Learning: Individual Differences

Abstract

The previous chapter sketched some of the basic intellectual processes entailed in learning that are common to us all. However, different individuals may use these same basic processes in very different ways and may bring to them very different types and levels of prior knowledge. Certain stylistic differences in the way people go about learning are relatively value free. That is, adopting one style rather than another is not necessarily better or worse, although qualitatively different types of knowledge may result from relatively strong biases (see, for example, the global and analytic information processing styles described later on). However, certain other differences in the way information is processed are more value laden in that they are associated with different types and levels of resultant knowledge. Such types and levels of knowledge may be considered, from certain perspectives, to be of higher or lower quality (see, for example, the deep and surface approaches to studying described later on).