Learning

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Chapter 8- Learning Outline

• Learning is the relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due

to experience.

• When shots of electric shocks are coupled with squirts of water, the snail

will learn to associate the two behavior together. Also known as response-

outcome or associative learning. The animals start to learn how to predict a

possible behavior.

• The Mexican Gray wolves had problems after being released back into

the wild, because they were bred in captivity and incapable of associating certain

behaviors with certain characters.

• Conditioning is the process of learning associations.

• Classical conditioning is learning to associate two stimuli and thus to

anticipate certain events.

• Operant conditioning is learning to associate a response and its

consequences. Allowing one to repeat behaviors they associate with good results

and not repeating behaviors that seem to provide poor results.

• Observational learning- learning through observations.

• Behaviorism, developed by Behaviorist John Watson, is the view that

psychology should be and objective science

Classical Conditioning

• Ivan Pavlov may be known as the father of classical conditioning. Classical

Conditioning

• Behaviorism, developed by Behaviorist John Watson, is the view that

psychology should be and objective science

• Respondent Behavior – An automatic response to a certain stimuli

(“responding behaviors”)

• Unconditioned Response (UCR) – The normal response that is generated

(unlearned) I.e. In Pavlov’s experiment, the normal response a dog has

when presented with food is salivation.

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) – The stimulus that triggers a normal

response (UCR) I.e. The food is the UCS in Pavlov’s experiment.

• Conditioned Response (CR) – The response that is learned (“conditioned”)

I.e. Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate upon the presence of a ringing tone.

• Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - A neutral stimulus that triggers a learned

response. I.e. The ringing is a CS because the dogs learned to salivate at the

presence of a ringing tone as opposed to food.

• This kind of association is possible because Pavlov presented a ringing

tone every time before food is given to the dog. Eventually, the dog

learned to anticipate food at the sound of ringing, so they salivate.

• Watson and Pavlov share the same view.

• There are 5 major processes with Classical Conditioning:

• Acquisition – The initial formation of the association between

CS and CR. This works well when the CS is presented half a second

before UCS is presented. This finding supports the view that classical

conditioning is biologically adaptive.

• Extinction - If the UCS is not presented after

CS for a couple of times, the organism will lose receptivity to the CS. Like if after

the ringing tone no food arrives, the dog stops to salivate at the presence of just a tone.

Spontaneous Recovery – However, if the UCS is again presented .o the CS, extinction ceases and the organism again begins to respond to the CS. Like when the food is again presented after ringing – dog salivates. Spontaneous recovery is the appearance of a formerly extinguished response, following a rest period.

• Generalization – The tendency for organisms to respond similarly to

similar (generalization) stimuli as the CS. I.e. Pavlov’s dog salivating to the sound of beeping that is similar to ringing. This is good because if you teach children to watch out for cars, they will also watch out for similar objects like trucks and vans.

• Discrimination – The ability to distinguish (discriminate) between different

stimuli, so you don’t react the same way to everything.

• Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning has led to a variety of practical uses like

helping drug addicts, increasing the immune system efficiency, and treating

emotional disorders.

• When two significant events occur close together in time, an

animal learns the predictability of the second event.

Biological Predispositions

• An animal’s capacity for conditioning is constrained by its biology.

• Each species’ predispositions prepare it to learn the associations that

enhance its survival.

• Learning enables animals to adapt to their environments.

Pavlov’s Legacy

• Pavlov showed that many other responses to many other stimuli can be classically

conditioned in many other organisms.

• Pavlov showed us how a process such as learning can be studied objectively.

• He also demonstrated that principles of learning apply across species.

• Classical conditioning is one way that virtually all organisms learn to

adapt to their environment.

Application of Classical Conditioning

• Used in treatment programs for those recovering from alcohol and other

drug abuse and emotional disorders

Operant Conditioning

•The learned behavior that acts upon the

situation and this behavior produces consequences. Like if you learned that eating on the bed makes your parents mad at you, your eating behavior will change depending on what kind of responses you want the situation to have.

• Respondent behavior is a behavior that occurs as an automatic response

to some stimulus

•Operant behavior is behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.

Skinner’s Experiments

• Law of Effect – Behavior that is rewarded is more likely to occur again.

• Skinner Box – The box Skinner used to research on animal behavior. The

box has a bar/button that the animal can push to obtain rewards(food). The

rate of pushing is recorded.

• Overjustification Effect – Giving a reward for something the organism

already likes to do. This is unfavorable because the organism will lose the

intrinsic interest and rely on rewards for they behavior. Like being paid to

put together your favorite puzzle.

• Skinner’s Operant Conditioning has many useful applications like

increasing student performance, influencing productivity in jobs, and

helping shape children behaviors.

• Many psychologists criticized Skinner for underestimating the importance

of cognition and biological constraints on learning.

Shaping Behavior

• Shaping – Gradually rewarding the organism as it approaches the desired

behavior. Like if you want a bird to peck on a bar, you would feed it every

time it got closer and closer to the bar but ignoring every other behavior it

does.

• Thus, you are shaping the behavior with successive approximations.

• Experiments show that some animals are capable of forming concepts;

they demonstrate this by discriminating between classes of events or

objects.

Types of Reinforcers

• A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a

response, strengthens the response.

• Negative reinforcement removes something undesirable to increase the

frequency of a behavior.

• Primary reinforcers are innately stabilized, there is no learning required.

• Conditioned reinforcer /secondary reinforcer is a stimulus that gains

its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer.

• Immediate reinforcers offer immediate payback; delayed reinforcers

require the ability to delay gratification.

Reinforcement Schedules

• Partial reinforcement is reinforcing a response only part of the time; results

in slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction

than does continuous reinforcement.

• In continuous reinforcement, learning is rapid, but so is extinction

if rewards cease. Continuous reinforcement is preferable until a behavior

is learned.

Fixed-ratio schedules in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule

that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.

• Variable-ratio schedule is a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a

response after an unpredictable number of responses.

• Fixed-Interval – Reinforcement after a “fixed” amount of time. Like

getting Candy 3hours after every time the floor is washed.

Variable-Interval – Reinforcement after an “unpredictable” amount

of time.

Punishment

• Punishment – Opposite of reinforcement, punishment decreases the

chances of a behavior reoccurring.• Although punishment can successfully

stop the undesired behavior, it also has drawbacks.

• Punished behaviors are not forgotten, just suppressed until appropriate

situations; punishment increases aggressiveness and attributes them to

the punisher.

• Punishment’s undesirable side effects may include suppressing rather

than changing unwanted behaviors, teaching aggression, creating fear, and

encouraging discrimination

Cognition and Operant Conditioning

• Cognitive Map – Mental images of ones surroundings. Like how mice

develop cognitive maps that represent a maze they just ran through.

• Latent Learning – Demonstration of acquired knowledge only when it is

needed. I.e..Mice who explored amaze only demonstrate that they know the

maze well by directly going to the food placed the previous time.

• An external reward’s ability to undermine our interest and

pleasure in an activity weakens the idea that behaviors that are rewarded

will increase in frequency.

Applications of Classical Conditioning

• Through classical conditioning, an organism associates different stimuli

that it does not control and responds automatically.

• Through operant conditioning, an organism associates it operant

behavior—those that act on its environment to produce rewarding or

punishing the stimuli with their consequences.

Learning by Observation

• Mirror neurons: frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain

actions or when observing another doing so.

• The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation, language

learning and empathy. PET scans reveal that humans, too, have mirror

neurons in this brain area, which also serves language.

• Human mirror neurons help children lean by observation how to mime lip

and tongue movements when forming new words.

• Mirror neurons also help give rise to children’s empathy and to their ability

to infer another’s mental state.

• Observational learning was researched by Albert Bandura in the 1960’s,

this is a type of learning that is accomplished by Modeling - watching

specific behaviors of others and imitating them.

• Prosocial Behavior is when the actions that are constructive, beneficial,

and nonviolent. These behaviors can prompt similar ones in others. Thus,

“Pro-social”

Chapter 8- Learning Outline

• Learning is the relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due

to experience.

• When shots of electric shocks are coupled with squirts of water, the snail

will learn to associate the two behavior together. Also known as response-

outcome or associative learning. The animals start to learn how to predict a

possible behavior.

• The Mexican Gray wolves had problems after being released back into

the wild, because they were bred in captivity and incapable of associating certain

behaviors with certain characters.

• Conditioning is the process of learning associations.

• Classical conditioning is learning to associate two stimuli and thus to

anticipate certain events.

• Operant conditioning is learning to associate a response and its

consequences. Allowing one to repeat behaviors they associate with good results

and not repeating behaviors that seem to provide poor results.

• Observational learning- learning through observations.

• Behaviorism, developed by Behaviorist John Watson, is the view that

psychology should be and objective science

Classical Conditioning

• Ivan Pavlov may be known as the father of classical conditioning. Classical

Conditioning

• Behaviorism, developed by Behaviorist John Watson, is the view that

psychology should be and objective science

• Respondent Behavior – An automatic response to a certain stimuli

(“responding behaviors”)

• Unconditioned Response (UCR) – The normal response that is generated

(unlearned) I.e. In Pavlov’s experiment, the normal response a dog has

when presented with food is salivation.

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) – The stimulus that triggers a normal

response (UCR) I.e. The food is the UCS in Pavlov’s experiment.

• Conditioned Response (CR) – The response that is learned (“conditioned”)

I.e. Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate upon the presence of a ringing tone.

• Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - A neutral stimulus that triggers a learned

response. I.e. The ringing is a CS because the dogs learned to salivate at the

presence of a ringing tone as opposed to food.

• This kind of association is possible because Pavlov presented a ringing

tone every time before food is given to the dog. Eventually, the dog

learned to anticipate food at the sound of ringing, so they salivate.

• Watson and Pavlov share the same view.

• There are 5 major processes with Classical Conditioning:

• Acquisition – The initial formation of the association between

CS and CR. This works well when the CS is presented half a second

before UCS is presented. This finding supports the view that classical

conditioning is biologically adaptive.

• Extinction - If the UCS is not presented after

CS for a couple of times, the organism will lose receptivity to the CS. Like if after

the ringing tone no food arrives, the dog stops to salivate at the presence of just a tone.

Spontaneous Recovery – However, if the UCS is again presented .o the CS, extinction ceases and the organism again begins to respond to the CS. Like when the food is again presented after ringing – dog salivates. Spontaneous recovery is the appearance of a formerly extinguished response, following a rest period.

• Generalization – The tendency for organisms to respond similarly to

similar (generalization) stimuli as the CS. I.e. Pavlov’s dog salivating to the sound of beeping that is similar to ringing. This is good because if you teach children to watch out for cars, they will also watch out for similar objects like trucks and vans.

• Discrimination – The ability to distinguish (discriminate) between different

stimuli, so you don’t react the same way to everything.

• Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning has led to a variety of practical uses like

helping drug addicts, increasing the immune system efficiency, and treating

emotional disorders.

• When two significant events occur close together in time, an

animal learns the predictability of the second event.

Biological Predispositions

• An animal’s capacity for conditioning is constrained by its biology.

• Each species’ predispositions prepare it to learn the associations that

enhance its survival.

• Learning enables animals to adapt to their environments.

Pavlov’s Legacy

• Pavlov showed that many other responses to many other stimuli can be classically

conditioned in many other organisms.

• Pavlov showed us how a process such as learning can be studied objectively.

• He also demonstrated that principles of learning apply across species.

• Classical conditioning is one way that virtually all organisms learn to

adapt to their environment.

Application of Classical Conditioning

• Used in treatment programs for those recovering from alcohol and other

drug abuse and emotional disorders

Operant Conditioning

•The learned behavior that acts upon the

situation and this behavior produces consequences. Like if you learned that eating on the bed makes your parents mad at you, your eating behavior will change depending on what kind of responses you want the situation to have.

• Respondent behavior is a behavior that occurs as an automatic response

to some stimulus

•Operant behavior is behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.

Skinner’s Experiments

• Law of Effect – Behavior that is rewarded is more likely to occur again.

• Skinner Box – The box Skinner used to research on animal behavior. The

box has a bar/button that the animal can push to obtain rewards(food). The

rate of pushing is recorded.

• Overjustification Effect – Giving a reward for something the organism

already likes to do. This is unfavorable because the organism will lose the

intrinsic interest and rely on rewards for they behavior. Like being paid to

put together your favorite puzzle.

• Skinner’s Operant Conditioning has many useful applications like

increasing student performance, influencing productivity in jobs, and

helping shape children behaviors.

• Many psychologists criticized Skinner for underestimating the importance

of cognition and biological constraints on learning.

Shaping Behavior

• Shaping – Gradually rewarding the organism as it approaches the desired

behavior. Like if you want a bird to peck on a bar, you would feed it every

time it got closer and closer to the bar but ignoring every other behavior it

does.

• Thus, you are shaping the behavior with successive approximations.

• Experiments show that some animals are capable of forming concepts;

they demonstrate this by discriminating between classes of events or

objects.

Types of Reinforcers

• A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a

response, strengthens the response.

• Negative reinforcement removes something undesirable to increase the

frequency of a behavior.

• Primary reinforcers are innately stabilized, there is no learning required.

• Conditioned reinforcer /secondary reinforcer is a stimulus that gains

its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer.

• Immediate reinforcers offer immediate payback; delayed reinforcers

require the ability to delay gratification.

Reinforcement Schedules

• Partial reinforcement is reinforcing a response only part of the time; results

in slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction

than does continuous reinforcement.

• In continuous reinforcement, learning is rapid, but so is extinction

if rewards cease. Continuous reinforcement is preferable until a behavior

is learned.

Fixed-ratio schedules in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule

that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.

• Variable-ratio schedule is a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a

response after an unpredictable number of responses.

• Fixed-Interval – Reinforcement after a “fixed” amount of time. Like

getting Candy 3hours after every time the floor is washed.

Variable-Interval – Reinforcement after an “unpredictable” amount

of time.

Punishment

• Punishment – Opposite of reinforcement, punishment decreases the

chances of a behavior reoccurring.• Although punishment can successfully

stop the undesired behavior, it also has drawbacks.

• Punished behaviors are not forgotten, just suppressed until appropriate

situations; punishment increases aggressiveness and attributes them to

the punisher.

• Punishment’s undesirable side effects may include suppressing rather

than changing unwanted behaviors, teaching aggression, creating fear, and

encouraging discrimination

Cognition and Operant Conditioning

• Cognitive Map – Mental images of ones surroundings. Like how mice

develop cognitive maps that represent a maze they just ran through.

• Latent Learning – Demonstration of acquired knowledge only when it is

needed. I.e..Mice who explored amaze only demonstrate that they know the

maze well by directly going to the food placed the previous time.

• An external reward’s ability to undermine our interest and

pleasure in an activity weakens the idea that behaviors that are rewarded

will increase in frequency.

Applications of Classical Conditioning

• Through classical conditioning, an organism associates different stimuli

that it does not control and responds automatically.

• Through operant conditioning, an organism associates it operant

behavior—those that act on its environment to produce rewarding or

punishing the stimuli with their consequences.

Learning by Observation

• Mirror neurons: frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain

actions or when observing another doing so.

• The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation, language

learning and empathy. PET scans reveal that humans, too, have mirror

neurons in this brain area, which also serves language.

• Human mirror neurons help children lean by observation how to mime lip

and tongue movements when forming new words.

• Mirror neurons also help give rise to children’s empathy and to their ability

to infer another’s mental state.

• Observational learning was researched by Albert Bandura in the 1960’s,

this is a type of learning that is accomplished by Modeling - watching

specific behaviors of others and imitating them.

• Prosocial Behavior is when the actions that are constructive, beneficial,

and nonviolent. These behaviors can prompt similar ones in others. Thus,

“Pro-social”