Learning

What is Learning?  a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience

Behaviorism  The psychological domain that argues that psychology should be an objective science

Pavlov  Russian scientist that studied the affect of salivation on digestion  Problem: Dogs would start salivating before they got food.  Solution: Forget the digestion, let’s study learning!

Learning  Pavlov noticed the dogs salivated naturally when they ate.  He paired bringing food with ringing a tone.  After a while he rang the tone, but didn’t bring food.  What did the dogs do?

Classical Conditioning  A form of learning where an organism learns to associate stimuli

4 Parts of Classical Conditioning  Unconditioned Stimuli (UCS)- something that causes a natural response  Unconditioned Response (UCR)- what happens naturally as a result of the UCS  Conditioned Stimuli (CS)- a previously neutral stimuli that, after learning, produces the natural response  Conditioned Response (CR)- same as UCR, but in response to the CS

4 Parts of Pavlov  UCS-  UCR-  CS-  CR-

4 Parts of Pavlov  UCS- Food  UCR- Salivation  CS- Tone  CR- Salivation

Other examples?  Flinching when seeing lightning  Shocking animals after a tone  Fear of drawing/tests

Parts of Learning

 Acquisition- gaining learning  Extinction- when the CS is no longer paired with the UCS, learning is lost  Spontaneous recovery- after extinction, if one waits awhile, learning can come back

Generalization  Conditioned responses occurring for similar stimuli (even ones that aren’t conditioned)  Example: Children fearing cars and learn to avoid motorcycles and trucks as well

Discrimination  The ability to tell the difference between stimuli  Example: Being afraid of pit bulls but not beagles

Examples of Classical Conditioning  OI (John Watson, Little Albert) OI  he_Office_Conditioning&video_id= (The Office) he_Office_Conditioning&video_id=247611

Aversive Conditioning  Using classical conditioning to keep animals (people) away from harmful substances  Developed by Garcia after studying taste aversions in rats  What things won’t you eat any more?

Applications of Classical Conditioning  Teaching people new things  Psych Therapy  Aversive Conditioning

Operant Conditioning  A type of learning that teaches using reinforcement and punishment

B.F. Skinner  English major who decided to study psychology as a graduate student  Focused on Thorndike’s law of effect: rewarded behaviors will likely be continued  Taught animals tricks

Principles of Operant Conditioning  Reinforcement- Something that causes a behavior to increase  Positive- good behavior results in a reward  Negative- good behavior results in taking away something bad  Punishment- Something that causes a behavior to decrease

Shaping  When behavior is trained through closer and closer approximations

Types of Reinforcement  Primary- innately satisfying (meets a need)  Food  Secondary- paired with primary to become satisfying  Money  Immediate- happens right now  Get a treat for answering a question  Delayed- reward comes in the future  Graduating high school

Reinforcement Schedules  Fixed-ratio- behavior is reinforced after a specific number of responses  You can take a break from homework after completing 2 assignments  Variable-ratio- behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable amount of responses  Traveling salesperson  Fixed-interval- behavior is reinforced for the first desired response after a specific time  Baking time on a cake  Variable-interval- behavior is reinforced for the first desired response after a variable time length  Getting

Punishment  Reduces behavior  Why?  Applying something undesirable  Taking away something desirable

Motivation  Extrinsic-  Outside of you  Rewards and punishments  Intrinsic-  Inside of you  Event is valuable for its own sake

Legacies of BF Skinner  Computers at school  Rewards at school/work  Child-rearing

Cognition in learning  Sometimes we learn without being conditioned  Known as latent learning

Observational Learning  We learn things from watching others  Monkey see, monkey do

Albert Bandura  Bobo Doll experiment  Children watched a video of an adult beating up a Bobo doll  Children beat up the Bobo doll  com/watch?v=eqNaLe rMNOE com/watch?v=eqNaLe rMNOE

Biological Basis?  Mirror Neurons- fire when perform an action or see someone else doing it  Provides the foundation for observational learning