20/Learning Concepts and Classical Conditioning

How We Learn

Humans adapt to their environments.
Learning includes:
- Classical conditioning: Expecting and preparing for significant events (e.g., food, pain).
- Operant conditioning: Repeating acts with rewards, avoiding acts with unwanted results.
- Cognitive learning: Observing events/people; learning through language.

Associative learning: Linking two events that occur close together.
- Example: Aquarium seal repeating behaviors (slapping, barking) to get herring.
- Example: Parrots swearing and getting laughter as a response.
Conditioning: The process of learning associations.

Associating a response (behavior) with its consequence.
Repeating acts followed by good results, avoiding acts followed by bad results.
Involves operant behaviors: Actions that operate on the environment to produce consequences.

Example: Japanese cattle ranch using electronic pagers.
- Classical conditioning: Animals associate pager beep with food arrival.
- Operant conditioning: Animals associate hustling to the trough with the pleasure of eating.

Acquiring mental information that guides behavior.
Observational learning: Learning from others' experiences.
- Example: Chimpanzees learning by watching others solve puzzles.

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936): Russian physiologist known for classical conditioning experiments.
John B. Watson: Urged discarding inner thoughts/feelings; focus on how organisms respond to stimuli.
Behaviorism: Objective science based on observable behavior.
Pavlov and Watson shared:
- Disdain for mentalistic concepts.
- Belief that basic learning laws are the same for all animals.
Classical conditioning: A basic form of learning for adapting to the environment.

Pavlov earned a medical degree at 33 and studied dog's digestive system.
Pavlov's experiments on learning earned him a place in history.
Incidental observation: Dogs salivating to the sight of food, dish, or person delivering food.
Objective exploration: Isolated dog in a room, measured saliva.
Paired neutral stimuli (NS) with food.

Unconditioned response (UR): Unlearned, automatic response (e.g., salivation to food).
Unconditioned stimulus (US): Stimulus that unconditionally triggers a response (e.g., food).
Conditioned response (CR): Learned response to a previously neutral stimulus (e.g., salivation to tone).
Conditioned stimulus (CS): Originally neutral stimulus that now triggers a conditioned response (e.g., tone).
Conditioned = learned, unconditioned = unlearned.

Initial learning of an association.
Optimal timing: NS presented half a second before US.
Conditioning won't occur when NS follows US.
Classical conditioning is biologically adaptive.
- Example: Male Japanese quail becoming excited by a red light signaling a female's arrival.

Classical conditioning is a basic form of learning.
Modern neuroscience supports Pavlov's ideas.
Pavlov showed how learning can be studied objectively.
Pavlov's success suggested the isolation of basic building blocks of complex behaviors.

Conditioning the body's immune system.
Taste paired with a drug influencing immune responses can produce an immune response.