are specific to the brain site injected and pharmacological effects that are largely specific to interactions with opiate agonists. Recent evidence suggests that glucose may attenuate opiate inhibition of acetylcholine release in the hippocampus. The relative safety of glucose has permitted tests of glucose effects on cognitive functions in humans. Glucose also enhances learning and memory in healthy aged humans and enhances several other cognitive functions in subjects with severe cognitive pathologies, including individuals with Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome. Thus, increases in circulating glucose concentrations have robust and broad influences on brain functions that span many neural and behavioral measures and cross readily from rodents to humans.

A knowledge matrix representation for a rule-mapped neural network

Neural networks are noted for their learning and generalizing capabilities. However, their advancement and applicabilities are severely limited by the low comprehensibility of their internal knowledge. Previously, the authors have proposed a rule-mapped neural network model by incorporating domain knowledge initially. This paper suggests a tool named ‘knowledge matrix’, that produces symbolic interpretations of the network's response to an input. These interpretations can be shown to enhance the reasoning power of the system. Moreover, the system knowledge can be refined explicably. The proposed approach is tested with a Chinese character structure recognition problem. This is an attempt to model a human learning process that is commonly observed in many situations. For example, a trainee may be given a set of provisional rules at the very beginning which is expected to be moderated in accordance with his forthcoming experience.

A self-organizing fuzzy logic controller for dynamic systems using a fuzzy auto-regressive moving average (FARMA) model

The paper proposes a complete design method for an online self-organizing fuzzy logic controller without using any plant model. By mimicking the human learning process, the control algorithm finds control rules of a system for which little knowledge has been known. In a conventional fuzzy logic control, knowledge on the system supplied by an expert is required in developing control rules, however, the proposed new fuzzy logic controller needs no expert in making control rules, Instead, rules are generated using the history of input-output pairs, and new inference and defuzzification methods are developed. The generated rules are stored in the fuzzy rule space and updated online by a self-organizing procedure. The validity of the proposed fuzzy logic control method has been demonstrated numerically in controlling an inverted pendulum. >

Growth and Equity with Endogenous Human Capital: Taiwan's Economic Miracle Revisited

This paper presents an endogenous model for a small open economy with a significant trade surplus and active government development strategies in order to reexamine the major determinants of economic and income distribution. This analysis provides a better interpretation for the intertwined relationship between and equity, an important economic issue that has not been fully addressed by the well-known models [5; 9; 20].' In traditional studies, economists have emphasized the role of two major factor inputs, physical capital and labor. Output is considered to depend merely on exogenous shifts in population and technology. Recently, Lucas points out that this conventional approach to studying economic may leave more than half of output unexplained [12]. In order to improve the understanding of the underlying endogenous forces promoting economic development, new growth theorists have proposed several alternatives to the conventional models, such as the endogenous fertility choice [4], the endogenous technological evolution [16], and the endogenous human capital accumulation or learning process [12; 13], to name but a few. These contributions have generated additional interests in, and rich implications for, empirical studies of public policy [6] and cross-country comparisons [3; 15]. Lucas's endogenous human capital formation model is particularly suitable for studying the