Question

What does the notion of ‘preparedness for learning’ mean?

Answer 1

The notion of ‘preparedness for learning’ means that an organism can learn only those associations that it is genetically prepared to acquire. It implies the biological constraints upon learning due to sensory capacities and response abilities. This is because the kinds of S-S or S-R learning an organism can acquire, depends upon the associative mechanism it is genetically endowed with. The dimension of preparedness consists of learning tasks that are easy for members of particular species to those tasks that they are unsuited to learn. Therefore, while on one hand preparedness for learning is a dimension where the members are prepared to learn tasks, on the other hand, members are not prepared for the learning task. In the middle lie those learning tasks whereby people are neither prepared nor unprepared.