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Trial and Error

The document discusses trial and error learning through an experiment where a participant navigated three mazes and their errors and time taken were recorded. Over the three trials, the participant's errors decreased from 1 to 0 and time taken also decreased, demonstrating trial and error learning. The experiment took place in a classroom with one female participant and showed that repeating a task leads to learning from mistakes and improved performance.

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Fatima Wahid
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28 views

Trial and Error

The document discusses trial and error learning through an experiment where a participant navigated three mazes and their errors and time taken were recorded. Over the three trials, the participant's errors decreased from 1 to 0 and time taken also decreased, demonstrating trial and error learning. The experiment took place in a classroom with one female participant and showed that repeating a task leads to learning from mistakes and improved performance.

Uploaded by

Fatima Wahid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Learning

Introduction:

Learning is relatively permanent alteration of behaviour as a result of individual

experience.When an organism can understand and change its behaviour, it is said to be

learned.

Trial and Error Learning:

It is a type of learning in which an individual learns by performing a number of

different behaviours (trials) and makes a number of incorrect choices (errors) before learning

the desired behaviour.

Example:

1. Maze learning, with eventual removal of errors in terms of blind alley entrances.

2. A child trying to take candy out from a jar that is placed on top of shelf.

Importance:

• Trial and error theory of learning was given by the famous psychologist Edward L.

Thorndike during his animal intelligence research in 1898.

• It is a fundamental process of problem solving.

• It is also called the process of Instrumental Learning.

• Motivation is the essential component of trial and error learning.

Rationale:

Trial and error is the process of discovering the best method to obtain the desired outcome by

perceiving and removing errors or failures through various experimental strategies.In this

experiment, we want to test if performing a behaviour various times decreases the number of

errors and time duration of the certain behaviour.

Mode of Experiment:
It is a field experiment. It is an experiment that is not conducted inside the laboratory, but in

the real world setting. Participants are exposed to different levels of a variable are observed.

Duration:

Total Time: 5 minutes

Instructions: 2 minutes

Experiment: 2 minutes 18 seconds Setting

of experiment:

The experiment took place in classroom.

Demographics:

No. of Participant(s): 1

Age: 20 years

Gender: Female

Occupation: Student

Attire: Black Abaya

Behavioural Observation:

At first, the participant sat quietly, holding a pen in her hand and she was constantly shaking

her hands, she looked a little confused.When she was shown the maze, she began to find the

best route quickly. In the beginning, she was confused and anxious. But in second and third

trial, she seemed confident and she was enjoying the maze and found the route out quickly

with 0 errors.

Procedure:
The lecturer divided the students into groups and instructed the students to choose a

participant for the experiment. The students were given 3 maze sheets and given the

instructions about the error measurement, and experimenter had to note the time and observe

the behavior of participant and note the errors made by participant and the time take for each

trial.

Results:

Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3

Errors 1 0 0

Time taken 70 seconds 38 seconds 29 seconds

Interpretation:

In first trial she took 1 minute and 10 seconds and she made an error and she was not doing it

easily because she was anxious, but in the second trial she made 0 errors and found the route

in just 38 seconds and in the last trial she did it quickly in just 29 seconds without getting

confused.

Conclusion:

This experiment helped us to understand the process of learning by trial and error process that

when we make errors we learn from that and do not repeat them and when the process is

repeated, it take less time to complete it and with less errors.

Strengths:
• The experiment was carried out in small groups, making it more convenient.

• The instructor explained the experiment thoroughly so it became easier to conduct the

experiment.

Limitation:

The experiment occurred in classroom where many groups were performing at the same time,

which created a lot of noise and disturbance.

References:

Praveen Shrestha, "Trial and Error Learning," in Psychestudy, November 17, 2017,

https://www.psychestudy.com/behavioral/learning-memory/trial-error-learning.

Cunia (2005) learning theory. Principles of Instruction and Learning: A Web Quest.

Retrieved April 2006, from http://suedstudent.syr.edu/~ebarrett/ide621/behavior.htm

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