Synonyms
Discovery; Enlightenment; Finding; Finding out; Instruction; Knowing; Mastering; Schooling; Searching; Studying; Training; Understanding
Let us begin humbly: It is very hard, perhaps even impossible, to define learning strictly, in a conclusive, perfectly clear and precise way that specifies all the necessary and sufficient conditions (constitutive properties or essential attributes) for something to truly or really be learning and pleases most psychologists. As Bolles (1979) put it:
The big question—What is the fundamental nature of the learning process?—is as unsettled today as it has ever been. There is, however, less concern today than there used to be about this ultimate question. One reason for this loss of concern may be a growing skepticism about whether the question can ever be answered. A second and perhaps more important reason is that, even though there is little agreement about the basic processes of learning, a good agreement has grown about the proceduresthat...
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Burgos, J.E. (2020). Learning. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_793-1
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