Learning
Habituation, association, and what actually gets learned.
The same room, the same order of events, every day. That is a syllabus whether or not anyone wrote one.
Photo: Barbara Olsen / Pexels
Horses habituate, sensitise and associate. None of that requires an intention on anybody's part — an animal in a place where the same sequence keeps happening learns the sequence, including the parts nobody planned.
3 entries
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Habituation
Ceasing to respond to something that repeatedly means nothing — the most-used mechanism and the most misread.
medium read -
Association
Two things paired in time become linked, including the ones nobody intended to pair.
medium read -
What gets learned
Often the timing or the place rather than the thing anyone meant to teach.
short read
Every entry separates what is observed from what is inferred, and says where the science is contested. The full index of entries lists all twenty-two.