Learning

AP PsychologyHollywood High School

Jonathan Lee

What is learning?

• Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience.

• For a change to be considered learning, it cannot simply have resulted from maturation, inborn response tendencies, or altered states of consciousness.

Question!

• Did you have to learn how to yawn?

A: YOU DIDN’T NEED TO LEARN TO YAWN YOU DO IT NATURALLY

Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning, the subject learns to give a response it already knows to a new stimulus.

• A stimulus is a change in the environment that elicits (brings about) a response.

• A response is a reaction to a stimulus. • When food – a stimulus – is placed in our

mouths, we automatically salivate – a response.

S -> R

• In CC, two stimuli, the unconditioned stimulus and neutral stimulus are paired together.

• A neutral stimulus (NS) initially doesn’t elicit a response. The UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS (UCS or US) reflexively, or automatically, brings about the UNCONDITIONED RESPONSE (UCR or UR)

Conditioned Stimulus and Reponse

• The CONDITIONED STIMULUS (CS) is a neutral stimulus at FIRST, but when paired with the UCS, it elicits the CONDITIONED REPONSE (CR).

• During Pavlov’s training trials, a bell was rung right before the meat was given to the dogs. By repeatedly pairing the food and the bell, acquisition of the conditioned response

Strength of Conditioning and Classical Aversive Conditioning

• Different experimental procedures have tried to determine the best presentation time for the NS and the US, so that the NS becomes the CS.

• Delayed conditioning occurs when the NS is presented just before the US, with a brief overlap between the two.

• Trace conditioning occurs when the NS is presented and then disappears before the US appears.

Classical Conditioning Learning Curve

Continued types of conditioning in CC

• Simultaneous conditioning occurs when the US and NS are paired together at the same time.

• In backward conditioning, the US comes before the NS. A pregnant woman who vomits hours after eating a burrito often will not eat a burrito again, which is a case of rare backward conditioning.

• Aversive conditioning: conditioning involving an unpleasant or harmful US. (Lil Albert)

Spontaneous Recovery

• If baby Albert had stopped crying whenever the rat appeared, but 2 months later saw another rat and began to cry, he would have been displaying spontaneous recovery. Sometimes a CR needs to be extinguished several times before the association is completely broken.

Continued

• Generalization occurs when stimuli similar to the CS also elicit the CR without any training. (i.e. Albert seeing a white rabbit and crying white rat ~ white rabbit) (occurs after conditioning).

• Discrimination occurs when only the CS produces the CR.

Higher-Order Conditioning

• Higher-order conditioning occurs when a well-learned CS is paired with an NS to produce a CR to the NS.

Operant Conditioning

• In operant conditioning, an active subject voluntarily emits behaviors and can learn new behaviors. The connection is made between the behavior and its consequence, whether pleasant or not.

• Law of effect: rewarded behavior is likely to recur.• Operant chamber: aka Skinner box. Soundproof

box with a bar or key that an animal presses or pecks to release a reward of food or water, and a device that records these responses.

Skinner Box

• Skinner used a lot of shaping in his experiments, a procedure in which reinforcers, such as food, gradually guide an anima’s actions towards a desired behavior.

• Reinforcer: in operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows

• Primary reinforcer: an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as the one that satisifies a biological need.

• Conditioned reinforcer: a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as secondary reinforcer.

Whining Kid + Tying Shoes

What is the positive reinforcement and the negative reinforcement involved in the scenario?

• The kid’s whining is postively reinforced, because he gets something desirable – his dad’s attention.

• Dad’s response is negatively reinforced because it gets rid of something aversive – Billy’s whining.

Intermittent Reinforcement Schedules

Skinner

• Skinner believed all these reinforcement principles of operant conditioning are universal. It matters little what response, what reinforcer, or what species you use. The effect of a given reinforcement schedule is pretty much the same: “pigeon, rat, monkey, which is which? It doesn’t matter…Behavior shows astonishingly similar properties.” (Myers, 2004)

How is punishment different from reinforcement?

• The effect of punishment is opposite to that of reinforcement. Reinforcement increases a behavior; punishment decreases it.

Cognition and Operant Conditioning

• Latent learning – learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.

• Cognitive map• Overjustification effect – the effect of promising a reward

for doing what one already likes to do. The person may now see the reard, rather than intrinsic interest, as the motivation for performing the task.

• Intrinsic/extrinsic motivation: a desire to perform a behavior for its own sake and to be effective.

• A desire to perform a behavior due to promised rewards or threats of punishment.

Biological Predispositions

• An animal’s natural predispositions constrain its capacity for operant conditioning.

• “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” (Mark Twain)

• Animals revert to their biological predispositions.

What are some pros and cons against operant conditioning and Skinner?

• Pros• At school – teachers and computers can work in tandem• At work – influences productivity, shares profits, and

participate in company ownership.• At home – limits people spending behavior, effective parental

discipline, take ownership of your life.

• Cons• Inhumane – humans are basically machine that respond to

stimulus.• Behaviorism ignores cognitive learning theories.

Module 22 Learning by Observation

• Observational learning – learning by observing others.

• Modeling – the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior.

• 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.

Bandura’s Experiment = Bobo Doll

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBqwWlJg8U

• What determines whether we will imitate a model?

• Prosocial behavior: positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior.

TELEVISION AND OBSERVATIONAL LEARNINGSome not so good examples of observational learning come from research on media models of aggression. What was the theme of the Dr. Phil show

Correlation does not imply causation