Hrm

Learning, thinking and memory

Types of learning

пÑ"" Trial and error- e.g. new products. Can be facilitated by giving away trial samples.

пÑ"" Classical conditioning. Examples include credits cards as conditioned stimuli, increasing product awareness to influence attitudes and the use of theme tunes in advertising; use of incentives at work.

пÑ"" Operant conditioning. Examples: use of reward vouchers or points; brand loyalty issues. Share payouts and bonus payments

пÑ"" Association. Examples include: experience good markets such as holidays and children learning as consumers. Bad management e.g. absenteeism & promotion

пÑ"" Imitation. Examples include learning by children and the adoption of new or innovative products. Imitation of bad management practices

пÑ"" Insight. Has little relevance to consumer learning but workers may suddenly realise why a difficult job is done as it is

Reinforcement

пÑ"" Positive [imagery of happy people using the product] or negative [only told when done things wrong].

пÑ"" Reinforcement schedules: intermittent preferable to continuous

пÑ"" Stimulus generalisation. E.g. brand loyalty.

пÑ"" Stimulus discrimination. E.g. focus on product’s unique features to distinguish it from competitors

пÑ"" Self-referencing. E.g. use of вЂ?you’ in advertising or in training programmes

Repetition and reinforcement

пÑ"" Optimum exposure for advertisements

пÑ"" 2-3/week; 12 exposures minimum

пÑ"" Mix of more and less вЂ?involving’ media

пÑ"" Repetition may make ad appear more true or seem famous

пÑ"" Primacy more important than recency for brand name

пÑ"" Optimum exposure for learning to drive

пÑ"" Lessons 3-4 times/week plus practice at least once per day

Who is the learner?

пÑ"" Many factors are relevant to understanding the learner in work and consumer behaviour and thus segmenting the audience:

пÑ"" Age, sex, motivation, incentives, expectations, learning style, prior knowledge, physical characteristics, preferred memory type, SES

What is to be learned?

пÑ"" Length, difficulty, meaningfulness all relevant.

пÑ"" Verbal vs. visual information:

пÑ"" Contrast an ad with a lot of factual information to one with few key words

пÑ"" Or how to present information in training manuals

Method of learning

пÑ"" Active vs. passive learning. E.g. interactive training such as programmed learning; getting people to phone in

пÑ"" Transfer of learning: of affect based on evaluative learning and of cognitive to provide вЂ?facts’

пÑ"" Time scale for responses: e.g. for low-frequency purchase items

Learning theories

пÑ"" Gestalt psychologists- principles include вЂ?wholeness’

пÑ"" Bandura- social learning

пÑ"" Pavlov and Skinner- conditioning

пÑ"" Tolman- human learning is purposive

Learning styles

пÑ"" Many theories of these, and some are influencing Government education policy

пÑ"" Pask- serialist vs. holist

пÑ"" Kolb and Honey/Mumford- four styles- active, reflective, theoretical, abstract

пÑ"" Hermann- brain dominance model

Information processing and memory

пЃ¬ Memory theories all include:

вЂ" Input

вЂ" Sensory registers

вЂ" Short term or working memory

вЂ" Long term memory

вЂ" Response and output

пЃ¬ There is too much information coming in to process, so it is selectively removed

пЃ¬ Filters are influenced by set and expectations, motivation, perceptual defence, beliefs, personality etc.

пЃ¬ Coding differences between LTM and STM

LTM and STM

пЃ¬ STM coding errors largely acoustic rather than visual

пЃ¬ LTM early verbal coding may be literal, but later involves meanings

пЃ¬ We store propositions based on what we have read, heard or seen but we also make inferred propositions

Information processing and retrieval

пЃ¬ Is there one large memory store? The theory that says this is the levels of processing model.

вЂ" Maintainance rehearsal, the rote repetition of verbal information

вЂ" Elaborative rehearsal involved deeper processing and attending