Intro to psych - Week 5

Learning

What is learning?

How we adapt to changes in the environment

• Any relatively permanent change in behaviour or mental processes brought by experience or practice

• Different from maturation (genetically controlled changes)

  • Maturation = Muscle development, bone growth etc

What behaviours aren’t learned?

• Reflexes: Unlearned, involuntary responses to a specific stimulus/environment

  • E.g. touching a hot stove and pulling away

• Fixed actions patterns (aka ‘instincts’): Motivated, complex behaviours that have strong innate basis, triggered by broad events 

  • E.g. baby crying for attention when they’re hungry, uncomfortable

  • Something that just happens, and is built in due to evolution

How do we learn through association (Classic conditioning)

3 key elements:

• Before classical conditioning: 

  • Unconditioned stimulus: A naturally occurring stimulus that leads to —>

  • Unconditioned response: An involuntary unlearned response

• During classical conditioning:

  • Acquisition: Repeated pairing of neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus

• After conditioning:

  • Conditioned stimulus: Formerly a neutral stimulus (NS) that becomes able to produce a learned response by being paired with an unconditioned stimulus

  • Conditioned response (CR):  learned, reflex-like response to a conditioned stimulus; also called a conditioned reflex

Extinction

Disappearance or weakening of a learned response following the removal or absence of the unconditioned stimulus or the removal of a reinforcer

Spontaneous recovery

• Reappearance of a learned response after extinction has occurred

• Learning is relatively permanent change in behaviour

Stimulus generalisation

Tendency to respond to a stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus with the conditioned response

Stimulus discrimination:

• the learned ability to respond only to a specific stimulus while ignoring similar, alternative cues

Exposure therapy

• Can help eliminate fear

• Involves directly confronting the anxiety/fear-provoking stimulus paired with an attractive stimulus and without the aversive outcome

• Allows extinction to occur

Biological constraints

• Conditioned taste aversion: Development of a nausea or aversive response to a particular taste because that taste was followed by a nausea reaction.

  • Occurs after only one association

  • E.g. me eating truffle pasta and vomiting, then associating truffle with nausea and feeling that way even before eating it

• Biological preparedness: Tendency for animals to learn certain associations, such as taste and nausea, with only one or few pairings due to the survival value of learning

  • Not all pairings are equal

  • E.g. spoiled milk being associated with nausea

Thorndicke’s law of effect

• If a voluntary response is followed by a pleasurable consequence, it tends to be repeated

• If a voluntary response is followed by an unpleasurable consequence, it will tend to not be repeated

Operant conditioning

• Process by which a voluntary behaviour becomes more probable or less probable depending on the pleasant or unpleasant consequences

Premack Principle

• Using a preferred activity to reinforce a less preferred activity

  • E.g. force them to do homework before allowing them to go to the playground

Punishment

Event or object following a response which DECREASES that the response will occur again

• E.g. taking away your phone because you didn’t do your homework

  • Helps temporarily remove behaviour, but behaviour eventually returns

  • Teaches us what NOT to do, but does not teach us what to do

  • (Psychologist suggest reinforcement instead of punishment)

How to use punishment effectively?

Types of reinforcers

• Primary reinforces: Naturally rewarding, serve to fulfill basic biological need

  • E.g. food, water, sleep, pleasure, affection

• Secondary reinforcers: Any reinforcer that has no inherent value, but becomes reinforcing after being paired with primary reinforcers

  • E.g. money, praise, good grades

Schedules of reinforcement

• Continuous reinforcement:

  • Reinforcement of each and every correct response

  • Helps distinguish correct and incorrect responses → Rapid learning

  • Extinction occurs rapidly when reinforcement is discontinued

• Shaping

  • Process of reinforcing small steps as they become closer and closer to the desired behaviour, until the desired behaviour is learned

Partial reinforcement

• Learning response that is reinforced after some, but not all

• Learning happens less rapidly

• Correct responses tends to be very resistant to extinction, efficient way to maintain behaviour

Fixed interval schedule

reinforcement based on time elapsed since last reinforcement; independent no. of reinforces

Variable interval schedule

Interval time that must pass before reinforcement becomes possible is different for each trial or number of event

Fixed ratio schedule

Number of reinforcements required for each event is not always the same

Variable ratio schedule

The number of responses for reinforcement is different for each trial or event

Latent learning

Learning that isn’t done through reinforcement, but is not observable until there is reason to demonstrate it

Learned helplessness

• Tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated failures from the past

• Related to depression

• HOWEVER if helplessness can be learned, it can also be unlearned

Observational learning

Learning that does not come from direct experience, but by watching others - social models - and the consequences of their behaviour

• Can be desirable/prosocial or undesirable and antisocial

•  Challenges the operant + classical conditioning that learning does not have to be done through experience

Elements of observational learning

• Attention : To learn anything through observation, the learner must first pay attention to the model

• Memory/Retention: The learner must also be able to retain the memory of what was done

• Imitation: The learner must be capable of reproducing, or imitating, the actions of the model

• Desire: The learner must have the motivation to perform the action

• Influenced by consequences observed – vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment