Learning

Learned vs. Unlearned Behaviors

  • Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience

  • Experience = skills + knowledge

  • Complex interaction of conscious and unconscious processes

  • Instincts and reflexes are innate and unlearned behaviors that an organism is born with

    • Reflex - knee jerk

    • Instinct - maturation, migration

Types of Learning

  • Associative Learning: When an organism makes associations between stimuli or events that occur together. This is the base for all types of learning.

Classical Conditioning

  • A process where a neutral stimulus is associated with a meaningful stimulus and causes a specific response

    • Stimulus = causes something to happen

  • Ivan Pavlov: A russian physiologist who first discovered classical conditioning

  • Unconditioned Response (UCR): An unlearned reaction that is automatically elicited by the unconditioned stimulus

  • Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that produces a response without prior learning

  • Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that does not naturally elicit the unconditioned response

  • Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A previously neutral stimulus that eventually elicits a conditioned response after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus

  • Conditioned Response (CR): Learned response to the conditioned stimulus that occurs after pairing

Components of Classical Conditioning

  • Acquisition: initial stage of learning

  • Generalization: applying what was learned to similar stimuli

  • Discrimination: learning to tell stimuli apart

  • Extinction: Unpairing the stimulus with the response

  • Spontaneous recovery: reappearance of CR after time

Behaviorism

  • John B. Watson is the Father of Behaviorism.

  • Believed conditioning could be extended to human emotions and not just reflexes.

  • In contrast to Freud, Watson believed that psychology must focus on the outward observable behavior that can be measured.

  • This incorporates Pavlov’s classical conditioning

Operant Conditioning

  • Another form of associative learning

  • In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response

  • In operant conditioning, organisms learn to associate a behavior with its consequences

  • B.F. Skinner is the father of operant conditioning

  • Law of effect by Thorndike: Behaviors followed by pleasant consequences are more likely to be repeated, and unpleasant consequences decrease behaviors

Important Terms

  • Consequences influence our behavior

  • Positive and negative refer to the addition and removal of stimulus

  • Reinforcement: Increasing the likelihood of a desired behavior

  • Punishment: decreasing the likelihood of a desired behavior

  • Positive Reinforcement: Adding a desirable stimulus to increase wanted behavior

  • Negative Reinforcement: Removing an undesirable stimulus to increase wanted behavior

  • Positive Punishment: Adding a undesireable stimulus to decrease unwanted behavior

  • Negative Punishment: Removing a desirable stimulus to decrease unwanted behavior

Types of Reinforcers

  • Primary Reinforcers

    • Innate reinforcing qualities

    • Inherently valuable

    • Food, water, pleasure

  • Secondary Reinforcers

    • No inherent value

    • Values attached to primary reinforcers

    • Verbal praise, money, etc

  • Punishment says you did something wrong but not necessairly what the correct action is. Reinforcement allows you to learn why something is wrong or correct. Thus, reinforcement helps you learn

Schedules of Reinforcement

  • Continuous reinforcement: Behavior is reinforced every time it occurs, leads to rapid learning, but when reinforcement stops, extinction takes place quickly

  • Partial reinforcement: Reinforce follows a behavior only a portion of the time