An Integrative Model of Learning by Being Told, from Examples and by Exploration

This paper presents a cognitive model for the three different types of human learning. To date, learning by being told [4], learning from examples [7], and learning by exploration have mostly been investigated in isolation as different machine learning procedures. We will first present the general assumptions of the proposed model and a description of the different learning methods. The model is then applied to describe what can be learned by the various learning methods and their combinations. Although the proposed model is general, we restrict this presentation to the learning of simple LISP functions.