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  Problem: Dogs would
studied the affect of
start salivating before
salivation on digestion they got food.
 Solution: Forget the
digestion, let’s study
learning!
Learning
 Pavlov noticed the dogs  What did the dogs do?
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.
Classical Conditioning
 A form of learning
where an organism
learns to associate
stimuli
4 Parts of Classical Conditioning
 Unconditioned Stimulus
(UCS)- something that
causes a natural
response
 Conditioned Stimulus
(CS)- a previously neutral
stimuli that, after
learning, produces the
natural response
 Unconditioned Response
(UCR)- what happens
 Conditioned Response
naturally as a result of
(CR)- same as UCR, but in
the UCS
response to the CS
4 Parts of Pavlov
 UCS-
 CS-
 UCR-
 CR-
4 Parts of Pavlov
 UCS- Food
 CS- Tone
 UCR- Salivation
 CR- Salivation
Other examples?
 Flinching when seeing lightning
 Shocking animals after a tone
 Fear of drawing/tests
Parts of Learning
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
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACs
OI (John Watson, Little Albert)
 http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?title=T
he_Office_Conditioning&video_id=247611
(The Office)
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
 Immediatehappens right now
 Get a treat for
answering a question
 Delayed- reward
comes in the future
 Graduating high
school
Reinforcement Schedules
 Fixed-interval- behavior
 Fixed-ratio- behavior is
is reinforced for the first
reinforced after a specific
desired response after a
number of responses
specific time
 You can take a break from
homework after completing 2
assignments
 Baking time on a cake
 Variable-interval Variable-ratiobehavior is reinforced for
behavior is reinforced
the first desired response
after an unpredictable
after a variable time
amount of responses
length
 Traveling salesperson
 Getting e-mail
Punishment
 Reduces behavior
 Applying something
undesirable
 Why?
 Taking away
something desirable
Motivation
 Extrinsic-
 Intrinsic-
 Outside of you
 Inside of you
 Rewards and
punishments
 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  http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=eqNaLe
 Children watched a
rMNOE
video of an adult
beating up a Bobo
doll
 Children beat up the
Bobo doll
Biological Basis?
 Mirror Neurons- fire
when perform an action
or see someone else
doing it
 Provides the foundation
for observational
learning