Chapter 5: Direct Learning and Human Potential
Predictive Learning and Human Potential
Mostly Nurture: The Role of Learning in Fulfilling One’s Potential
Psychology studies how heredity (nature) and experience (nurture) interact to influence behavior. In the previous chapter, we related Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs to very different human conditions. Whether we are growing up in the rain forest or in a technologically-enhanced urban setting, the bottom of the pyramid remains the same. We need to eat and drink and require protection from the elements. Deprivation of food or water will result in our becoming more active as we search for the needed substance. Unpleasant weather conditions will result in our becoming more active to remove the source of unpleasantness. Our senses enable us to detect appetitive and aversive stimuli in our internal and external environments. Our physical structure enables us to move, grasp, and manipulate objects. Our nervous system connects our sensory and motor systems.
Human beings inherit some sensory-motor connections enhancing the likelihood of our survival. Infants inherit two reflexes that increase the likelihood of successful nursing. A reflex is a simple inherited behavior characteristic of the members of a species. If a nipple is placed in the corner of an infant’s mouth it will center the nipple (i.e., root). Birth mothers’ breasts fill with milk and swell resulting in discomfort that is relieved by an infant’s nursing. This increases the likelihood that the mother will attempt to nurse the infant. This happy combination of inherited characteristics has enabled human infants to survive throughout the millennia.
Human mothers eventually stop producing milk and human infants eventually require additional nutrients in order to survive. This creates the need to identify and locate sources of nutrients. Humans started out in Africa and have migrated to practically every location on Earth’s land. Given the variability in types of food and their locations, it would be impossible for humans to depend upon the very slow biological evolution process to identify and locate nutrients. We cannot inherit reflexes to address all the possibilities. Another more rapid and flexible type of adaptive sensory-motor mechanism must be involved.
We described foraging trips conducted by members of the Nukak tribe. Foods consisted of fruits and honey and small wild animals including fish and birds. The Nukak changed locations every few days in order to locate new food supplies. Where they settled and looked changed with the seasons. Hunting and gathering included the use of tools assembled with natural elements. Clearly, prior experience (i.e., nurture) affected their behavior. This is what we mean by learning.
Operational Definition of Learning
All sciences rely upon operational definitions in order to establish a degree of consistency in the use of terminology. Operational definitions describe the procedures used to measure