Chapter 5

Learning

How do people learn?What is learning?

• Many different theories exist- including:– Constructivism– Behaviorism– Piaget’s Developmental Theory– Neuroscience– Brain-based Learning– Learning Styles– Multiple Intelligences– Right Brain/Left Brain Thinking

Cont.

– Communities of Practice– Control Theory– Observational Learning– Vygotsky and Social Cognition

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In the everyday sense, learning often refers to formal methods of acquiring new knowledge or skills, such as learning in the classroom or learning to play a flute.

According to psychologists…

• The topic of learning is much broader.

• Psychologists formally define learning as a process that produces a relatively enduring change in behavior or knowledge as a result of an individual’s experience.

• According to psychologists, learning occurs in every setting not just in the classroom.

Cont.

• Learning takes place at every age.• The psychological study of learning is not limited

to humans. Learning is an important aspect of behavior of virtually all animals.

• Much of our knowledge of learning has been discovered by behaviorists, psychologists who believe that only observable behavior is a valid topic for study.

Behavior Analysts- Who are they?

• Behaviorists (psychologists) who practice behavior modification and change behavior by working with the environment

• Most behavior analysts work with developmentally disabled children or patients in psychiatric hospitals

• Other behaviorists help people to end bad habits like smoking or overeating

How do behaviorists study learning?

They observe the learning experiences of animals in carefully controlled laboratory situations

Using animals as subjects, researchers can precisely control the conditions under which a particular behavior is learned

• Conditioning: a very basic form of learning; the process of learning associations between environmental events and behavioral responses

Conditioning and learning

• Answering the phone and using a word-processing program- are behaviors we have learned through conditioning

• Two types of conditioning:– Classical conditioning– Operant conditioning

The Father of Classical Conditioning

• The psychological study of learning began in Ivan Pavlov’s Russian laboratory in the late 19th century- he was initially studying the digestion process in dogs

• Pavlov became interested in how the presentation of food automatically produced salivation

• To explain this phenomenon-Pavlov invented a teaching technique: classical conditioning

• Pavlov taught dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell- how is this classical conditioning?

Try it.

• Think about something really tasty and see if your mouth waters automatically. Did it work?

• It should because salivation is a reflexive response to food. It is the body’s way of preparing to receive food. Saliva helps break down food into digestible bits.

Classical Conditioning

• Organisms first display a response to a stimulus that they do not have to be taught, something they do “naturally”

• Ex: Dogs salivate naturally when they are fed• In his study, Pavlov taught dogs to salivate at

the sound of a bell that signaled that food was coming

• Often involves reflexive behavior( a relatively simple, unlearned behavior governed by the nervous system, that occurs automatically when the appropriate stimulus is presented)

Pavlov: 4 Components of classical conditioning:

#1:

Occurs Before conditioning:

• Unconditioned responses (UR): Pavlov’s dogs automatically, or reflexively, salivated when presented with food. They didn't have to learn or be conditioned to salivate in the presence of food. Pavlov called this response unconditioned- or not-learned.

Unconditioned stimuli (US)

• #2. Occurs During conditioning

• An event that automatically triggers a certain reflex reaction is called an unconditioned stimuli.– Ex: food in the dog’s mouth was the US– Salivation for the food was the unconditioned

response (UR).

Conditioned stimuli (CS)

• #3. A conditioned stimuli is an event that is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus. The bell that Pavlov rang in a typical experiment = CS

• It was conditioned or associated with food through the process of pairing trials. The idea is that after enough trials, the CS will produce the desired response on its own.

Conditioned responses (CR)

• #4. Occurs After conditioning

• Once the Conditioned Stimuli produces the Unconditioned Response on its own, the desired response is called the conditioned response.

• this is a learned reaction

• Ex- the dog hears the bell and salivates even when food is not present

Confused?

• Classical conditioning terminology can be confusing~ think of the term conditioned as having the same meanings ‘learned”

• “conditioned stimulus” refers to “learned stimulus”

• Unconditioned response” refers to “unlearned response”

Factors that affect conditioning

Pavlov discovered that many factors could affect the strength of the conditioned response:

ex. The more frequently that the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus were paired, the stronger the association between the two

Intermittent pairing: pairing the CS and US only once in a while, reducing both the rate of learning and the final strength of the learned response

Extinction

• The pairing of two appropriate stimuli stops and the power of the CS eventually fades

• If the CS is presented enough times without the US, the CS will eventually cease to elicit the CR

• This reverses the process of classical conditioning

• Example: Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell- if the bell keeps getting presented without any delivery of food, the dogs would eventually stop salivating at the sound of the bell.

Why is classical conditioning important?

• Very important in terms of human survival

• It helps us to learn things by association without effort

• After we have associated a CS with a US to the point where the CS produces the CR, we can expand automatically on that learning through a process known as generalization.

Generalization

• Ex. If you learn to associate certain facial gestures, like a snarl or a sneer, with eventual violence, then the snarl/sneer (CS) produces fear (CR) whereas only a flying fist of a verbal threat (US) elicited fear (UR) in the past.

• You have generalized and this could save your neck.

Generalization, cont.

• On the negative side…• If attacked by a black pit bull, you might get

scared any time you encounter a black dog, even a Chihuahua

• OR- Consider a war veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress. If this person has experienced loud explosions and heavy gunfire and developed a strong fear to these events, this individual may react the same way when they hear a car backfire or some other loud noise.

Discrimination

• When we begin to over-generalize what we’ve learned, we are not engaging in discrimination. We need to know how to discriminate, or tell the difference between stimuli- between a gun firing and a car backfiring.

• Discrimination is learned when a CS is presented enough times without eliciting a response.

Classical Conditioning in Humans

• As common in humans as it is in animals- ex. Phobias: intense, irrational fears of particular things or situations- spiders, snakes, flying, heights, claustrophobia

• John Watson and Baby Albert• Joseph Wolpe: (psychiatrist) desensitization

therapy- treatment for anxiety – believes it was not possible to be both fearful and relaxed. If people wee taught to relax in fearful situations, anxiety should disappear.

Operant Conditioning

• Learning in which an important event follows a specific response

• The important event is a positive consequence

• ex. Every two weeks I get paid at my job. Am I paid to sit around and take up space? No, I’m paid for performing duties, for working. I do something and something happens. I work, and I get paid.

• Operant conditioning takes place all around us, in our homes, as well as the workplace. Parents use rewards, or operant conditioning to get their children to do their homework.

Edward Thorndike: Law of Effect

• 1911

• Addressed the idea of a consequence having an effect on behavior

• Subject: Cats

• Constructed the puzzle box made out of a wooden crate with spaced slats and a door that could be opened by a special mechanism

• Placed a hungry cat inside the box and shut the door.

• Placed some food on a dish outside the box and the cat could see it through the slats in the crate.

• The cat had to figure out how to open the door to get the food.

• Cat accidentally hit the latch and the door opened- cat got to eat.

• Tried it again- at first the cat didn’t recall how he had triggered the latch. Eventually the cat triggered the latch again- each time he tried it, the cat found the latch in shorter amounts of time.

• The greater the satisfaction, the greater the strengthening of the bond. The consequence of getting the food served as a reward for learning how to open the box. The opening the box behavior = my job; the food was like my paycheck.

Reinforcer

• When a consequence of an action or event increases the probability that the event or action will happen again- it is being reinforced

• Like a reward

• Operant conditioning is all about the effects that reinforcers have on behavior

B.F. Skinner

• Famous behavioral psychologist, followed Thorndike in using animals to investigate operant conditioning.

• Skinner Box: constructed a box with a lever inside- when an animal pressed the lever, a food pellet fell out of a feeder into the box

• Skinner wanted to see if rats placed in the box could learn to press the lever in order to receive the food.

• Rats aren’t used to pressing levers- Skinner had to facilitate the process with a procedure known as shaping.

• Skinner rewarded the rats for performing a behavior that was close to the required response.

• Shaping was done gradually so that the rats pressed the bar for food the same way that Thorndike’s cats learned to open the door.

Conclusion

• Anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur again can be used a reward or reinforcer.

• The reinforcer could be food, money, recess, or vacations.

Types of Reinforcers

• Two basic types of reinforcers:– Positive reinforcement is the use of any

reinforcement that increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur again.

– Negative reinforcement occurs when the removal of noxious stimuli leads to an increased likelihood that a behavior will occur again.

Are all reinforcers equal?

• Probably not…differences between reinforcers exist and determine the impact that the reinforcers have on responses.

• Two types of positive reinforcers:– Primary reinforcers: rewards that do not

require shaping or prior training to be effective. Ex. food, pleasurable sensations, water, adequate warmth

Cond.

• Conditioned reinforcer: also called a secondary reinforcer, is one that has acquired reinforcing value by being associated with a primary reinforcer.

• Ex. Money: reinforcing because we have learned that we can use it to acquire primary reinforcers and other conditioned reinforcers. Also, awards, frequent-flyer points, and college degrees

Two types of positive reinforcers

1. Primary reinforcers: rewards that do not require shaping or prior training to be effective. Ex. Food, pleasurable sensations

• David Premark (1971): primary reinforcers can be identified by looking as what people spend most of their time doing.(riding a bike, sleeping, playing video games). Premark Principle: high probability responses can be used to reinforce lower probability responses. Using ice cream (high probability) to get a kid to eat vegetables (low probablility response)

• 2. Secondary reinforcers- things that become reinforcing through experience and learning.

• Ex: dolphin trainers blow a whistle as they reward the dolphins with fish. Eventually, the dolphins associate the whistle with food, and the whistle is reinforcing in and of itself.