Following through on my thoughts on the subject "Terror Takes Its Toll On Brain’s Chemistry; Post-trauma Stress Has Biological Basis" (article in The Kansas City Star 6/12/90), I reviewed some insights on the process of learning. In Essentials Of Psychology; Exploration and Application, by Dennis Coon, Second Edition, Chapter. 9, I found solid foundation for my own thinking about learning. Check out the following:

"Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior due to past experience. A reinforcer is any object or event that increases the probability of a response. Positive reinforcement takes place when a reward or pleasant event follows an action. Negative reinforcement rewards a response by bringing an end to discomfort. Primary reinforcers are natural physiological or biological rewards. Direct stimulation of "pleasure centers" in the brain may also serve as primary reinforcement. Learned reinforcers are called secondary reinforcers. Delay of reinforcement reduces its impact. If the delay is long no learning at all will take place. Nevertheless, long chains of behavior may be reinforced by a single reward. For humans, much learning is based upon feedback about the effects of a response. Feedback is also known as KR, or knowledge of results."

As stated above, learning is a RELATIVELY permanent change in behavior due to past experience. A simplistic example might be at one time in human history, it was thought that the earth was flat, and that if you went to far in any horizon, you would come to the edge and fall off.

This wasn’t the thinking of pranksters or idiots; this was the thinking of some of the brightest human minds of th& time. When new information allowed new learning, the prior change in behavior of not travelling to far in any direction became obviously relative to the understanding of that time. When new learning took place, there became a new "relatively" permanent change in behavior.

The relativity of this permanancy of this change will be based on the "permanancy" of the facts posed in the ongoing learning process. As long as the facts support the thinking that the "gravity" here on earth is in the center of our globe-like planet, we will likely travel into the horizons with no fear of falling off.