— Biological Factors — 

• Learning vs. Instinct - learning is a relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience. Instinct is a complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned.

• Learning vs. Maturation - maturation is biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

• Habituation - decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

• Limits on Learning - Biological Factors in Conditioning: your genetics can, in some cases, limit the way you learn.

• Conditioned taste aversion - Garcia: gave rats a particular taste, sight, or sound (CS) and later also gave them radiation or drugs that led to nausea and vomiting (UCR). The sickened rates developed aversions to the tastes but not to the sights or sounds.

• Preparedness or phobias? The difference between whether or not you are prepared for a situation or overly prepared (which could be considered a phobia).

— Classical Conditioning — 

• Learning from associations - learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning).

• Ivan pavlovs experiments:

  • UCS - a stimulus that unconditionally - naturally and automatically-triggers a response (dog has food in mouth) → UCR: the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus (salivation)

  • NS - neutral stimulus (tone that is made when the dog has food in his mouth)

  • CS - an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an UCS, comes to trigger a conditioned response (tone) → CR: the learned response to a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (salivation)

• Acquisition - initial learning, of the stimulus - response relationship.

• Extinction - the diminished responding that occurs when the CS (tone) no longer signals an impending UCS (food).

• Spontaneous recovery - the reappearance of a CR after a rest pause - suggested to Pavlov that extinction was suppressing the CR rather than eliminating it.

• Stimulus generalization - the tendency to respond to stimuli similar to the CS

• Stimulus discrimination - the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus (which predicts the UCS) and other irrelevant stimuli.

• John B. Watson - showed how specific fears might be conditioned. An 11 month old infant "little albert" feared loud noises but not white rats. Watson presented him with a white rat and, as he reached to touch it, struck a hammer against a steel bar just behind the head. After 7 repetition, albert burst into tears at the mere sight of the rat.

• Conditioned emotional response - a learned response to something because of an emotional experience.

• Phobias - an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation.

• Aversions - associates an unwanted state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

— Operant Conditioning — 

• Learning from Consequences

• Instrumental learning - law of effect: E.L. Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely

• B.F. Skinner - Skinner Box: a sound proof chamber with a barorkey that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer. It contains a device to record responses. You are able to see how consequences shape behavior

  • -operant chamber: another name for the Skinner Box

• positive reinforcement - follows an operant behavior with the addition of a reinforcing stimulus. The response is strengthened. Example: getting a hug, watching TV.

• negative reinforcement - an operant behavior that is followed by the removal of an aversive (psychologically or physically harmful) stimulus; an escape or avoidance. The response is strengthened. Example: fastening a seatbelt to turn off beeping

• Punishment - an aversive event that decreases that behavior that it follows. It's a powerful controller of unwanted behavior. It is not a negative reinforcement. Punished behavior is suppressed- behavior returns when punishment is no longer eminent. It causes increased aggression- shows that aggression is a way to cope with problems- explains why aggressive delinquents and abusive parents come from abusive homes. Creates a fear that can generalize to desirable behaviors. Example: fear of school, learned helplessness, depression. Does not necessarily guide toward desired behavior

• Generalization - the tendency, once a response has been established, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to evoke similar responses. Example: for a dog walk, anything that looks like a leash will get the dog excited

• Discrimination - in classical conditioning, the ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. Example: the dog will only respond to the leash

• Acquisition - the initial stage of learning, during which a response is established and gradually strengthened. The phase associating a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus comes to evoke a conditioned response. You've achieved conditioning (ex: the dog can salivate by hearing a bell, you can say acquisition was achieved)

• Extinction - diminishing of a conditioned response. In classical conditioning, when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus

• Shaping - an operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of a desired goal

• delayed reinforcement - we respond to reinforcers that are greatly delayed: the paycheck at the end of the week, the good grade at the end of the semester, the trophy at the end of the season. To function effectively, we must learn to postpone immediate rewards for greater long-term rewards. Small but immediate consequences are sometimes more alluring than big, but delayed, consequences.

• primary reinforcer - an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need. Example: getting food when hungry or being relieved of electric shock 

• Conditioned secondary reinforcer - a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer. It is learned. Example: money, good grades, a pleasant tone of voice, a word of praise

• Schedules of Reinforcement

• continuous reinforcement - reinforcing the desired response each time it occurs. Learning and extinction occurs rapidly. Example: paycheck

• partial reinforcement - reinforcing a response only part of the time. Results in slower acquisition and greater resistance to extinction. Ex: fishing

• Ration = number; interval = time

• fixed ratio (FR) - reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses. The faster you respond, the more rewards you get, high rate of responding. You know how many number of responses needed to get a reward. Example: you sell 30 cups at Chuck E Cheese to get a bonus

• variable ratio (VR) - reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.Very hard to extinguish because of unpredictability. Example: gambling, fishing

• fixed interval (FI) - a schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed. The response occurs more frequently as the anticipated time for reward draws near. If you know when the reward is coming, it's fixed. Ex: progress reports (get rewarded for grades) and paycheck

• variable interval (VI) - reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals. Produces slow, steady responding. Like pop quiz, or gambling or fishing (how long you have to sit there till you get rewarded?)

• aversive conditioning - a type of counter-conditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol)

— Social Learning — 

• Observational Learning - learning by observing and imitating the behavior of others. Children are especially likely to imitate those they perceive to be like them, successful, or admirable.

  • Key processes in observational learning:

Recently, neuroscientists have discovered mirror neurons (in a frontal lobe area adjacent to the brain's motor cortex) that provide a neural basis for observational learning. When a monkey performs a task such as holding or tearing, these neurons fire. It also happens when the monkey sees another monkey performing the same task.

• "Monkey See, Monkey Do."

• Retention: keeping learned information in the memory.

• Reproduction: reproduce or recurring act. (Copy cat).

• Motivation - the desire to follow another's actions.

• Acquisition - of a behavior may occur without specific performance of the behavior: Mirror neurons may also help give rise to children's empathy and to their theory of mind (their inferring another's mental state). As adults we often feel what others feel.

• Modeling - The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior.

• Bandura (Bobo doll) - Albert Bandura did an experiment where a child was in one room playing or drawing and in the next room he saw an adult kicking and throwing a large Bobo doll while yelling. Then the experimenter frustrated the child by interrupting his play and takes him into a room with few toys and a Bobo doll. So what determines whether we will imitate a model?

  • Bandura believes part of the answer is reinforcements and punishments-those received by the model as well as the imitator.

    • We look and we learn.

—  Cognitive Processes in Learning — 

• Cognitive factors in Classical Conditioning - concepts such as consciousness have given way to a growing realization that they underestimated the importance of cognitive processes (thoughts, perceptions, and expectations) on an organism's learning capacity.

  • Blocking - failure of redundant stimulus to become a CS. (conditioned stimulus)

  • Predictive value of CS-Rescorla.

Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner argued that when two significant events occur close together in time, an animal learns the predictability of the second event. The more predictable the association, the stronger the conditioned response.

•  It's as if the animal learns expectancy, or an awareness of how likely it is that the UCS will occur.

• Conditioning occurs best when the CS and the UCS have just the sort of relationship that would lead a scientist to conclude that the CS caused the UCS.

• Cognitive factors in Operant Conditioning - subjects develop expectation that a response will be reinforced or punished; they also exhibit latent learning, without reinforcement.

  • Evidence of cognitive processes has come from studying rats, who when exploring a maze, with no obvious reward, are like people driving around a new town. They seem to develop a cognitive map: mental representation of the layout of one's environment.

  • Latent Learning - learning that occurs, but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.

  • Learned Helplessness - the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

• Insight Learning - Kohler showed that there is more to learning than conditioning. Problem solving by reinforcement has helped organisms learn. For example; with Kohler's experiment, he observed apparent insight with a chimpanzee placed in a cage with a little stick, and a long stick just outside of the cage, and some fruit farther away. After repeatedly trying to reach the fruit with the little stick he has in the cage, he suddenly realized to use the little stick to reach the bigger stick that could reach the fruit.