The Human Learner

Chapter highlights:

Trip through the body and brain of the learner Explanation of what learning is Capacity and limitations of the human learner.

 

Welcome to a voyage through the body and brain of your learner. Why undertake such a voyage? Two reasons. First, if you are really dedicated to transforming people in ways that benefit them and those they serve, doesn’t it make sense to know as much as possible about the characteristics and capabilities of these individuals? This chapter offers you information and insights into the human learner.¹ It increases your ability to adapt your instructional efforts for maximum effect. Second, most writings about training focus on instructional stimulus elements, that is, what you should do to be a great trainer or designer of instruction. They rarely explain how the learner deals with and internalizes these stimuli. Without a clear understanding of how humans access, treat, and retrieve what we transmit to them, we decrease the probability of successful learner transformation. Let’s begin our study of the learner by defining “learning.”

What Is Learning?

Before we share our definition, stop here for a moment and come up with your own words to describe “learning.” Write them here:

 

Basically, learning is change, adaptation. All organisms are genetically coded to reproduce the essential characteristics of their species: Daffodils beget other daffodils. Humans are no different. We are all more or less the same. We discriminate easily between ourselves and nonhumans because, as humans, we share so many characteristics. But each individual member of a species is different from all other members of the species in subtle ways. These variations are critical to our survival. As environmental conditions change, the individual variations result in some members of the species adapting better than others. This allows species to survive and evolve over time.

Humans have an enormous capacity for learning, a capacity genetically coded into us. This learning capability permits us to change as we receive information from the environment. The most adaptable individuals, especially in primitive times, learned more rapidly than did others about the opportunities and dangers surrounding them, and they passed this learning ability on to their offspring, who eventually passed it on to us. Today, we humans are incredible learning organisms. No other species on earth does it better. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that we are genetically programmed for an environment that no longer exists. In the natural world, it takes thousands of generations to alter a species significantly. (We can speed things up through deliberate breeding programs, but this is not how it works in nature.) Think about it. At 25 years per generation (the average time to reproduce and grow a replacement human), how many generations have there been since the year 1 A.D.?

2,000 years ÷ 25 = ________

Eighty generations! Not enough to make even a mild dent in our evolution. But imagine how different the world facing today’s youngsters is from that of 2,000 years ago. Even 10,000 years represents only 400 generations. Hardly a drop in the evolutionary bucket.

Remember that we are speaking of learning as change—the ability to adapt to new information. Learning is an innate capability of all humans, but like height or body build, it varies by individual. This is key to your work as a trainer, instructor, educator, instructional designer, or training manager. Your job is to help people learn—to help them change. Your job is to facilitate that transformation, not to transmit information.

Here are the results of three training sessions. In your view, which one was the most successful? Place a checkmark in that session’s box.

• Session 1: The trainees left the session chuckling over what the trainer had told them about the new products. They thought she was witty and had been entertaining and fun.
• Session 2: The trainees left the session with an armload of manuals and a strong impression that soon they would be dealing with a lot of new products.
• Session 3: The trainees left the session able to position the array of new products and sell them to their customers.

Session 1 apparently was fun, but the only change noted was a new memory of an entertaining presenter. Session 2 suggests that the change wrought was “an impression” of a lot of new products. In Session 3, trainees leave usefully transformed. They can do two things they weren’t capable of doing prior to the session: They can position the new products, and they can sell them. Applause for the Session 3 trainer!

How We Learn: Senses, Filters, and Memory

Now we begin our guided tour of the human body and brain with some fascinating pauses to view learning in action. Let’s start with the senses.²

Senses and Perception

Imagine yourself as a learner. There you are, surrounded by the universe. Just you and the universe.

What connects the internal you to the external universe? How does information from the outside world get in? Answer: It enters through your senses. How many senses? Please insert your number in the box below.

Take a moment now to do two things. In table 31, write the names of the five senses. These five provide us with all of our sensory inputs—every piece of information we obtain from the outside world. Then estimate what percentage of all the sensory information we receive comes to us through each sense and write that number to the right of the sense. Another way of answering this is to estimate the processing capability of each sense compared with that of the others (how much information we can gather from each sense in the same unit of time relative to one another). Assume all senses are working perfectly, with no impairments.

Table 3-1. Senses Percent of Information, Estimated

 

Sense	Percentage of Information
	Total: 100%

The answers are in table 32.

Table 3-2. Senses Percent of Information, Actual

 

Sense	Percent
Sight	83.0%
Hearing	11.0%
Smell	3.5%
Touch	1.5%
Taste	1.0%
	Total: 100%

Surprised? You won’t be after you reason it out. Imagine that you’re in an open field. It’s a calm, clear day. How far can you see? Probably 50 miles, maybe more.

Hear? A mile or two. Smell? Ten to 20 yards if no wind is blowing. Touch? Arm’s length. Taste? A couple of inches.

Let’s try a simple demonstration. Close your eyes. Open them for one second. Note how much you saw (shape, color, texture, depth, space, position, and so forth). If you listened to an orchestra playing, would you perceive as much complexity and individuality in the same one second? What about smell? Touch? Taste? This demonstrates how powerful our sense of sight is. Hearing processes less information in the same timeframe. Smell, less than hearing. Touch, even less. Taste is very limited.

It’s important to remember that the human learner has multiple senses, each with different processing capacities. Sight, obviously, is extremely important for learning because it is such a major sense. Hearing is also enormously important because through our hearing we acquire language, especially in early childhood. Language provides us with the words and concepts to name and explain phenomena. Together these two powerful senses help us perceive much of what surrounds us. The five senses are the portals through which the raw materials for learning enter our bodies.

The more of the learner’s senses we engage in organized and meaningful ways, the more easily learning can occur.

A note of caution, however. Numerous advocates of multimedia instruction aimed at targeting multiple senses hype systems and methods that use combinations of media and assert that these are highly effective for learning. This type of oversimplified and wholesale advocacy is not supported by research. While the notion of multisensory instruction may please learners initially, especially the combination of auditory plus visual presentation, research evidence suggests that this may, in fact, overwhelm learners’ informationprocessing capabilities. Use of attractive, “seductive” elements often does nothing more than add irrelevant noise to the learner’s informationprocessing system.³ There is a major distinction between spatially and temporally integrated multisensory input versus mixtures of notwellconnected audiovisual (and even other) sensory messages. The evidence indicates that the former has a beneficial effect whereas the latter tends to produce a decremental (negative) effect on learning.⁴

Filtering the Stimuli: The Brain Stem, the Autonomic Nervous System, and the Endocrine System

Information is constantly bombarding our senses. Do we perceive all of it?

      Yes       No

Test yourself. Before we asked this question, were you even aware of the sensations your blouse or shirt was creating on your body? Did you hear every sound around you? When you were concentrating, did noises seem to fade out? Our human makeup is such that we selectively perceive environmental stimuli. We only notice what appears to be relevant. In your opinion, is that good?

      Yes       No

From a survival perspective, the answer is a resounding yes. If we perceived everything around us, we would not be able to eliminate the irrelevant. That lion bearing down on us should command all of our attention, and the pretty blue flower nearby should not distract us.

As an informationprocessing organism, we are hardwired with an automatic ability to filter out perceptual irrelevancies. It is part of the role three key systems in the human body—the brain stem, the autonomic nervous system,⁵ and the endocrine system—play. These automatically adjust our awareness to environmental stimuli. They create what is scientifically referred to as “arousal,” which triggers the release of adrenaline to increase heart rate and thus pump more oxygen to the muscles and brain for fight or flight. In particular, the autonomic nervous system manages respiration. It causes our attention to be alert and aroused by environmental information or to ignore it. Figure 31 depicts this gatekeeper function.

Attention, like breathing, tends to be automatically controlled. You can take charge of both for a short time, but as soon as you cease consciously controlling them, they revert to automatic. From a traininglearning perspective, that is very important. Whether it be a live trainer, a computermediated learning program, or a video clip in a DVD, if the learner unconsciously feels that the information is not

Figure 3-1. The Autonomic Nervous System Filters External Stimuli

vital to his or her needs, the autonomic system may raise the threshold of sensory input and filter out what is being transmitted. As a result, there is no perception and no learning.

Short-Term Memory: Time and Capacity

Information that passes our perceptual filters enters our shortterm memory. That’s not a place; it’s an informationtreatment function. The information is examined and either dropped or passed into longterm memory. How short is shortterm memory? Imagine receiving a piece of information in a training session. What would you estimate to be the length of time that shortterm memory will hold that piece of information, if left untreated, before it totally disappears?

• 10 to 15 seconds
• one to two minutes
• one to two hours.

If untreated, information in shortterm memory begins to disappear almost immediately and is gone in somewhere between 10 and 15 seconds. Shortterm memory is like a buffer zone. It fills up rapidly and then quickly empties. This is due to a process known as endocytosis, which causes shortterm memory to decay. From a practical perspective, this is also because survival requires you to treat, sort, eliminate, or store information at great speed. Thank those longgone ancestors whose superior learning capabilities enabled them to live enough years to pass those wonderful characteristics on to us.

How much information can we hold in shortterm memory? Not much. For a long time, research suggested that five to nine items (or chunks) of information can be accommodated at a time. The size of a chunk depends on the prior knowledge of the learner. For example, is 213 one item or three? The answer is, “it depends.” If those are three individual digits to be retained, they are three items. If you see the three numbers as a Los Angeles telephone area code, you process the code as a single chunk. More recent research suggests that more individual variability exists than previously thought.⁶ More than likely, however, for most people, around four “chunks” may be more accurate. Frightening, isn’t it?

For training and learning purposes, regardless of capacity, it’s important to create meaningful chunks that condense several pieces of information into one. This facilitates perception, learning, and retention. Here’s an example:

• The four cardinal points of a compass are north (N), east (E), west (W), and south (S) (four items to store in memory).
• Remember this acronym: NEWS (one item to store in memory).

By creating a single chunk, we reduce the shortterm memory load. The more naïve the learner is (that is, the less prior knowledge she or he possesses for a given topic), the more rapidly shortterm memory fills up. When learners are in informationoverload mode, it doesn’t matter how much data you transmit. They can no longer efficiently learn and retain.

Long-Term Memory: Time and Capacity

If the learner views the information in shortterm memory as important for storage (usually an unconscious decision), then the information enters longterm memory. How long is longterm memory? Think of when you were a child and of a friend or a favorite toy you have not thought about in years. Can you “picture” that friend or toy? Your ability to do so indicates that longterm memory really means long. Depending on how we store information in our longterm memory warehouse, we may retrieve it many years later. If it is not a distinct, highly unique memory, it may become blended and confused with others, but wellorganized and stored information can be retrieved throughout your whole lifetime.

For fun, let’s test your longterm memory. Fill in the blanks in the following statements. Of course, you will not recall any of these that you didn’t originally learn.

1. The first human to set foot on the moon was _________.
2. There are _________ days in September.
3. The square on the _________ of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
4. 9 x 9 = _________.
5. Einstein’s famous formula is E = _________.

That was a factrecall exercise. Here are the correct answers:

How well did you do? Most of our test subjects scored four or five out of five even though they had not used these facts for many years. The information was well retained.

With respect to capacity, longterm memory is practically limitless. The human brain has the potential to store huge amounts of information. Never worry about filling it up. The problem is not in the storage but rather in the retrieval.

What Does This Mean for the Learner … and the Trainer?

Learners generally want to learn; trainers want learners to learn. The disconnect arises in the “what” and the “how” of learning. By understanding that learners are informationtreating organisms with sensory capacities, informationprocessing constraints, and memory load limits, and by attending to their informationhandling and storage capabilities, we can facilitate what both learners and trainers want— effective learning. Remember these two key points:

 

 

• Learning is change. This change begins with receiving information from as many senses as possible in an integrated, reinforcing manner. If the information is transmitted in a meaningful, organized, and relevant way, it will pass through the learner’s filters and enter his or her short-term memory.
• Information that is chunked and organized appropriately to the learner’s ability and experience level is more easily stored in long-term memory and, most important, more readily retrieved.

Learning is change in mental (cognitive) structures, change in the potential for new behaviors. The learner is transformed. The learner’s mind is no longer the same as it was before the learning took place. The transformation provides the learner with the ability to act in new ways.

Remember This

We close this chapter with a brief review challenge. Select the word or phrase in parentheses that best fits each of the following statements:

1. In designing and delivering training, it is more important to focus on the characteristics of the (learner/trainer) than of the (learner/trainer).
2. Learning means (memorizing/change).
3. Humans have a (small/large) capacity to learn.
4. Our learning characteristics have been programmed for (today’s environment / an environment that no longer exists).
5. The purpose of excellent training is (transformation of the learner / transmission of clear content).
6. Each of our senses has (the same/different) processing capacities.
7. Most of the time, the environmental information we attend to and how much we focus on it are governed by our (conscious will / unconscious brain and nervous systems).
8. The short-term memory of a novice learner fills up (rapidly/slowly).
9. “Chunking” information required for learning (facilitates/impedes) retention and retrieval.
10. The main challenge with information in long-term memory is (retrieval/storage).

Here are the answers and comments:

1. In designing and delivering training, it is more important to focus on the characteristics of the learner than of the trainer. As any good salesperson will tell you, start with the customer. Our learners are the starting point. We are merely the means for achieving success that they and the organization value.
2. Learning means change. The change occurs in the learner’s cognitive structures, which results in the potential for behavior change.
3. Humans have a large capacity to learn. We have not yet calculated just how great it is and perhaps never will. However, we must respect the informationprocessing capacities of our human learners.
4. Our learning characteristics have been programmed for an environment that no longer exists. Humans have evolved over millions of years. We are born with an ability to adapt to our environment. The modern classroom and workplace are completely different from the environments of our ancestors. We use our characteristics that favor learning, and we manage those that conflict with it.
5. The purpose of excellent training is transformation of the learner. (Enough said already!)
6. Each of our senses has different processing capacities. Although they vary a great deal, all the senses are important for different learning requirements. Taste, the lowly 1 percent sense, can be critical for survival in dealing with food.
7. Most of the time, the environmental information we attend to and how much we focus on it are governed by our unconscious brain and nervous systems. These nonvoluntary mechanisms are critical to survival in a hostile environment.
8. The shortterm memory of a novice learner fills up rapidly. Unfamiliarity with new subject matter or skills produces numerous tiny chunks of information bombarding shortterm memory. The novice learner is soon in information overload, and the learning system falters. The result is confusion or turnoff.
9. “Chunking” information required for learning facilitates retention and retrieval. Chunking assembles individual items into a single, comprehensible unit. For example, “BMW” (the familiar name of a car manufacturer—one chunk) is also a mnemonic for the order in which you place objects on a table from left to right when doing a “proper” setting: bread (plate), main (course plate), water (glass): BMW. This helps a novice server set a table correctly and takes up far less space in shortterm memory than the full seven words of the sequence.
10. The main challenge with information in longterm memory is retrieval. Putting things into longterm memory is much easier than finding things you stored days, weeks, months, or even decades ago. As trainers, our challenge is to organize for storage/retention and facilitate with practice for retrieval.