Short answers, pulled from the story.
Learning begins before a single breath is drawn, with a human fetus demonstrating habituation by the 32nd week of gestation. This early capacity proves that the central nervous system is primed for memory and understanding long before birth.
John B. Watson championed the behaviorist approach in the early 20th century by arguing that psychology should focus solely on observable behaviors. His controversial Little Albert experiment demonstrated how emotions could be learned through classical conditioning.
Monica Gagliano, an Australian professor of evolutionary ecology, discovered that garden pea plants demonstrate associative learning. Her experiments showed that pea seedlings learned to associate a gentle wind from a fan with the direction of light.
Plants like the Mimosa pudica demonstrate learning by withdrawing their leaves upon repeated touch, a form of habituation. This behavior shows that the biological imperative to adapt through experience is woven into the fabric of life itself.
Declarative memory splits into episodic memory, which records specific events and history, and semantic memory, which extracts facts from their experiential context. These types allow humans to recall personal history while simultaneously accessing a timeless organization of knowledge.