Classical and Operative Learning

• Learning is defined in psychology as a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior as a result of experience

• Learning is that organism’s behavior is changed for the most part permanently as a result of some experience

• Learn by association because we have associative learning

  • Associative Learning: We learn through experience AND association

• Classically conditioned

• Operatively conditioned

• Other primates learn by observation, but for the most part, when talking about organisms in general, we’re talking about conditioned learning

• Today’s lesson applies more broadly to animals, while Thursdays lesson will apply to higher-ordered vertebrates like humans

• Association between music and movie

  • You associate the music with the movie even though many people has never seen the theme song this movie is from

  • There is a shark that eats people and they’re trying to capture it

  • How do we experience the music to help us understand what this story is about?

    • When the shark is about to attack, when the shark is in vicinity, ominous tone

    • Minor key

  • Weird element of human psyche is that humans tend to result to the same way to major keys and minor keys, and very generally speaking major keys are happier and more upbeat, while music in minor keys depending on tempo, tends to feel ominous, scarier, or sadder

    • We hear this minor key and start to feel a bit nervous, knowing that nothing is literally coming for you, but still feel the nervousness of knowing a shark is out there in the movie.

• Learn to associate theme song with that movie, but also connects to other experiences of listening to music in minor keys, starts slowly and speeds up, and particular instrumentation

  • Beginning of the music focusing on the wind instruments then switches over to the strings, then introduction of brass

  • Adding instrumentation also affects the way we think about things

  • We hear this music and it’s onimous

  • Friend that played piano, at house for sleepover, he goes “I want to make something very creepy”, changed Jingle Bells to slow and minor key

3 Types of Behavioral Learning

• Leads to relatively important change in behavior

• Classical Conditioning: A neutral stimulus is associated with a natural response

  • Dr. Ivan Pavlov (1936)

  • Many pieces of stimulus that we become familiar with

  • Very interested in understanding how certain kinds of stimulus leads to certain kinds of responses

  • Respondent Behavior

  • Classical conditioning associates two or more stimuli to affect a very specific kind of behavior

  • Pavlov was researching dogs, and one of the things that he was curious about is what gets to be termed as “unconditioned response”. What he noticed was when dogs are presented food, they begin to salivate. He says that this is an unconditioned response (AKA something they do naturally). The stimulus of the food is the unconditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned response is the salivation.

  • What he began to wonder is if he could cause that salivation without showing food, possible to make that behavior occur without stimulus that usually causes that behavior?

  • Pavlov used a bell, an auditory stimulus, and the dog had no response to it. What he realized is that if he paired the auditory stimulus with the food, then the dog began associating those two things together.

  • This stage of conditioning/training is called acquisition, when you are training the respondent (organism/dog) to respond to the stimulus. After a while, Pavlov noticed that this dog did start salivating at the sound of the auditory stimulus even without the presentation of the food. This meant that Pavlov successfully conditioned and trained dogs to associate auditory stimulus with food so much that they hear the auditory stimulus and start salivating, since they associate food with the bell.

  • You get to a point where you look at a clock and you start feeling hungry because you see the time. In doing so, he discovered that its possible to take a neutral stimulus and make it a conditioned stimulus if you associate the neutral stimulus with unconditioned stimulus. What happens is that unconditioned response to food becomes a conditioned response because now you conditioned/trained dog to respond to auditory stimulus.

  • It’s not a perfect system because he discovered quickly that timing matters when establishing associations. During acquisition, it’s the association of unconditioned stimulus and neutral stimulus to go from unconditioned → conditioned stimulus. But if he waits too long to present unconditioned stimulus, then the association never happens, since the dog never learns to associate auditory stimulus with food. If you don’t reinforce that stimulus, the dog will also lose the association.

  • It is possible to extinguish the response so that it becomes extinct.

  • If you wait a certain period of time and try again, very often the respondent had a slight conditioned response as spontaneous recovery. We can lose the big association, but when reintroduced, we will have a little response to it anyway.

  • Pavlov learned that tiny mattered when classic conditioning, when trying to pair a neutral stimulus with unconditioned stimulus so that neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus.

  • When it comes to dogs, 0.5 second must be the timing between the stimuli in order for acquisition to occur. Timing varies by respondent. If you wait too long (1.5 minute for dogs), and association doesn’t happen.

  • Generalization: Entirely possible for animal to conditionalize neutral stimulus. If you’re using a whistle to do the original conditioned response, but it’s possible for respondent to generalize and say that it’s just whistle, but it’s also when you hear a bell or sound that to me, as the respondent, sounds similar, then I will have the same response to all auditory stimuli.

    • It had really broad ranging consequences, since if respondent could generalize auditory stimuli, what else could they generalize? Is it visual stimuli? Is it any sort of somatic stimuli (touch, scent)?

  • J. B. Watson (father of behaviorism) really interested in studying conditioning in children in the 1950s. He observed children through naturalistic observation, and he was conducting field studies. He went to lots of hospitals, looked at childrens’ wards. But after observing children in this way, he decided that in order to figure out if his theory was valid, he actually needed to conduct an experiment (if you could get your answer to naturalistic observation, you don’t need experiment nowadays).

    • Aware of Pavlov’s natural conditioning, and thought to himself, if respondent might generalize conditioning (associate stimulus way more widely than previously thought), then maybe he could condition someone to do something (behavior) then uncondition that response.

    • Children are easier to condition than adults, so in 1920, Watson and assistant began an experimental case study with an infant known as “Little Albert”. He documented experiments. The child was a 9-month-old infant. Little children have natural response to loud noises, and he wanted to see if he could use a loud noise as a neutral stimulus and pair it with something to see if he could have child response fearfully to neutral stimulus.

  • Condition Little Albert to fear the neutral stimulus.

    • Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Loud noise (metal bar struck w hammer)

    • Unconditioned Response (UR): Fear response (crying) to loud noise

    • Conditioned Stimulus (CS): White rat

    • Conditioned Response (CR): Albert began crying at sight of rat.

  • After 6 cycles of “conditioning”, repeating loud noise w rat.

  • He responded fearfully to anything furry. This is a pretty common thing when you have a little experience, that’s when danger of generalization. Since infant doesn’t have tons of life experience, he can’t differentiate so he responds fearfully to all furry things.

  • 17 days after they conditioned Little Albert to experience all of this. They stopped the continual conditioning and Little Albert was in a room, and they sent a dog into the room, and he still reacted fearfully to the appearance of the dog. When Watson traded out dog with other furry things, so spontaneous recovery of conditioning even 17 days after the experiment.

  • Recognition that it’s possible to condition given responses can be generalized or become extinct or spontaneously recovered, the question becomes how long does it take for something to become extinct? They recognized that it matters how advanced

  • They weren’t interested in cognition to facilitate associative learning, purely the behavior itself. In modern psychology where we are interested in mental processes, when studying classical conditioning, we study.

  • Respondent of organism predicting what’s happening next based on what’s happening next.

  • Ms. Aguayo’s dog Snowball is on a schedule that’s more strict than Ms. Aguayo. Snowball wakes up and expects that within 15-20 minutes of waking up, he will be let outside and if they forget, he will scratch at the door. He has an expectation, and immediately afterwards, he will get treats. If you don’t break it up into normal-sized pieces, he will keep on staring at you.

  • Taste aversions: In 1970s, different psychologists wonder if certain behaviors if personal are actually conditioned

    • Dr. Paul Rozin’s “tasteful situations” experiment.

    • He designed an experiment/survey.

    • Classically conditioned because we associate negative with this stimulus. Neutral stimulus with our food and suddenly it’s not good.

    • One experience completely destroys complete enjoyment of specific food.

  • Respondent Behavior: Typically automatic and involuntary.

• Operant Conditioning: A response is increased or decreased due to reinforcement or punishment

  • Subjects associate their actions with consequences

  • Subject is making a decision

  • Still learning, still changing behavior

  • In classical conditioning, we’re changing it through conditioning and making a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus, and an unconditioned response into conditioned response

  • Subject has a choice and they accept the consequence of that choice

  • To tell the difference, ask the question can the subject control the events in which they are responding?

    • If the answer is yes, if they can decide what their behavior is gonna be, then it’s operative conditioning

  • Mostly we’re talking about strengthening behaviors that are desirable, behave in a way that you want them to behave

  • Like the example of biting nails and seeing the beautiful nails

  • B. F. Skinner was a behaviorist (1990), really typical of psychologists of 20th century, interested in changing behavior in a precise manner and what steps are needed to make that happen

  • What he was really interested in was Thorndike’s Law of Effect, which is a common sense idea that states behavior that’s rewarded is likely to occur

  • Skinner wanted to test the strength of this idea if this is decision making, so he builds a Skinner Box (operant chamber), and did experiment with white rats. He built a box and the goal of the box is to get the rat to do a complex behavior. So the goal was that when the rat saw that the light was green, that it would learn to press the lever so it would get food. It would get the food only when the light is green and press the lever.

    • Had it been one thing, light with food, then it would be classical conditioning. But since it’s more than one action, it becomes operant conditioning.

  • Loudspeaker for auditory stimulus, other lights, electrified grid. Shaping the behavior in various ways, first through associative learning (steps that look like classical conditioning). Initially the lights are on and you press the lever. Then when one light is on, press the lever. In a relatively short amount of life, they learn to discriminate stimuli and learn that when green light becomes on, they press the lever and get food. This is decision making, they ignore when stimuli don’t lead to food. This is the shaping, and what reinforces the shaping is the reward for doing the right thing at the right time.

  • This shaping is by taking the food away and train the lever when the light turns green, because that leads to a different set of consequences. Researchers found that you can tie together different sets of decisionmaking where the subject is making decisions that as long as there are periodic reinforcements, it will learn that when green light is on and it presses lever, it gets food.

  • Need to know what reinforcers and rewards are in place.

  • Primary reinforcers: Satisfies a basic need for survival, i.e. food.

  • Secondary reinforcers: Something that can get you a basic need.

  • Food and candy in primates.

  • Leading them to series of actions

  • When we talk about reinforcement, we also talk about:

    • Positive reinforcement: Skinner modified rat’s behavior with positive reinforcement, which is adding something pleasurable to induce a behavior. After behavior has occurred. Show the dog the primary reinforcement, food, ask them to sit, and once they have done the behavior accurately, then you hand over the reward.

    • Negative reinforcement: Removing an unpleasant stimulus when a desired behavior occurs, like if you put on sunblock, you avoid sunburns.

    • Both are different from punishment

      • The effect of punishment is the opposite of reinforcement, which is strengthening the desired behavior. There is no value judgment on that. However, punishment is getting rid of an undesired behavior.

      • Positive punishment: Introducing an unpleasant stimulus following an undesired behavior, like when touching hot stove and feels pain.

      • Negative punishment: Removing a pleasant stimulus after an undesired behavior, like taking away phone for staying out past curfew.

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    Law of Effect: A behavior that is rewarded is likely to recur.

    • Mostly want to produce reinforcement that is positive and avoid punishment.

    • In mid 20th century, psychologists use classical conditioning and operant conditioning to test the limits. Edward Tolman is interested in looking into how quickly rats could learn a maze. Rats that are awarded learn the maze faster than rats who are not rewarded. The maze he developed was on stilts, so rats fall. Learn the maze. Get food box, so he conducts experiment, and he’s a strict behaviorist (anticipate that positively reinforced.

    • Formed cognitive map of maze so they knew what to do to solve maze, but because they didn’t receive rewards, they never demonstrated learning.

    • Occurs all of the time, and we’re not even aware of the learning until we stop to prove it in some way.

    • We have cognitive map of living spaces.

    • Tolman's maze experiments are primarily associated with latent learning, which is a concept that differs from both operant and classical conditioning. In his famous experiments with rats navigating mazes, Edward C. Tolman demonstrated that rats could learn the layout of a maze without any immediate reinforcement. They would explore the maze and form a cognitive map of it, even when there were no rewards present.

      When a reward was introduced later, the rats could navigate the maze more efficiently, showing that they had learned even without reinforcement. This suggests that learning can occur without direct reinforcement, contrasting with the principles of operant conditioning, which focuses on behavior modification through rewards or punishments.

    • Also works on smaller spaces, psych students in community college, blindfolded them and asked for them to turn on headlights, AC, etc., and found that we have cognitive space of dashboard. Our brains are constantly creating maps of physical spaces around us, and we don’t know it until we have to prove it in some way.

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• Observational Learning: Learning occurs through observation and imitation of others