			Home About us Contact

Individual Learning (individual + learning)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Psychology	27%
Life Sciences	27%
Humanities and Social Sciences	27%

Selected Abstracts

Computational Models for the Combination of Advice and Individual Learning

COGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009
Guido Biele
Abstract Decision making often takes place in social environments where other actors influence individuals' decisions. The present article examines how advice affects individual learning. Five social learning models combining advice and individual learning-four based on reinforcement learning and one on Bayesian learning-and one individual learning model are tested against each other. In two experiments, some participants received good or bad advice prior to a repeated multioption choice task. Receivers of advice adhered to the advice, so that good advice improved performance. The social learning models described the observed learning processes better than the individual learning model. Of the models tested, the best social learning model assumes that outcomes from recommended options are more positively evaluated than outcomes from nonrecommended options. This model correctly predicted that receivers first adhere to advice, then explore other options, and finally return to the recommended option. The model also predicted accurately that good advice has a stronger impact on learning than bad advice. One-time advice can have a long-lasting influence on learning by changing the subjective evaluation of outcomes of recommended options. [source]

Individual learning and building organisational capacity for development,

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2007
Hazel Johnson
Abstract Building capacities and capabilities for international development is an ongoing subject for debate, further fuelled by recent interest in learning and knowledge. This article focuses on how, and the extent to which, individual learners in education and training programmes for development policy and management interact with their organisations to build capacities and capabilities. It demonstrates some of the ways that individual learning and organisational capacity are linked by examining case studies from Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The article reflects on the complex nature of this interaction and on the broader challenges of linking learning to development. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Song Learning in Wild and Domesticated Strains of White-Rumped Munia, Lonchura striata, Compared by Cross-Fostering Procedures: Domestication Increases Song Variability by Decreasing Strain-Specific Bias

ETHOLOGY, Issue 5 2010
Miki Takahasi
Song diversity results from the interactions between natural selection, sexual selection, and individual learning. To understand song diversity, all three factors must be considered collectively, not separately. Bengalese Finches were domesticated about 250 yr ago. Their courtship songs have become different from their ancestor, the White-rumped Munia. Bengalese Finches sing songs with complex note-to-note transition patterns and with acoustically diverse song notes while White-rumped Munias sing songs with fixed note sequence and mostly broad band song notes. Bengalese Finches were selected for domestication based on their good parenting ability, not their songs, but this artificial selection has nonetheless affected their songs. To test whether divergence occurred not only in the song phenotypes but also in the genetic basis for predisposition of strain specific song learning, we conducted a cross-fostering experiment between Bengalese Finches and White-rumped Munias. In both strains, song learning was affected by rearing condition: the acoustical feature and transition patterns followed those of the foster fathers. However, the accuracy of song learning differed between the wild and the domesticated strains: sharing of song note between sons and tutors in Finches was not very accurate regardless of the tutor, while Munias were highly accurate in copying Munia songs but often omitted song elements from Finch fathers. These results suggest that White-rumped Munias are strongly constrained to learn their own strain's song, and that this constraint was relaxed in the Bengalese Finch by domestication. [source]

Does Learning Matter for Knee Replacement Surgeries?

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2003
Data Evidence from a German Hospital
In 2003, Germany will be the first country in the world to adopt a fully prospective payment system for the reimbursement of all inpatient hospital services. To face the increasing competition, hospitals can pursue either a specialization or a cost and quality leadership strategy. It stands to reason that organizational and individual learning will play an important role for both strategies. This paper raises the question, whether results from traditional learning curve theory can be applied to surgical procedures despite the latter's heterogeneity. We develop a theoretical model of surgical learning and test it using detailed operating room data from the first 601 total knee replacement surgeries of a small German hospital between 1994,2000. Our results suggest that classical learning curve theory can indeed be applied to this high cost high volume procedure. [source]

Social Comparison-Based Thoughts in Groups: Their Associations With Interpersonal Trust and Learning Outcomes

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2007
Eric Molleman
This study relates thoughts derived from 4 types of social comparison to trust and individual learning. Our study (N = 362 students) showed that upward identification (i.e., believing one is just as good as a better performing teammate) was positively related to trust and individual learning. Upward contrast (i.e., believing one is worse than a better performing group member) was negatively related to learning, as were downward-identifying thoughts (i.e., believing one will perform as badly as a poorly performing teammate). Downward contrast (i.e., thinking one can do much better than the poor performer) was negatively related to trust. We concluded that social comparison-based thoughts are important to consider when designing teamwork because of their constructive and destructive consequences. [source]

Rapid evolution of social learning

JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, Issue 9 2009
M. FRANZ
Abstract Culture is widely thought to be beneficial when social learning is less costly than individual learning and thus may explain the enormous ecological success of humans. Rogers (1988. Does biology constrain culture. Am. Anthropol. 90: 819,831) contradicted this common view by showing that the evolution of social learning does not necessarily increase the net benefits of learned behaviours in a variable environment. Using simulation experiments, we re-analysed extensions of Rogers' model after relaxing the assumption that genetic evolution is much slower than cultural evolution. Our results show that this assumption is crucial for Rogers' finding. For many parameter settings, genetic and cultural evolution occur on the same time scale, and feedback effects between genetic and cultural dynamics increase the net benefits. Thus, by avoiding the costs of individual learning, social learning can increase ecological success. Furthermore, we found that rapid evolution can limit the evolution of complex social learning strategies, which have been proposed to be widespread in animals. [source]

The two faces of knowledge diffusion: the Chilean case

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2006
Piergiuseppe Morone
This paper analyses the dynamics of return to knowledge where knowledge is acquired through the combination of interactive and individual learning. We suggest that in light of this new definition of knowledge, choosing the optimal level of education is no longer an individual exercise of present and future utility maximization as suggested by formal human capital theory. We find that other external (environmental) variables might affect the individual decision of investment. We calculate the effect of individual and interactive learning on determining the wage of Chilean male workers resident in urban areas and aged between 14 and 65. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Diet traditions in wild orangutans

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
Meredith L. Bastian
Abstract This study explores diet differences between two populations of wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) to assess whether a signal of social learning can be detected in the observed patterns. The populations live in close proximity and in similar habitats but are separated by a river barrier that is impassable to orangutans in the study region. We found a 60% between-site difference in diet at the level of plant food items (plant species,organ combinations). We also found that individuals at the same site were more likely to eat the same food items than expected by chance. These results suggest the presence of diet (food selection) traditions. Detailed tests of three predictions of three models of diet acquisition allowed us to reject a model based on exclusive social learning but could not clearly distinguish between the remaining two models: one positing individual exploration and learning of food item selection and the other one positing preferential social learning followed by individual fine tuning. We know that maturing orangutans acquire their initial diet through social learning and then supplement it by years of low-level, individual sampling. We, therefore, conclude that the preferential social learning model produces the best fit to the geographic patterns observed in this study. However, the very same taxa that socially acquire their diets as infants and show evidence for innovation-based traditions in the wild paradoxically may have diets that are not easily distinguished from those acquired exclusively through individual learning. Am J Phys Anthropol 143:175,187, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Individual learning and building organisational capacity for development,

Learning through teaching: Peer-mediated instruction in minimally invasive education

BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
Ritu Dangwal
The current paper provides insight into the learning strategies adopted by children working at Minimally Invasive Education (MIE) Learning Stations. Previous research has clearly indicated the attainment of basic computer literacy by groups of young children in the age groups of 7,14 years. This learning takes place due to the emergence and development of group social processes, an aspect crucial for achieving basic computing skills. The paper describes the process of socially shared understanding and learning as being crucial to individual learning. It is to be noted that this approach of socially shared learning does not challenge the analysis of the individual level of processing; it maintains that individual learning is vital in any learning context, but insufficient to build the psychology of learning. MIE research is of the view that young children learn through interaction with others, particularly peers as it provides an important context for social and cognitive learning. For it is in this way that children make sense of their own experience and environment. Hence, schools are not the only privileged sites of learning. [source]