ABSTRACT
Psychology.—Learning refers to a modification in the ability to accomplish a task, brought about by an interaction with the environment. It differs from a behavioral change that occurs through maturation (internal evolution of the organism following a developmental program characteristic of the species). The concept of learning is invoked both at the most elementary level of life (for example, behavioral plasticity of certain one-celled animals) and in sophisticated artificial systems (for example, backpropagation algorithms in connectionist networks) (→CONNECTIONISM, NEURAL NETWORK). Obviously, it is also brought to bear in the study of human cognitive development (→COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT).
