In the field of Psychology, learning refers to a change in behavior as a result of experience. An example of learning would be a dog learning to sit or shake hands in order to get a treat. This type of learning is called Operant Conditioning and it occurs because the organism is getting rewarded for the change in behavior.
Another type of learning, Classical Conditioning, occurs when two stimuli (events) are linked together. For example, if your professor only wears a tie on pop-quiz days, you may learn to dislike ties because you associate them with pop-quizzes.
However, classical and operant conditioning aren’t the only types of learning. In the experiment that follows, we will test another common and useful form of learning.
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In this experiment, you will be asked to memorize a series of words presented to you one at a time. Twenty words will be flashed on the screen for a very short time and will be separated briefly by a blank screen. After the last word is flashed on the screen, you will be asked some questions to test your recall.
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When you press or tap the Start Experiment button below, the word list will begin. After the whole sequence has been shown, you will begin the recall test.
What color were the words shown in that represented vehicles?
Make a selection.
What color were the words shown in that represented school items?
Make a selection.
What color were the words shown in that represented body parts?
Make a selection.
What color were the words shown in that represented animals?
Make a selection.
Congratulations! You have finished this experiment.
When the experiment started, you probably thought we were going to ask you to recall the words you were shown. Most participants are surprised when they are asked what colors went with what categories, and yet most participants perform at a better than chance level.
The graph of the results shows two bars. The “guessing” bar represents the expected performance of someone who is simply guessing at the answers. The other bar shows your actual performance. If you performed better than “guessing,” it indicates that latent learning occurred. That is, you learned some or all of the category colors even though we did not ask or tell you to do so.
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This experiment was actually intended to measure latent learning. Latent learning is learning that is not immediately used, but saved for a later date when you need the learning or are reinforced for demonstrating the learning. Much of human learning remains latent until we are required to engage in the information that we had passively experienced before.
For example, think of the number of times that you have heard stories of people who had never had a CPR class, but had watched someone do it and found themselves in a position where the only way they could save the life of their loved one was to perform CPR with skill. Were they able to do it? It would seem so, thanks to latent learning.