360 MB (378,290,220 bytes) Learning is a lifelong adventure.

It starts in your mother's womb, accelerates t o high speed in infancy and childhood, and continues through every age, whether you're actively engaged in mastering a new skill, intuitively discovering an unf amiliar place, or just sleeping, which is fundamental to helping you consolidate and hold on to what you've learned. You are truly born to learn around the cloc k. But few of us know how we learn, which is the key to learning and studying more effectively. For example, you may be surprised by the following: People tend to misjudge what they have learned well, what they don't yet know, a nd what they do and do not need to practice. Moments of confusion, frustration, uncertainty, and lack of confidence are part of the process of acquiring new skills and new knowledge. Humans and animals explore their worlds for the sake of learning, regardless of rewards and punishment connected with success. You can teach an old dog new tricks. In fact, older learners have the benefit of prior knowledge and critical skills two advantages in learning. Shedding light on what's going on when we learn and dispelling common myths abou t the subject, How We Learn introduces you to this practical and accessible scie nce in 24 half-hour lectures presented by Professor Monisha Pasupathi of the Uni versity of Utah, an award-winning psychology teacher and expert on how people of all ages learn. A Course about You Customers of The Great Courses are already devoted to lifelong learning and may be surprised at how complicated the process of learning is. We have a single wor d for it learn but it occurs in a fascinating variety of ways, which Professor Pasup athi recounts in detail. She describes a wide range of experiments that may stri ke a familiar chord as you recognize something about yourself or others: Scripts: We have trouble recalling specific events until we have first learned s cripts for those events. Young children are prodigious learners of scripts, but so are first-time parents, college freshmen, foreign travelers, and new employee s. Variable ratio reinforcement: Children whining for candy are usually refused, bu t the few occasions when parents give in encourage maximal display of the behavi or. The same principle is behind the success of slot machines and other unpredic table rewards. Storytelling: Telling stories is fundamentally an act of learning about ourselve s. The way we recount experiences, usually shortly after the event, has lasting effects on the way we remember those experiences and what we learn from them. Sleeper effect: Have you ever heard something from an unreliable source and late r found yourself believing it? Over time, we tend to remember information but fo rget the source. Paradoxically, this effect is stronger when the source is less credible. Dr. Pasupathi's many examples cover the modern history of research on learning fro m behaviorist theory in the early 20th century to the most recent debates about whether IQ can be separated from achievement, or whether a spectrum of different learning styles and multiple intelligences really exist. What You Will Learn You start by examining 10 myths about learning. These can get in the way of maki ng the fullest use of the extraordinary capacity for learning and include widesp read beliefs, such as that college-educated people already know how to maximize

learning or that a person must be interested in a subject in order to learn it. Professor Pasupathi then covers mistaken theories of learning, such as that lab animals and humans learn in the same way or that the brain is a tabula rasa, a b lank slate that can absorb information without preparation. Babies might seem to be a counterexample, showing that you can learn from scratch. However, you exam ine what newborns must know at birth in order for them to learn so much, so quic kly. Next you explore in depth how humans master different tasks, from learning a nat ive language or a second language, to becoming adept at a sport or a musical ins trument, to learning a new city or a problem-solving strategy, to grasping the d istinctive style of thinking required in mathematics and science. Then you look inside the learning process itself, where many factors come into play, including what is being learned and the context, along with the emotions, motivations, an d goals of the learner. You close by considering individual differences. Some pe ople seem to learn without effort. How do they do it? Tips on Learning Along the way, Professor Pasupathi offers frequent advice on how to excel in man y different learning situations: Mastering material: Testing yourself is a very effective strategy for mastering difficult material. Try taking a blank sheet of paper and writing down everythin g you can recall about the subject. Then go back and review the material. Next, try another blank sheet of paper. Second-language learning: Becoming fluent in a second language in adulthood is d ifficult because your brain is tuned to your native language and misses importan t clues in the new language. To overcome this obstacle, immerse yourself among n ative speakers of the new language. Motivating a child: When trying to motivate a schoolchild to learn, avoid contro lling language, create opportunities to give the child a sense of choice, and be careful about excessive praise and other forms of rewards, which can actually u ndermine learning. Maintaining a learning edge: Middle-aged and older adults can preserve their lea rning aptitude by exercising to maintain cardiovascular health, staying mentally active, and periodically trying a new challenge, such as learning to draw or st udying new dance steps. Adventures in Learning Winner of prestigious teaching awards from her university's chapter of Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in Psychology, Dr. Pasupathi brings today's exciting field of learning research alive. Her descriptions of ongoing work in her field, in which she is a prominent participant, are vivid and insightful, allowing you to put yourself into a given experiment and ask, "How would I react under these circumstances? What does this tell me about my own approach to learning?" By the time How We Learn ends, you will appreciate the incredible breadth of wha t we learn in our lifetimes, understand the commonality and diversity of human l earning experiences, and come away with strategies for enhancing your own advent ures in learning. "Learning is a human birthright," says Professor Pasupathi. "Everything about us is built for lifelong learning from our unusually long childhood and our large pr efrontal cortex to our interest in novelty and challenge." And she finds reason for optimism about the future of humanity due to our almost miraculous capacity to learn. About Your Professor

Dr. Monisha Pasupathi is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. She joined the f aculty at Utah in 1999 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Pla nck Institute for Human Development in Germany. Professor Pasupathi has been honored multiple times for her teaching. She was na med Best Psychology Professor by her university's chapter of Psi Chi, the Nation al Honor Society in Psychology. Psi Chi also awarded her the Outstanding Educato r Award and Favorite Professor Award. Professor Pasupathi's research focuses on how people of all ages learn from thei r experiences, particularly through storytelling. She is coeditor of Narrative D evelopment in Adolescence: Creating the Storied Self, and her work has been publ ished widely in scholarly journals. Directory of \TTC Teaching Company - How We Learn 2012 01 Myths about Learning.mp3 02 Why No Single Learning Theory Works.mp3 03 Learning as Information Processing.mp3 04 Creating Representations.mp3 05 Categories, Rules, and Scripts.mp3 06 What Babies Know.mp3 07 Learning Your Native Tongue.mp3 08 Learning a Second Language.mp3 09 Learning How to Move.mp3 10 Learning Our Way Around.mp3 11 Learning to Tell Stories.mp3 12 Learning Approaches in Math and Science.mp3 13 Learning as Theory Testing.mp3 14 Integrating Different Domains of Learning.mp3 15 Cognitive Constraints on Learning.mp3 16 Choosing Learning Strategies.mp3 17 Source Knowledge and Learning.mp3 18 The Role of Emotion in Learning.mp3 19 Cultivating a Desire to Learn.mp3 20 Intelligence and Learning.mp3 21 Are Learning Styles Real.mp3 22 Different People, Different Interests.mp3 23 Learning across the Lifespan.mp3 24 Making the Most of How We Learn.mp3 How We Learn.txt 25 File(s) 360 MB (378,290,220 bytes)