Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information.
The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines.
Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.
Human learning may occur as part of education or personal development.
Human learning may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation.
The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy.
Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals and humans.
Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness.
There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.
Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning.
Children play, experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact.
Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they make meaning of their environment through play.
In psychology, habituation is an example of non-associative learning in which there is a progressive diminution of behavioral response probability with repetition of a stimulus.
Habituation is another form of integration.
An animal first responds to a stimulus, but if it is neither rewarding nor harmful the animal reduces subsequent responses.
Habituation has been shown in essentially every species of animal, including the large protozoan Stentor Coeruleus.
Sensitization is an example of non-associative learning in which the progressive amplification of a response follows repeated administrations of a stimulus.
An everyday example of sensitization is the repeated tonic stimulation of peripheral nerves that will occur if a person rubs his arm continuously.
Sensitization is thought to underlie both adaptive as well as maladaptive learning processes in the organism.
Associative learning is the process by which an element is learned through association with a separate, pre-occurring element.
Operant conditioning is the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior.
Operant conditioning is distinguished from Pavlovian conditioning in that operant conditioning deals with the modification of voluntary behavior.
Discrimination learning is a major form of operant conditioning.
One form ofoperant conditioning is called Errorless learning.
The typical paradigm for classical conditioning involves repeatedly pairing an unconditioned stimulus, which unfailingly evokes a particular response,  with another previously neutral stimulus , which does not normally evoke the response.
Following conditioning, the response occurs both to the unconditioned stimulus and to the other, unrelated stimulus whic is now referred to as the "conditioned stimulus".
Imprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phase-sensitive learning that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior.
Imprinting was first used to describe situations in which an animal or person learns the characteristics of some stimulus, which is therefore said to be "imprinted" onto the subject.
The learning process most characteristic of humans is imitation; one's personal repetition of an observed behaviour, such as a dance.
Humans can copy three types of information simultaneously: the demonstrator's goals, actions and environmental outcomes.
Through copying the three types of information, most infants will tune into their surrounding culture.
Play generally describes behavior which has no particular end in itself, but improves performance in similar situations in the future.
Play is seen in a wide variety of vertebrates besides humans, but is mostly limited to mammals and birds.
Cats are known to play with a ball of string when young, which gives them experience with catching prey.
Besides inanimate objects, animals may play with other members of their own species or other animals, such as orcas playing with seals they have caught.
Play involves a significant cost to animals, such as increased vulnerability to predators and the risk of injury and possibly infection.
Play consumes energy, so there must be significant benefits associated with play for it to have evolved.
Play is generally seen in younger animals, suggesting a link with learning.
Play may have benefits not associated directly with learning, for example improving physical fitness.
Enculturation is the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquires values and behaviours that are appropriate or necessary in that culture.
The influences which as part of this process limit, direct or shape the individual, whether deliberately or not, include parents, other adults, and peers.

If successful, enculturation results in competence in the language, values and rituals of the culture.
The learning where learner uses multimedia learning environments is called multimedia learning.
Electronic learning or e-learning is a general term used to refer to Internet-based networked computer-enhanced learning.
A specific and always more diffused e-learning is mobile learning, it uses different mobile telecommunication equipments, such as cellular phones.
When a learner interacts with the e-learning environment, it's called augmented learning.
Augmented digital content may include text, images, video, and audio.
By personalizing instruction, augmented learning has been shown to improve learning performance for a lifetime.
Rote learning is a technique which avoids understanding the inner complexities and inferences of the subject that is being learned and instead focuses on memorizing the material so that it can be recalled by the learner exactly the way it was read or heard.
The major practice involved in rote learning techniques is learning by repetition, based on the idea that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the more it is repeated.
Rote learning is used in diverse areas, from mathematics to music to religion.
Although it has been criticized by some schools of thought, rote learning is a necessity in many situations.
Informal learning occurs through the experience of day-to-day situations.
Informal learning is learning from life, during a meal at table with parents, Play, exploring.
Formal learning is learning that takes place within a teacher-student relationship, such as in a school system.
Nonformal learning is organized learning outside the formal learning system.
The educational system may use a combination of formal, informal, and non-formal learning methods.
In some schools students can get points that count in the formal-learning systems if they get work done in informal-learning circuits.
Tangential Learning is the process by which some portion of people will self-educate if a topic is exposed to them in something that they already enjoy such as playing an instrument like the guitar or playing the drums.
Dialogic learning is the type of learning based on dialogue.
Dialogic learnings conception is based on contributions of diverse disciplines.