Week 5 - Week 8

Learning & Conditional

• Classical Learning Studies

  • Pavlovian (Classical) Conditioning with Dog salivation

    • Watson’s Little Albert

  • BF Skinner’s Behavioral (Operant) Conditioning

  • Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment & (Observational) Learning

• Conditioning

  • Associating one thing with something else

    • E.g. Drinking beer and getting drunk (or throwing up)

  • 1) Acquisition

    • Initial learning of stimulus - response relationship

  • 2) Extinction

    • Diminishing of conditioned (trained) response

  • 3) Spontaneous recovery

    • Reappearance (after rest period) of extinguished conditioned response

  • 4) Generalization

    • Associating similar Unconditional stimuli

      • E.g. How you know a cell & other stimuli ring OR how dogs salivate to any number of stimuli

  • 5) Discrimination

    • Distinguishing Condotional stimulus from irrelevant stimuli

• Classical Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov and Watson)

  • Classical conditioning

    • Basic learning process that involves repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus with a response-producing stimulus until the neutral stimulus elicits the same response

    • Discovered by Ivan Pavlov while he was studying digestion

  • Association of one stimulus with another

    • Unconditional stimulus (UCS)

      • e.g. Food; Loud noise

    • Unconditional response (UCR)

      • e.g. Salivation; Startle reflex (fear)

    • Conditional stimulus (CS)

      • e.g. Bell/Rat, which comes before food/noise

    • Result - Just the (CS) eventually causes (CR)

      • Bell causes salivation; rat causes fear

  • John B. Watson

    • Founded new approach called behaviorism

    • Advocated scientific study of objectively observed behavior

    • Believed all human behavior is result of conditioning and learning

    • Conducted controversial “Case of Little Albert”

  • Classical Conditioning: Applications

    • Avoiding addiction cues:

      • Addicts are encouraged to stay away from people and situations linked to (or which augment) their addictions

    • Counter-conditioning:

      • Aversive conditioning

        • Associating tastes or drugs with nausea

        • Often (quickly) learn a new behavior, like taste aversion

      • Desensitization

        • Associating pleasant feelings with anxiety triggering stimuli

        • Try a peppermint (pleasant) before/during the exam (an anxiety instigator)

• Operant Conditioning (Skinner) - deals with the learning of active, voluntary behaviors that are shaped and maintained by their consequences

  • Thorndike

    • First psychologist to systematically investigate animal learning and how voluntary behaviors are influenced

    • Trial and error

    • Law of effect

      • Responses followed by a satisfying effect becomes strengthened and are more likely to result in a particular situation

      • Responses followed by a dissatisfying effect are weakened and less likely to occur in a particular situation

  • B. F. Skinner

    • Believed that psychology should restrict itself to studying only phenomena that could be objectively measured and verified—outwardly observable behavior and environmental events

    • Proposed that internal thoughts, beliefs, emotions, or motives could not be used to explain behavior

    • Coined the term operant to describe any “active” behavior that operates upon the environment to generate consequences

    • Invented to Skinner box

  • Association of behaviors with consequences

    • shaping

      • Building on existing behaviors to achieve goal

      • Pigeons pecking, Dogs barking, etc.

    • Reinforcement

      • INCREASES likelihood of response

        • Positive Reinforcement: Adding a positive stimulus (e.g. Treat)

          • Positive: Response is followed by the addition of a reinforcing stimulus, increasing the likelihood that the response will be repeated in similar situations

        • Negative Reinforcement: Removing an aversive stimulus (e.g. Pain, removing a low grade)

          • Negative: Response results in the removal of, avoidance of, or escape from a punishing stimulus, increasing the likelihood that the response will be repeated in similar situations

    • Punishment

      • Process in which a behavior is followed by an aversive consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behavior’s being repeated

        • (Punishment and negative reinforcement are often confused)

      • Opposite of reinforcement

      • Decreases likelihood of a behavior occurring

      • Two Types of punishment identified by Skinner

        • Punishment by application: a situation in which an operant is followed by presentation of or addition of an aversive stimulus; also called positive punishment

        • Punishment by removal: a situation in which an operant is followed by the removal or subtraction of a reinforcing stimulus; also called negative punishment

  • Utilizing Operant Conditioning

    • Children

      • Reinforce good behaviors

      • Ignore whining

      • Move misbehaving child away from reinforcing stimuli

    • Ourselves

      • State your goals

      • Monitor your behavior

      • Reinforce your behavior

  • Learning cont.

    • Reinforcers

      • Primary - Innately satisfying “rewards”

      • Secondary - Learned (associated with rewards)

    • Over-Justification

      • Too much reward can be bad

        • Decreases motivation (e.g. being paid to play)

      • Latent Learning

        • Learning can occur without reinforcement / training

          • E.g. Mental maps: You “learn” to find your way around

  • Reinforcement

    • Primary reinforcer: Stimulus or event that is naturally or inherently reinforcing for a given species, such as food, water, or other biological necessities

    • Secondary (conditioned) reinforcer: Stimulus or event that has acquired reinforcing value by being associated with a primary reinforcer

  • Cognitive & Learning

    • Learned Helplessness (Seligman)

      • Learned helplessness is the phenomenon in which exposure to inescapable and uncontrollable aversive events produces passive behavior.

      • The cognitive expectation that behavior would have no effect on the environment causes a person or animal to become passive.

      • This is shown when researchers study behavior, athletic performance, and psychological disorders such as depression and its management.

Memory & Memory Loss

• Memory involves three fundamental processes

  • Encoding: Transforming information into a form that can be entered and retained by the memory system

  • storage: Retaining information in memory so that it can be used at a later time

  • Retrieval: Recovering stored information for conscious awareness

• Ways to improve your memory

  • Pay attention

  • Minimize distractions @ encoding and retrieval

    • Proactive vs. Retroactive interference

  • Practice (repeat, rehearse, reason)

    • Avoid memory decay; Savings in relearning

  • Maximize use of encoding strategies such as chunking, acronyms, semantics, and imagery

    • Make it meaningful to you

• Types of Sensory Memory

  • Visual sensory memory is sometimes referred to as iconic memory because it is the brief memory of an image, or icon.

    • Duration: Approximately ¼ to ½ a second

  • Auditory sensory memory is sometimes referred to as echoic memory, meaning a brief memory that is like an echo.

    • Lasts up to three or four seconds

• Short-Term Working Memory: The Work of Consciousness

  • STM provides temporary storage for information transferred from sensory and long-term memory.

    • Duration: About 20 seconds

      • Can be retained longer through maintenance rehearsal

        • Mental or verbal repetition of information

      • Information loss may be due to decay or interference from new or competing information

    • Capacity

      • Described by George Miller as “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”

      • Can be increased by chunking; use maintenance rehearsal to encode

        • Current research suggests that the true “magical number” is four plus or minus one when chunking not an option

• Long-Term Memory

  • Any information stored longer than the 20-second duration of short-term memory.

  • Abbreviated as LTM

  • Unlimited amount of information can be stored in long-term memory

    • LTM has different memory systems

    • Long-term memories can last a lifetime

    • Amount of information that can be held is limitless

• Memory Techniques

  • Enhance your memory via encoding techniques called Mnemonics:

    • Chunking

    • Imagery

    • Acronyms

  • Study repeatedly

  • Rehearse & actively think about material

  • Refresh memory by using retrieval cues

  • Minimize interference

  • Test knowledge to rehearse & check learning

    • Repeat, Rehearse, Reason, Remember

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