NCMA 112 MOD2-5

• Learning


  The lifelong, dynamic process by which individuals acquire new knowledge or skills and alter their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions
• Systematic desensitization


  Technique based on respondent conditioning used to reduce fear and anxiety in clients
• Importance of learning in health care

  • For patients and families to improve their health and adjust to their medical conditions
  • For students acquiring the information and skills necessary to become a nurse
  • For staff nurses devising more effective approaches to educating and treating patients and one another in partnership
• Learning Theory


  A coherent framework of integrated constructs and principles that describe, explain, or predict how people learn
• Ivan Pavlov was a Russian Psychologist known for Classical conditioning
• Learning


  A relatively permanent change in mental processing, emotional functioning, skill, and/or behavior as a result of experience
• Basic psychological principles of learning

  • Behaviorism
  • Cognitive
  • Psychodynamic
  • Humanistic theories
• Classical Conditioning


  • Type of unconscious or automatic learning creating a conditioned response through associations between an unconditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus
• The gateway to learning is through experience and how that experience is processed by the learner
• Types of Classical Conditioning

  • Unconditioned Stimulus
  • Unconditioned Response
  • Conditioned Stimulus
• Behaviorism assumes that all learning occurs through interactions with the environment and that the environment shapes behavior
• Stimulus Generalization


  Tendency of initial learning experiences to be easily applied to other stimuli
• The construction and testing of learning theories over the past century contributed much to the understanding of how individuals acquire knowledge and change their ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving
• Discrimination Learning


  Individual learns to differentiate among similar stimuli
• Behavioral Learning Theory

  • Focusing on what is directly observable
  • Learning is the product of stimulus conditions and response
  • Useful in nursing practice for the delivery of health care
  • Emphasizes the importance of stimulus conditions and the association formed in the learning process
• Discrimination Learning


  • Patients who have been hospitalized many times learn about hospitalization as a result of their experience
• Respondent conditioning is used to extinguish chemotherapy patient’s anticipatory nausea and vomiting
• Stimulus generalization

  • Positive or negative personal encounters may color the patient evaluation of their hospital stay
• Learning


  Enables individuals to adapt to demands and changing circumstances and is crucial in health care
• Systematic desensitization

  • Fear of a particular stimulus or situation is learned and can be unlearned or extinguished
  • Fearful individuals are first taught relaxation techniques and then gradually introduced to the fear-producing stimulus at a nonthreatening level
• Operant conditioning is the learning process whereby a desirable behavior is reinforced or strengthened to occur more frequently in the future
• Cognitive Learning Theory


  Emphasizes the mental processes and activities within the learner, focusing on thoughts influencing actions
• Avoidance conditioning anticipates an unpleasant stimulus rather than applying it directly
• Two methods to increase the probability of a response

  1. Giving positive reinforcement greatly enhances the likelihood that a response will be repeated

  2. Applying negative reinforcement involves the removal of an unpleasant stimulus
• Escape conditioning involves responding in a way that causes uncomfortable stimulation to cease
• Reinforcer is a stimulus or event applied after a response occurs that strengthens the probability that the response will be performed again
• Operant


  A set of behavior that constitutes an individual doing something
• Skinner believed that internal thought and motivations could not be used to explain behavior
• Operant Conditioning is a learning process that involves a change in the probability of response
• Kind of Reinforcers

  • Positive Reinforcers
  • Negative Reinforcers
  • Positive Punishment
  • Negative Punishment
• Information Processing model assesses how information is encountered, stored, and remembered by learners
• Behaviorist B.F. Skinner coined the term Operant Conditioning
• Advantages of Operant Conditioning theory: simple and easy to use, encourages clear objective analysis, focuses on observable conditions and reinforcement effects
• Punishment is the presentation of an adverse event or outcome that causes a decrease in behavior
• Cognitive Learning Theory emphasizes the operation of the mind and how thoughts influence individual actions within the environment
• Disadvantages of Operant Conditioning theory: teacher-centered, promotes extrinsic rewards, based on animal studies, behavior may deteriorate over time
• Information Processing model

  Information is encoded in short-term or long-term memory, involving organization using preferred storage strategies
• Feedback is an important aspect in the Learning Process, with negative feedback resulting in less learning when ego is threatened
• Operant conditioning

  When the desired response occurs, a meaningful reward is provided, increasing the recurrence of the desired response
• Cognitive Learning Theory is highly active and directed by the individual, involving perceiving, interpreting, and reorganizing information