Chapter 6

Chapter 6

6.1 Basic Forms of Learning: Associative and Nonassociative    

• Organisms need to adapt their behavior occasionally 

• Learning: the process by which an organism experience produces enduring changes in both the brain and behavior, such as improved skill or understanding 

  • Involves adapting our behavior, such as when a sky of dark clouds leads us to expect rain 

  • Allows us to adapt the environment to our desires and needs 

  • Important to sustain life 

• Two forms of learning 

  • Associative Learning: Making connections between different events our our behavioral responses to them 

  • Nonassociative Learning: Involves changes in how much or how little we respond to a single event or stimulus with experience 

    • Habituation: an organism’s reflexive response to a repeated stimulus becomes weaker 

      • The brain decrease its attention to stimuli in our environment that it learns are harmless of unimportant 

        • Brain becomes less responsive 

      • Habituation reflects a change in how we respond to those inputs 

      • The initial responsiveness to the sensory input can be recovered if the brain detects something new in the environment 

        • Renews your interest 

      • Example: Car alarm changing its rhythm

      • Something from within the environment can distract your from the original stimulus 

      • Dishabituation: Recovery of a response that has undergone habituation, typically as a result of the presentation of a new stimulus 

        • Suddenly becoming more interesting, making person respond to old stimulus again 

    • Sensitization: an organism’s reflexive response to a repeated stimulus becomes stronger

      • Leads to an increased response with repetition of the stimulus, making us more sensitive to it 

      • Intended to bring attention to potentially bad stimuli in our environment 

• One method of studying learning and habituation is to monitor eye movements and measure how long subjects look at something and where they look 

• Habituation is adaptive because it is a waste of time to attend to unchanging stimuli that aren’t important 

• Dual-Process Theory of Nonassociative Learning (Groves and Thompson) 

  • Suggest that habituation and sensitization are distinct opposing processes 

• Habituation is a decrease and sensitization is an increase in reflexive behavior in response to repeated exposure to stimulus 

6.2 Nuts and Bolts of Classical Conditioning     

• Association learning: when a connection is made between two events 

• Conditioning: refers to changes in behavior that are conditional on, meaning dependent on, specific associations that have been made 

• Two types of forms of conditioning

  • Classical condition: a passive form of associative learning where an involuntary response—such as a reflex—becomes associated with a new stimulus 

    • Brain learns to change behavior as a response to something in the environment 

    • Phenomenon by Ivan Palov

      • Dogs associated specific stimuli to getting food 

      • Some behaviors are automatic and occur without any need for learning 

    • Unconditioned Stimuli: Produces a reflexive response without prior learning 

    • Unconditioned Response: automatically generated by unconditioned response 

    • Conditioned Stimuli: A stimulus that has no prior positive or negative association but comes to elicit a response after being associated with the unconditioned stimulus

      • Basically occurs because of unconditioned stimuli 

    • Conditioned Response: automatically generated by conditioned stimuli after an association between unconditioned and conditioned stimuli is made 

    • Neutral Stimulus: A stimulus that does not produce a specific response

6.3 What Classical Conditioning Teaches Us About Learning      

• Five fundamental process that lead to learning 

  • Acquisition: The initial learning of the US-CS link in classical conditioning

    • The phase where the pairing of the US and the neutral stimulus is introduced, such as the pairing of the food and the bell 

    • First, there is no response to the neutral stimulus, but many pairing lead to CS that evoke the CR until the association is fully learned 

  • Generalization: The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the CS, so that learning is not tied too narrowly to specific stimuli 

    • The similar two stimulus are, the more likely they are to be generalized 

  • Discrimination: occurs when we learn to respond to a particular stimulus but not to others, this preventing overgeneralization 

    • Allows you yo stop and look when you hear a car horn 

  • Extinction: An active learning process whereby the CR is weakened in response to the CS if it is frequently presented in the absence of the US 

    • It is more about the brain learning to not respond because the CS is no longer associated with the US 

  • Spontaneous Recovery: Observed when an extinct behavior reappears after a delay 

    • The US does not have to present 

• If an organism has an opportunity to relearn an association after extinction, the relearning will be more rapid than the original conditioning process.  

• Residual plasticity hypothesis: neural networks of learning persist even after extinction, providing a residual memory trace of the association, which can lead to savings if conditioning is reintroduced

6.4 Classical Conditioning Provides the Power of Prediction      

• Classical conditioning depends on the closeness in time, or contiguity of the CS and US 

  • Contiguity is important to learning, but not enough 

  • Contingency, or predictiveness, was is more important 

    • Learning is essentially predicting the future based on the past 

• When something good or bad happens, your brain tries to learn cues to predict that outcome in the future 

• Our brains are prediction machines, using past experiences to see into the future and test whether our predictions are right or wrong

• Conditioning from familiar stimuli is more difficult than conditioning from unfamiliar stimuli 

  • Predictions associated with them makes new learning difficult to predict 

• Conditioning does not occur randomly, but rather the brain selectively learns events associations that are more valuable and informative for predicting the future 

• Blocking: A classical conditioning phenomenon whereby a prior association with a conditioned stimulus prevents learning of an association with another stimulus because the second one adds no further predictive value.

• Our brain learns what is most informative for associations 

6.5 Learning to Feel With Classical Conditioning      

• Classical conditioning can impact complex emotions 

• Counterconditioning: Be used to counteract undesired associations by conditioning new responses 

• Negative associations can be so powerful that they are learned extremely rapidly and are easily generalized, even after a single experience 

  • These can be fixed through counter conditioning and extinction used in therapy 

• Fear Conditioning: depends on the amygdala, a region next to the hippocampus 

  • Amygdala: plays an important role in forms of emotional learning 

    • Plays an important role in emotional CS-US associations that are made

• The amygdala is perfectly positioned for fear conditioning because it communicates not only with brain structures associated with memory but also with the brainstem, which influences bodily reflexes

  • Bridges stimulus associations and body responses 

6.6 Biologically Predisposed for Association      

• Classical conditioning is when the brain selectively learns associations that are more valuable for predicting the future 

  • Influenced by our prior experiences, but also handed down through genes 

• Humans and other animals evolved internal mechanisms that guide our learning, so that we form associations that are adaptive, meaning more valuable to our ability to survive and reproduce

• Preparedness: is the species-specific biological predisposition to learn some associations more quickly than other association 

• Vicarious classical conditioning: involves learning a conditioned response by observing other organisms experience 

• Conditioned taste Aversion: Human tendency to associate nausea (UR) with food (CS) rather than with other environmental factors

• Humans and many other mammals are biologically prepared to strongly associate both taste and smell with nausea because these senses are closely connected with food.

6.7 Classical Conditioning in the Real World     

• CR drug use consequences 

  • Drug cravings 

    • Making them feel the opposite  

  • Drug tolerance 

    • More drug is needed as the individual becomes less responsive to the drug

  • Increase the risk of overdosing 

    • As drug tolerance builds, drug user may take high doses to experience a high  

6.8 Nuts and Bolts of Operant Conditioning     

• Operant Conditioning: a second form of associative learning in which a learner makes associations between a voluntary behavior and its consequences and makes a behavioral change as a result

  • Operant conditioning involves learning to produce voluntary actions or behaviors to control or operate on the environment to produce a desired outcome 

• Thorndike (cat experiment) 

  • Placed cats in box and they would meow and paw 

  • Eventually, the cats saw the string and were rewarded with freedom and a treat

  • The more they did it, the less time the required to pull the string 

• He notes that the only way cats acquired the skill of escaping the box was through trial and error 

  • Only through the cat’s own actions did the amount of time to escape the box begin to improve 

  • They made unknown associations of the world (or the box) to make voluntary behavior 

• Law of Effect: Behavior is a function of its consequences

  • Actions that are followed by good outcomes are strengthened and behaviors that are followed by bad outcomes are weakened 

    • Good outcomes —-> Satisfiers 

    • Bad outcomes —--> Annoyers 

• Thorndike’s cats were experiencing operant conditioning because their voluntary behaviors were generally modified as a result of their consequences 

• By allowing associations to voluntary (operant) and involuntary (classical) behaviors, our brain begins to control and be controlled by the environment 

• Operant conditioning can be explained by ABCs 

  • Antecedent The stimulus that precedes the behavior and signals a context in which certain behavior and signals a context in which certain behaviors can lead to certain consequence 

    • Antecedent cues do not cause behavior, but set the occasion for a behavior 

  • Behavior: Learning cannot influence behavior unless the behavior occurs

  • Consequence: Consequence is the stimulus after the behavior that either increases or decreases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated  

6.9 Your Behavior has Consequences     

• Consequences will either cause you to repeat behaviors or not 

• What Thorndike called satisfiers and annoyers later became referred to as reinforcement and punishment, terms designed to focus less on the invisible contents of an organism’s mind (like thoughts and emotions) and more on its observable, measurable behavior

• Reinforcement: refers to an increased likelihood of a behavior being repeated 

  • Two types of major type 

    • Primary Reinforcers: A type of consequence that tends to be satisfying because they meet some biological need and are effective regardless of a person’s prior experience 

      • Include food, a drink when thirsty, warmth when cold, or even sex

        • Necessary to pass on our genes 

    • Second Reinforcers: A learned pleasure things that gain value through learning and experience because they're linked to basic rewards because of their association with primary reinforcers 

      • Not biologically motivated 

      • Money, though just paper or an electronic transfer, has value because we've learned to associate it with fulfilling basic needs. 

    • When you want to control your surroundings, your actions can either add or remove something. 

      • In operant conditioning, "positive" means that your action adds something, and "negative" means that it takes something away. 

    • Positive reinforcement: the presentation of a positive stimulus that leads to an increased frequency of behavior 

    • Negative reinforcement: increases the probability of a behavior by avoiding or removing an outcome 

    • Positive and negative reinforcement are used to increase or reinforce a behavior while punishment decreases the likelihood of a behavior

    • Positive punishment: when an unpleasant stimulus is presented to decrease the likelihood of a behavior

    • Negative Punishment: Decreases a behavior by removing a stimulus

    • A behavior weakens due to consequence so each consequence is a punishment  

• Punishment: refers to the decreased likelihood of a behavior being repeated 

6.10 Behavior Modification: Putting Reinforcement to Work for Personal Change     

• Punishments for behaviors may not be appropriate or productive 

• Children receiving feedback (of them doing well which allows them to learn better) may be different from how adults react when they receive feedback

  • Children show a greater learning during positive (success) relative to negative (failure) performance feedback and greater activity in executive function and cognitive control regions  

• Children tend to learn better with reinforcement rather than punishment 

• Premack Principle: the idea that activities individuals frequently engage in can be used to reinforce activities that they are less inclined to perform

  • It is not about the potential pleasure of a behavior that can be used to reward a less pleasurable behavior, but because of how frequent a behavior is to reinforce a less frequent one 

• Preferred Behavior: One that presumably is naturally more reinforcing to the individual and engaged in more often 

• Delay Discounting: future consequences have less potency

6.11 Learning New Habits and Breaking Old One     

• Skinner believed that learning is applied to animals AND humans

• Skinner’s Operant Chambers 

  • Animals could keep responding whenever they wanted, without a specific goal like escaping. 

  • This meant researchers could see how quickly animals responded and how their behavior changed over time. 

  • The animals could perform the behavior repeatedly to earn more rewards, like food or water, while they were in the box.

  • Shaping: Gradually changes in random behavior into a desired target behavior 

    • Behavior that is vaguely similar to the target behavior builds in complexity until the target behavior is achieved 

• Instinctive Drift: when an animal’s natural instinct interferes with learned behavior

6.12 Learning on Schedule      

• Continuous Reinforcement Schedule: A behavior is rewarded every time it is performed 

  • Can lead action to rapid extinction 

• Partial Reinforcement Schedule: Behavior is rewarded only some of the time 

  • Effective motivators 

  • Determined by one of two factors 

    • 1) How many behaviors have to be performed 

    • 2) How much time has to elapse 

  • Schedules determined by amount of behavior are called ratio schedules

  • Schedules determined by amount of time is called interval schedules 

  • Variable schedules are more resistant to extinction than fixed schedules because of the unpredictability of the reward 

• Fixed-ratio schedules: Requires a specific number of behaviors before a reward if given 

  • Behavior tends to decrease after a reward is received and then accelerated as repetitions gets closer to receiving the reward 

• Variable-Ratio Schedule: reinforces an average number of behaviors that is less predictable than the fixed version 

  • Casinos 

• Fixed-interval schedules: Reinforcement is given for the first behavior made after a fixed amount of time 

  • Study habits: having an exam every 3 weeks 

• Variable interval schedules: A response is reinforced based on an average amount of time elapsed 

  • Leads to slower responses because the time to the next reinforcer is unpredictable 

  • Fishing or waiting for a text 

6.13 Beyond Behavior: The Role of the Mind in Learning      

• Operant learning traditionally reflects contingent reinforcement, in which a specific response is reinforced because it yields some desired change to the environment

• Noncontingent reinforcement is where a reward was delivered to pigeons on a fixed-interval schedule no matter what behavior they were doing at the time

• Superstitious Conditioning: A form of operant conditioning in which a behavior is learned because it was coincidentally reinforced, but has no actual relationship with reinforcement.

  • Learning can occur even when it does not reflect true associations between actions and their consequences

    • Learning depends on the associations made in the mind of the learner

      • This leads to cognitive revolution

• Latent Learning: occurs when no behavior is reinforced and without any clear motivation or need to learn

  • The cognitive revolution in psychology focused on mental processes behind behavior

  • Edward Tolman demonstrated that learning can occur without rewards, called latent learning

    • In his maze experiment, rats that weren’t initially rewarded still learned the maze, showing faster times once they began receiving rewards. This proved they had formed internal "cognitive maps" of the maze. Even when the original route was blocked, they could find new paths, revealing they had learned the maze layout as a whole

• Operant conditioning follows a process of learning curve, by which we acquire knowledge or a skill through trial and error 

  • However, latent learning allows us to understand that this is not entirely true because we might develop a mental concept of how things work 

• Insight learning: a form of learning that occurs without trial and error and this without clear reinforcement 

  • Occurs abruptly without thinking

• Psychologist Wolfgang Köhler studied insight learning in chimpanzees by testing how they solved problems

  • He hung bananas out of their reach and observed how they used objects in their enclosure to get them.

  • Instead of using trial and error, the chimps seemed to assess their options and successfully solved the problem on the first try, like attaching two sticks to knock the bananas down. 

  • Köhler argued that this wasn’t just trial and error; the chimps formed a mental concept of the solution, resulting in an "aha!" moment that helped them figure out how to reach the bananas.

Classical Conditioning (October 4)      

• Key Concepts 

  • Reflex: an automatic stimulus-response sequence 

  • Habituation: decrease in reflex due to repeated stimulation

  • Extinction: after conditioned stimulus repeatedly fails to predict unconditioned stimulus, conditioned response declines 

  • Spontaneous recovery: after extinction and a delay, conditioned stimulus triggers conditioned response again 

  • Generalization: other stimuli like the conditioned stimulus may also trigger conditioned response  

  • Discrimination training: decreases generalization by extinguishing stimuli like conditioned stimulus 

Classical Conditioning (October 7)      

• Classical 

  • Respond to something 

  • Environment influences behaviors 

• Operant 

  • Respond for something 

  • Behavior influence environment 

  • Reinforce a behavior to increase its frequency 

• Reinforcement 

  • Positive reinforcement adds something to increase behavior

    • Give a dog a treat when they sit 

    • Smile at a child when they say “thank you” 

  • Negative reinforcement removes something to increase behavior

    • Remove leash on a dog that walks beside you

    • Let a child out of time out when they are calm

• Punishment 

  • Positive punishment adds something to decrease behavior

    • Tell a dog “no!” when they jump

    • Require a child to do an extra chore after misbehaving

  • Negative punishment removes something to decrease behavior

    • Put food out of reach to stop dog from eating it 

    • Take a favorite toy away after a child refuses to share

• Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction 

  • Reinforce to increase behavior

    • Positive (adds stimulus)

    • Negative (removes stimulus)

  • Punish to decrease behavior

    • Positive (adds stimulus)

    • Negative (removes stimulus)

  • Extinguish to decrease behavior 

    • Do nothing (i.e., stop pairing)

• Key Concepts 

  • Extinction*: After behavior fails to predict reinforcer, behavior declines

  • Spontaneous Recovery*: After extinction and a delay, behavior can re-emerge

  • Generalization*: – Stimuli like the one eliciting the conditioned behavior may also trigger behavior

  • Discrimination Training*: Decreases generalization by extinguishing behavior to stimuli like the one eliciting conditioned behavior

  • Shaping: If the intended behavior does not occur spontaneously, operant conditioning to similar behaviors can guide animal to intended behavior

  • *: similar to classical conditioning

• Imprinting 

  • Critical periods in development 

    • Some behaviors are only learned during a particular time in development

  • Some stimulus-dependency 

    • Parent-like visual information is better than other stimuli

    • Species-like sounds are better than other stimuli

  • Predisposition towards particular behaviors