n.
Process of acquiring modifications in existing knowledge, skills, habits, or tendencies through experience, practice, or exercise.
Learning includes associative processes (see association ; conditioning ), discrimination of sense-data , psychomotor and perceptual learning (see perception ), imitation, concept formation , problem solving , and insight learning. Animal learning has been studied by ethologists and comparative psychologists, the latter often drawing explicit parallels to human learning (see comparative psychology ; ethology ). The first experiments concerning associative learning were conducted by Ivan Pavlov in Russia and Edward L. Thorndike in the U.S. Critics of the early stimulus-response (S-R) theories, such as Edward C. Tolman , claimed they were overly reductive and ignored a subject's inner activities. Gestalt-psychology researchers drew attention to the importance of pattern and form in perception and learning, while structural linguists argued that language learning was grounded in a genetically inherited "grammar." Developmental psychologists such as Jean Piaget highlighted stages of growth in learning. More recently, cognitive scientists have explored learning as a form of information processing , while some brain researchers, such as Gerald Maurice Edelman , have proposed that thinking and learning involve an ongoing process of cerebral pathway building. Related topics of research include attention , comprehension , motivation , and transfer of training . See also behaviour genetics ; behaviourism ; educational psychology ; imprinting ; instinct ; intelligence .