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Learning in humans
A central ability in humans is learning, for it facilitates an adjustment of behaviour to the respective environmental conditions. From birth up until death, humans learn about themselves and their surroundings. Learning means a perpetual acquisition of knowledge, which can bring about a change in attitudes and modes of behaviour. Learning can occur consciously or subconsciously.
Learning proceeds in two phases: When subjected to stimuli, a living being takes in information and stores this in its memory (learning mode). In appropriate situations, the stored information is called up and – conditioned through experience – effects a changed behaviour (recall mode).
Yet learning is not just a purely rational process. Emotions also play an important role.
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How Ada learns
Like humans, Ada learns from experience: She can store an incident and later build upon it. Ada can furthermore link various pieces of information and draw conclusions from this. Upon observing two individuals standing close together for a long period of time, she concludes that they are a pair.
Ada likewise learns how to synchronise her various components, such as the floor plates, the movable eyes and the light fingers. This process can be compared to a child who has to learn how to grasp an object.
From the behaviour patterns of individual visitors, Ada also learns something about their character, such as their inclination to play or their behaviour in groups. These «experiences» determine Ada’s subsequent mode of behaviour and regulate her scale of values for the longer term.
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