Unit 4 Psych

Learning

Learning

a relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience

Classical Conditioning

A neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus which causes an unconditioned response through repeated pairing. The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus causing a controlled response

Ivan Pavlov

Russian physiologist

He was looking into whether or not saliva had a lot to do with digestion

If i take food on the tongue of the dog it will salivate more than a dog with no saliva on his dog (he was right)

He accidently found out a confounding variable- after a while, there is salivia with no food

John B Watson

Started the behaviorist movement

Wanted to see if he could condition emotional responses in people

Little Albert study- super unethical

Rat Study

NS- Sugar water

UCS- drug

UCR- nausea

CS- sugar water

CR- nausea

Side effect- Immune system was being supressed

They taught the rat's body to lower the immune system whenever they ate sugar

generalization

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

Discrimination

in classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus

Extinction

the diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS); occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced.

spontaneous recovery

the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response

What benefits does classical conditioning have

it increases your chances for survival

taste aversion

sensory cues we associate with nausea after we have been nauseous at the same time as we experienced that object in the past

conditioned emotional response

emotional response that has become classically conditioned to occur to learned stimuli, such as a fear of dogs or the emotional reaction that occurs when seeing an attractive person

Preparedness

We are biologically predisposed to make certain associations more quickly and easily than others

Little Albert follow-up experiments didn't work as well for inanimate objects

you develop a taste aversion to unusual or strange-looking food over a normal one much faster. If you get sick and you eat a snail and hamburger you will blame the snail

Exposure Therapy

Works off the extinction process. Exposing one to one's fear. If nothing negative happens, the fear will eventually dissipate and be extinguished.

Flooding

A type of exposure therapy.

complete immersion in ones fear

systematic desensitization

A type of exposure therapy.

Works off the extinction process. Exposing one to one's fear. If nothing negative happens, the fear will eventually dissipate and be extinguished.

Most effective

Pros: Less anxiety causing

Cons: Takes more time

counter conditioning

associates something you like with your fear

stimulus substitution

Pavlovs original explanation

Through the conditioning process, the CS becomes equal to the UCS

CS=UCS

CR X= X UCR

Contiguity Theory

Conditioning works because the CS and UCS are paired together in time

If you say someone's name and throw the ball a minute later, they would not be able to associate those two things

Cognitive Theory

Through conditioning, the CS comes to be a predictor of the presentation of the UCS

operant conditioning

a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher

70-80% of learning is done this way

Difference between classical and operant conditioning

Stimulus and then response vs Response and then stimulus

Concepts of Operant Conditioning

Positive- + - Adding something to the equation

Negative- Removing something from the equation

Reinforcement- Anything that increases the likelihood that the behavior will continue

Punishment- Increasing the likelihood that the behavior will stop

Edward Thorndike

behaviorism; Law of Effect-relationship between behavior and consequence

Worked with cats in the puzzle box

Gestalt Theory

You learn with an aha! Moment. Something greater than the sum of the parts figures it out

Instrumental Learning

Cat is able to get out of the puzzle box easily when a reward is presented

Learning happens incrementally

LAW OF EFFECT: behaviors followed by good consequences will be targeted, and behaviors followed by bad consequences will be weakened

Reinforcers and punishments

Discrefits insight learning

Skinner

Was born when Thorndike was working on his research

Wanted to be a writer/journalist

Meets John Watson in college

Finds the field of psychology interesting

Starts working on experiments relating to law and effect

Presents operant conditioning to the world as his graduate thesis

He is more well-known than Thorndike because he advertised it better

Types of Reinforcement

Primary Reinforcement

Something that we innately enjoy/dislike

Food, attention, comfort

Pain, discomfort, negative attention

Secondary Reinforcement

Anything that we learn to value

Tie back to primary reinforcement

Money

Phone:

Punishment

Thorndike removes the punishment part from his law of effect bc it does not always work

Punishments only work under certain conditions

Guaranteed

Immediate

Must be seen as a punishment

Conditioning Concepts

Generalization

Discrimination

Extinction

Skinners Box

Rats behavior are reinforced or punished

Response are recorded along with amount of time

Positive Reinforcement

Adding something pleasant to continue the behavior

Positive Punishment

Adds something you dont like to decrease the behavior

Negative Reinforcement

Taking away something unpleasant to continue a behavior

Negative Punishment

Taking away something pleasant to stop the behavior

Schedule of reinforcement

Continuous, fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable ratio

fixed ratio

Organism receivecs a reinforcement after a set amount of correct responses

Pros: gets more behavior quickly, resists extinction better than continuous

continuous

Every time you get a behavior, it is reinforced

Any time you put money in vending machine (behavior), you get a snack (reward)

Extinction happens very fast

variable ratio

Organism receives a reinforcement after a varied number of responses (slot machine)

Advantages: resists extinction very well, rate of response is quick

Problem: not good for new behaviors

Fixed Interval

Receives reinforcement for the first desires behavior after a set amount of time has passed

Advantages: almost guarantees a behavior when set about of time has passed

Problems: no interaction in between

Variable Interval

Organism receives a reinforcement for the first desired behavior after a variable amount of time has passed

Advantages: subject will be available more often, resist extinction

Disadvantag: not good for new behaviors

Shaping

reinforcing for successively closer apporximations to the desired behavior

Most operant learning occurs this way

Language

Dog training

Behavior in school

Chaining

Reinforcing serprate individual skills and putting them together later to create a more complex behavior

Less common but sometimes needed to teach a skill 0

Token Economices

OPerant conditonign technique where individuals can earn a token of some sort for desired behavior that they can later exchange for a primary

Cognitive LEarning

Cognitive Learning

Involves the use of mental process, attention, memory, observing, imitating others

Does not need external rewards

Does not require the person to engage in any observable behavior at the time of learning

learning/performance distinction

BEHAVIORIST DISAGREE

Wolfgang Kohler

insight learning- aha moment

Thorndike proved him wrong

A sudden unexpected solution to a problem

Study done on chimps

Behaviorists claim this is chaining

Tolman

cognition; studied rats and discovered the "cognitive map" in rats and humans

Cognitive Mapping-

an internal representation of the spatial relationships among objects in the environment

Animals from cognitive maps from working within their surroundings

Latent Learning

learning that occurs without any direct reinforvements such that is might be useful in the future

Albert Bandura

Cognitive Behaviorist

Social Cogntive learning

Modeling

Observational Learning

Bobo experiment

Social Cognitive Learning

Proving existence of serveral cognitive factors involved in learning

Attention

Memory

imitation

Vicarious Reinforcement

Anticipating consequences through observing the behaviors of others

Mirror Nuerons

Physical biological evidence that when we are imagining doing something, your brain acts like you are actually doing it

Social Learning

Studies have shown that observing behaviors that are meant to benefit others has a positive effect on our own behaviors