unit 6: learning

learning

learning

The process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors due to experience 

association

Our minds naturally connect events that occur in sequence

Ex. Hearing a song in a movie and connecting it with an object or event (JAWS) 

How do you get people to change there habits effectively?

Patients need to select a new behavior rather than give up an existing behavior

“Do not eat fried foods”... (Not possible to form a habit for not doing something)

Non-Associative learning

an animal's behaviour toward a stimulus changes in the absence of any apparent associated stimulus or event (such as a reward or punishment).

Habituation

an organism’s decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it

• NOT SENSORY ADAPTATION – rather a form of learning 

• Even if a stimulus changes, we still have reduced sensitivity – ex. Friend yelling “BOO” 

• Living near a train track 

• Rat habituation 

  • Rat stops jumping when they make a loud noise after a while

Associative Learning

learning that certain events occur together the events may be two stimuli (classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (operant conditioning)

• Necessary for survival - predicting immediate future 

• Examples include 

  • Classical conditioning

  • Operant conditioning

  • Observational learning

Classical Conditioning

natural things that happen normally

Operant Conditioning

voluntary response; instrumental learning 

Watson’s Extreme Environmentalism

• “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own special world to bring them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to be any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” –John Broadus Watson, 1928

  • It's all about the environment

  • If you shape the behavior you are going to get a certain outcome

Principles of Classical Conditioning

Behaviorism, Conditioning, Higher Order/ Second Order Conditioning, Extinction, Stimulus Generalization/ Discrimination

Behaviorism

• an approach to psychology that emphasizes the study of observable behavior and the role of the environment as the determinant of behavior

  • “Its (science of physiology) theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior” (Watson) 

  • Ignored cognition – today we do not ignore cognition

    • Focused on just actions; today we focus on thoughts AND actions 

Conditioning

Association between environmental stimuli and the organism’s response 

Higher Order/Second Order conditioning

• A neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus (CS) by being paired with an existing conditioned stimulus (CS)

• Usually not as strong as primary conditioning

  • ex) scared of the school bus because she didn’t like school and the school reminded her of her teacher

Extinction (classical)

• The weakening and eventual disappearance of a learned response

• In classical conditioning, it occurs when the conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with the unconditioned stimulus

  • Ex: you stop pairing the bell sound with food (eventually the dog will stop salivating at the sound)

Stimulus Generalization (classical)

• In classical conditioning, occurs when a new stimulus that resembles the conditioned stimulus, elicits the conditioned response.

• If the CS (spider) elicits a CR (fear) other bugs or even toy spiders could begin to elicit the CR

Stimulus Discrimination (classical)

• The tendency to respond differently to two or more similar stimuli.

  • Ex: only being afraid to big dogs because you’ve been bitten by a big dog 

• In classical conditioning, it occurs when a stimulus similar to the conditioned stimulus (CS) fails to evoke a conditioned response (CR).

Classical Conditioning

The process by which a previously neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to elicit a response through association with a stimulus that already elicits a similar or related response 

Pavlov’s Apparatus

• Harness and fistula (mouth tube) help keep dogs in a consistent position and gather uncontaminated saliva samples.

• They do not cause the dog discomfort.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

•  a stimulus that unconditionally (naturally) triggers a response (UR) 

  • ex. A puff of air to the eye

Unconditioned Response (UR)

• an unlearned, naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus (US) 

  •  ex. Blinking

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

a stimulus that elicits no response

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

Originally a neutral stimulus (NS) that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US) comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR)

Conditioned Response (CR)

a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus (NS) but now conditioned stimulus (CS)

Acquisition

• in CC – the initial stage, when one links a NS with a US to that the NS triggers the CR

• when a behavior, such as a conditioned response, has been learned; the moment when a response is established based on conditioning

Unconditioned response and conditioned response are USUALLY….

the same thing

Acquisition and Extinction

• 1) Spontaneous recovery only happens after extinction occurs

  • Ex: a while passing since you got into a car accident and your panic attacks have stopped, but one day you have one out of nowhere when you're about to drive 

• 2) Happens without reintroducing the US 

• 3) Response is weaker (less salvation for Pavlov’s dogs)

  • Ex: Car accident

Pavlov’s Study

• Food- unconditioned stimulus 

  • Unconditioned response= salivation

• Bell- neutral stimulus

What matters for acquisition?

timing.

Delayed Conditioning

• present conditioned stimulus; while the conditioned stimulus is still there, present the unconditioned stimulus(overlap)

• best when .5-1 second

good for when training a dog

Trace Conditioning

• presents conditioned stimulus, short break, then presents the unconditioned stimulus.

• not great – shorter breaks are better

Simultaneous Conditioning

• conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are presented at the same time.

• not very effective

  • ex: presenting food and bell at the same time (bell not being a predictor of food)

Backward Conditioning

• unconditioned stimulus is presented, then conditioned stimulus is presented.

• not very effective

  • ex: presenting the food before the bell (the dog won’t pay attention to the bell at that point)

Pavlov’s Legacy

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

• Classical conditioning is one way that virtually all organisms learn to adapt to their environment. (Not just bells, not just salivation, and not just dogs)

Practical Scenarios of Classical Conditioning

• Drug rehab- advice when leaving facility

  • Not going back to their old habits (friends, hobbies, places to go, etc.)

• Lupus- immune system conditioning

  • Classically condition improvements to health based on drugs they are using and other stimuli offered while giving drugs 

    • Stimuli without drug can improve autoimmune response  

Counterconditioning/ Unlearning Fear

• The process of pairing a conditioned stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response that is incompatible with an unwanted conditioned response 

  • ex: another child’s fear of rabbits was removed by pairing the stimulus which elicited fear with a stimulus that elicited happiness 

Operant Conditioning/ Instrumental Learning

• VOLUNTARY!! 

• The process by which a response becomes more or less likely to occur depending on its consequence 

Edward Thorndike

• came up with the law of effect

• Law of Effect- that any behavior that is followed by a pleasant consequence is likely to be repeated and any behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped

  • Trial and error 

    • Do something and it's positive, it will happen again. Do something and it's negative, it wont. 

Consequences of Behavior

• A neutral consequence neither increases or decreases the probability that the response will recur 

• Reinforcement strengthens the response of makes it more likely to occur

• Punishment weakens a response or makes it less likely to recur  

Reinforcement 

A stimulus strengthens or increases the probability of the response that it allows 

Primary Reinforcers

are inherently reinforcing and typically satisfy a physiological need (food, water, sleep, sex, comfort) 

Secondary Reinforcers

are stimuli that have acquired reinforcing properties through associations (money, tokens, grades, praise)

Punishment

The process by which a stimulus weakens or reduces the probability of the response that it follows

Primary Punisher

Something that is inherently punishing such as an electric shock

Secondary Punisher

a stimulus that has acquired punishing properties through an association with other punishers

Positive Reinforcement

When a pleasant consequence follows a response, making the response more likely to occur again

Negative Reinforcement

• When a response is followed by the removal of something unpleasant, making the response more likely occur again 

  • Ex: Taking away having to do chores because you got a good grade on a test due to studying (more likely to study again)

Positive Punisher

• When something unpleasant occurs after a behavior 

  • ex: taking away a kids phone and he starts crying

Negative Punisher

• When something pleasant is removed 

  • ex: dinner is taken away for a bad grade

Problems with Physical Punishments

• 1) Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten, this also negatively reinforces parents punishing behavior 

• 2) Punishment teaches discrimination among situations (ex: cursing)

• 3) Punishment can teach fear - (generalization) 

  • 33 countries outlaw corporal punishment 

  • ex) Mr. Kinsella’s uncles would get hit by the nuns with a ruler if they got questions wrong or had bad behaviors which could have caused them to be scared of all nuns, all churches, religion, etc.  

• 4) Observational learning= might increase aggressive behavior 

How do you classify between pos/neg punisher/ reinforcements?

Way to remember the difference between punishments and reinforcement- ask: will the action be repeated; if yes, reinforcement. If not, punishment. Then ask: is something being added or removed. If added, positive. If removed, negative

Skinner Box

• operant conditioning chamber

• a box containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer, with attached devices to record the animal's rate of bar pressing or key pecking

Principles of Operant Conditioning

Extinction, Stimulus Generalization/ Discrimination

Extinction (operant)

 occurs when a response is no longer followed by a reinforcer 

Stimulus Generalization (operant)

• Stimuli that are similar to the original stimulus are more likely to trigger a response 

  • ex: getting reinforced for cleaning your room= cleaning other areas of the house for the same reinforcement 

Stimulus Discrimination (operant)

• The tendency of a response to occur in the presence of one stimulus but not another 

  • Ex: getting reinforced for cleaning your room= that only applies to your room

Continuous Reinforcement

• A particular response is always reinforced

• Takes a shorter time, but is forgotten quickly 

  • What you learn quick, you forget quick   

Intermittent (Partial) Reinforcement

• A particular response is sometimes but not always reinforced

• Fixed- Ratio, variable- ratio, fixed interval, and variable interval

  • Fixed: an exact amount 

  • Variable: a varying amount   

  • Interval: the length of time 

  • Ratio: the number of times

• Best choice for response to continue

• Takes longer BUT lasts longer

• Time and number of times 

Shaping

• To teach complex behaviors, you may need to reinforce successive approximations of a desired response

  • ex) Training animals or getting children to make their beds 

  • ex) If a child is trying to learn to make their bed, reinforce it when they just fix the blankets and pillows in the morning as a start 

Chaining

• Used to establish a specific sequence of behaviors by initially positively reinforcing each behavior in a desired sequence and then later rewarding only the completed sequence 

  • Ex: dog riding a bike, pigeons playing ping pong 

Applications of Operant Conditioning

• Reinforcers affect productivity. Many companies now enable employees to share profits and participate in company ownership 

  • Reward specific achievement

  • Immediate if possible

    • Ex: IBM (Watson)

      • Ceo would walk around and reward positive behavior with $100 immediately 

        • Rewards being immediate are more effective  

• If children reinforcing (good) behaviors increase their occurrence, ignoring unwanted behaviors decrease their occurrence 

Self Improvement Steps

1) State your goal in measurable terms and announce it

2) Monitor how often you engage in your desired behavior

3) Reinforce the desired behavior

4) Reduce the reward gradually

John Garcia

• known for contributing to the learning theory through his theory of taste aversion.

• Lab Rat Experiment:

  •  If sickened hours later the rats avoided the novel flavor– defied the US must immediately follow CS

  • Developed aversions to taste but not sounds or sights (taste aversions)

Limits on Classical Conditioning

• Biologically primed associations

• Natural selection- color red

• A genetic predisposition to associate a CS with a US that follows predictably and immediately is adaptive 

• Not everything involved gets conditioned with a bad event 

  • ex: going out to eat with a friend and getting sick. Conditioning only the food you ate and not the friend you were with. 

Limits on Operant Conditioning

• Tendency for conditioning to be hindered by natural instincts 

• Raccoon Study (Keller and Marian Breland)

  • Taught raccoons to put a coin in a box

    • Food was reinforcer

  • Two coins brought out instincts – Instinctive Drift

    • Animals will drift towards whatever the instinctive behavior is 

Expectancy

• cognitive influence on conditioning

• an awareness of how likely it is that the US will occur

  • ex) Alcohol treatment

    • nausea spiked drinks

    • tries to help to classically condition an alcoholic to not want to drink by making them sick

    • doesn’t help because the alcoholic knows that something is being put in their drink that is causing the nausea

• fixed interval schedule- behavior increases as expectancy increases

Latent Learning

• cognitive influence on conditioning

• a type of learning which is not apparent in the learner's behavior at the time of learning, but which manifests later when a suitable motivation and circumstances appear

Insight

• cognitive influence on conditioning

• a sudden realization of a problems solution

• a type of learning that is not determined by classical or operant conditioning occurs when we suddenly find the solution to a problem, as if the idea just popped into our head

  • AHA MOMENT 

Cognition in Conditioning

•  Evidence of cognitive processes during learning comes from rats during maze exploration 

  • Navigate without an obvious reward 

  • Rats seem to develop cognitive maps

    • Mental representation of the layout of the maze (environment) 

Intrinsic Motivation

• the desire to perform a behavior for its own sake 

  • ex: to get into a good college 

Extrinsic Motivation

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

  • ex: going to a job because you get paid

Overjustification Effect

• when intrinsic motivation is rewarded extrinsically, the behavior will decrease after the reward is taken away

  • ex: cranky old man

    • The cranky old man would yell at the kids for playing outside his house and they thought it was funny. To get rid of him, he said he would pay them $1 every day to come play there. He began decreasing the amount over time, and when it got to only $0.05, they didn’t want to come anymore.

Problem-focused Coping

attempting to alleviate stress directly –by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor – used when we feel control

Emotion-focused Coping

attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to one’s stress reaction. – used when we feel less control

Learned Helplessness

• the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

  • ex: not wanting to study anymore when you always get a bad grade

External Locus of Control

• the perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate

• “your failure”

Internal Locus of Control

• the perception that you control your own fate.

• “your success”

Self-Control

the ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards.

Walter Mischel’s Marshmallow Study

• Correlational study

  • Only about 15% of students were able to wait 15 minutes to eat the marshmallow

  • It was found that those who were able to wait did better on their SATs, had fewer drug/alcohol addiction, and better marriages 

    • All about the ability to delay gratification 

      • Put off immediate want for long term benefit 

  • You can learn to put off the immediate want 

Learned Optimism

• the idea that a talent for joy, like any other, can be learned.

• it is contrasted with learned helplessness.

Imitation Onset

• Learning by observation comes about early in life 

  • ex: children imitating your behavior/ behavior they see

Bandura’s Experiments

• Bandura’s bobo doll study (1961) indicated that individuals (children) learn through imitating others who receive reward and punishments 

• Bandura broke children down into different groups and one of the groups watched the aggressive model beat up the bobo doll, the other group didn’t

  • They are then put into a situation where they were playing with toys and the toys are taken away from them, to create anger 

• The children are then put into a room with a Bobo doll. If they had watched the adult attack the doll, they would mimic the way in which the adult model attacked the doll.

  BOTH PHYSICALLY AND VERBALLY

Did the same gender models have a stronger or lesser influence on the children in the Bobo Doll Experiment?

stronger

• boys= more violent

• girls= more verbal

Vicarious Learning

• learning by seeing the consequence of another person’s behaviors

• The other person “models” the behavior, and the learner will watch to see if the model is reinforced or punished

  • this causes the children to not act aggressively to avoid punishment

Mirror Nuerons

neuroscientists have discovered that these neurons activate during observational learning

• allows humans/ animals to empathize

Overimitation

performing unnecessary steps because it was observed 

Theory of Mind

• imagining what someone else is experiencing

• “putting yourself in someone’s shoes”

  • this is developed over time, not as children

Modeling Requirements

• Attention

• Retention

• Ability to reproduce the behavior

• Motivation 

  • Learner must believe they can successfully carry out the behavior and control the outcome– self efficacy

Antisocial Behavior

• negative, destructive, unhelpful behavior

  • ex: walking through a door and the person in front of you not holding it open for you

Prosocial Behavior

• positive, constructive, helpful behavior

• models can have prosocial effects

Applications of Observational Learning

• Bad news from Bandura’s studies is that antisocial models (family, neighborhood TV) may have an antisocial effects