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CHAPTER 6: LEARNING
1. More than just school
2. Learning relates to personalities
3. Superstitions
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How Psychologists Learn
• Animal learning > human learning
• The basics of conditioning > environment leads to
learning associations
• Animals – babies – children – college students
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Classical Conditioning
• Began w dogs > explains much @ people
• A new stimulus gets the same response as an original
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stimulus
1903: Ivan Pavlov – Russian physiologist
Expert on digestion – Nobel laureate
Called salivating response in dogs a “psychic reflex”
Drooled @ meat powder – drooled @ anything associated
w meat powder
Paired light or bell w meat powder > drooled at light or
sound
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Classical Conditioning
• What happened ?
• Food is desired > salivating at it is normal > unconditioned
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stimulus (US)
Bell, click, lights are initially neutral – dog can’t eat them
> become a conditioned stimulus (CS)
Conditioning = training
Pavlov’s theory = behavior, emotions, thinking, problems
all guided by conditioning
1. what gets a reward ?
2. what goes with what ?
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Classical Conditioning
• Environment plays major role
• Still a valuable concept for psy, ed, other areas
• Basics
• Unconditioned/al – untrained, natural
• Unconditional stimulus (US) – gets reaction naturally
• Unconditional response (UR) – untrained beh caused by
US
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Classical Conditioning
• Basics
• Conditioned/al – needs training
• Conditioned stimulus (CS) – was neutral, now associated
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w another stimulus, event
Conditioned response (CR) – trained reaction to the CS
With Pavlov, UR & CR – drooling
UR & CR may/may not be the same
Often CR is weaker than an UR
UR > pain
CR > fear of pain
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Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov called responses, “reflexes”
• Not always so > some actions voluntary, others not
• Trial – when US paired w CS
• May only need one time
• Other examples of conditioning may take longer
• How are people affected ?
• Phobias – not natural > genetic, environment, multiple
causes
• Memories – strong positive/negative feelings
• Bodily sensations – antibody release, hunger, sex
responses
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OK
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???
• Why be afraid ?
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Classical Conditioning
• Processes of classical conditioning
• Acquisition – development of new CR
• Stimulus Contiguity – one event happens with/after
another > pairing
• Watch for what is intense or new > more likely to become
a CS
• Extinction
• Degrading/disappearance of a CR
• Most organisms flexible > conditioning not permanent
• In lab, this done by giving CS w/o US
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Classical Conditioning
• Extinction
• In life, we get used to something
• How quickly can something extinguish > depends on
strength
• Spontaneous Recovery
• An extinct CR returns for no apparent reason
• Usually weaker
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Classical Conditioning
• Renewal Effect
• Extinguished response can be renewed in same setting
• Extinction may suppress, not stop learning
• No “unlearning”
• Old phobias can return
• Stimulus Generalization
• Example > Little Albert
• Subject responded to new stimuli as CS, when new
stimuli resembled the CS
• Children usually like white fuzzy things
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Classical Conditioning
• Stimulus Generalization & Little Albert
• Rat paired w/ noise
• Albert feared rat, Santa’s face, rabbits, slippers
• Anything like the CS gets the CR
• More similar, more likely
• Can be adaptive > people/animals group events/objects
so no need to experience each one
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Classical Conditioning
• Stimulus Discrimination
• Organism can distinguish between the specific CS &
similar ones
• Only shows the CR to the CS
• Less similar, the easier to discriminate
• Adaptive > poisonous food, dangerous animals
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Can you tell which one is safe ?
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Classical Conditioning
• Higher-Order Conditioning
• A CS now acts like the US > can create new CS
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Operant Conditioning
• Skinner’s term – c. 1930s
• R-O = Response-Outcome
• Not classical conditioning
• Stimulated by the consequence – not happened yet
• Skinner’s belief: humans/animals operate on their
environments > manipulation
• Operant conditioning – not reacting – making choices –
voluntary action may get reward
• Dog just sits – hopes for treat
• More like learning – (Pavlov’s dogs had a reflex) – some
question this – operant conditioning may affect organs
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Operant Conditioning
• Skinner built on Pavlov
• Animal/person repeats what might get reward
• Reinforcement – consequence that makes beh likely
• > suggests that reinforcement influences much @ us
• > Skinner realized this through animal research
• Concepts of OC
• Skinner box/operant chamber – box w levers – controlled
rewards, monitoring system ~ Habitrail – subjects “emit”
behavior – supposed to sound more voluntary
• In box, rewards are controlled by scientist/mechanism
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Operant Conditioning
• Concepts
• Skinner Box – gradually, the subject begins to control the
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rewards via beh > reinforcement contingencies (rules)
What response gets reward
Box had meter
Graph the response
A. steep slope – rapid response
B. shallow slope – slow response
What is happening ? Acquisitioning & shaping
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Operant Conditioning
• Acquisition – dev new response
• Shaping – the typical means of acquisition – gradual > get
reinforcement as you do a better job
• Organisms will not behave this way naturally – animal
tricks
• Extinction – beh not rewarded/reinforced – slowly fades –
animal/person tries harder > then stops
• - resistance to extinction – how long living things continue
to maintain beh
• - practical aspect – which beh maintained
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Operant Conditioning
• Stimulus Control
• Sometimes a stimulus comes before the beh, still part of
operant conditioning
• Stimulus is a signal > R – O (reward or no reward)
• Discriminative Stimulus
• Cue tells animal/person that this is distinct – if it acts,
certain outcome
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Operant Conditioning
• Discrimination v. Generalization
• Discriminative stimulus – very specific
• Stimulus generalization – many stimuli work, and
person/animal learns this
• Reinforcement
• Strengthens response tendency
• Primary reinforcer – basic, obvious, biological – eg food,
sex
• Secondary/Conditioned reinforcer – we learn that they are
valuable - $, ed, power
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Operant Conditioning
• Secondary/Conditioned reinforcer
• Important only in that they influence beh
• Reinforcers Δ – over time, culture, w/in individuals – rich
may not care @ $
• Schedules of Reinforcement
• How often reinforcers given/presented
• Measurable – does sched increase response tendencies
• I. Continuous reinforcement – 100% of the time
• II. Intermittent reinforcement – sometimes – this is more
powerful – “hooks” – children’s habits
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Operant Conditioning
• Schedules of Reinforcement
• Types of Intermittent Schedules
• 1. Ratio sched – every x number of responses gets reinf
• a. fixed-ratio (FR) – set number of non-reinforced
responses
• b. variable-ratio (VR) – varying number
• 2. Interval sched – after x amount of time
• a. fixed-interval (FI) – amount of time established
• b. variable-interval (VI) – amount of time not est, times
vary, but researcher uses an average amount of time
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Operant Conditioning
• Schedules of Reinforcement
• Ratio sched – get fast, intense responses – subjects keep
emitting beh to get reward
• Variable sched – slower, consistent, not likely to become
extinct
• Positive & Negative Reinforcement
• Positive reinf
• – reward
• – something that increases likelihood that creature will act
that way again
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Operant Conditioning
• Positive reinf
• - strengthens response
• Negative reinf
• NOT PUNISHMENT
• Makes a response more likely because a stimulus is
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removed
Stimulus is aversive, unpleasant
Still based on R-O
Sometimes hard to distinguish from punishment
Tied to “escape learning” ~ avoidance
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Operant Conditioning
• Negative Reinforcement
• Escape learning – makes the bad stimulus either
diminish/stop
• Tied to avoidance learning – prevents the aversive
stimulus from happening
• In Skinner box, some parts OK
• Punishment
• Outcome that makes a response less likely
• Not negative reinf (removing a stimulus)
• Adding a stimulus
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Operant Conditioning
• Punishment
• Not just discipline > beyond that
• Issues over physical punishment
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Observational Learning
• Creatures learn by watching others (models)
• Studied by Albert Bandura
• Bandura thought it was part of conditioning
• Makes conditioning even more powerful – because even
seeing/hearing about it works
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Observational Learning
• Concepts
• Attention – must pay attention to the situation
• Retention – remember it
• Reproduction – how it is performed
• Motivation – does individual think it will work
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Observational Learning
• …and Violence
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Observational Learning
• …and Violence
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Observational Learning
• And Violence
• 1960s – Bandura’s bobo doll experiments
• Children acted on what they saw
• How much violence
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Behavior Modification
• Behavior Modification
• Teach via conditioning
• Reconditioning – fix problems, bad habits
• Schools, prisons
• 1. choose a target beh
• - specific, clear
• - not fixing character, personality
• 2. get baseline data
• - determine how much beh, when, etc.
• - systematic
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Behavior Modification
• 2. get baseline data
• - what are antecedents > what happened before
• - what are consequences
• 3. should this beh be incr/decr
• Increase
• A. what might reinforce it
• B. contingencies – what subject must do
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Behavior Modification
• Decrease beh
• - reduce response strength
• A. determine reinforcement
• B. control antecedents
• C. punishment – be reasonable
• Some use contracts