LEARNING

PSYC 01A-6051
LECTURE #5

8 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
▪ Define learning
▪ Describe Classical Conditioning
▪ Describe Operant Conditioning
▪ Describe Cognitive Learning Theory
▪ Discuss Observational Learning

8 WHAT IS LEARNING?
▪ Learning
▪ Any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by
experience or practice
▪ Once something is learned, it’s always somewhere in memory

8 CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
▪ Pavlovian Conditioning
▪ Learning to elicit an involuntary, reflex-like response to a stimulus
other than the original, natural stimulus that normally produces it
▪ Discovered by Ivan Pavlov
▪ Early 1900s
▪ Pavlov
▪ Studying digestive system in dogs
▪ Salivation is a normal reflex
▪ Reflex
8 An unlearned, involuntary response
▪ Stimulus
8 Any object, event, or experience that causes a
response
▪ Response
8 The reaction of an organism

▪ Pavlov’s dogs
▪ Food is the stimulus
▪ Salivation is the response

▪ Several Key Elements

▪ (1) Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

▪ An occurrence that leads to an involuntary response ex: food
▪ (2) Unconditioned Response (UCR)
▪ The natural reaction to the unconditioned stimulus ex:
salivate
 ▪ (3) Neutral Stimulus (NS)
▪ Something that has no relationship to the UCS or the UCR
ex: sound or assistant

▪ (4) Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

▪ After the unconditioned stimulus has been paired repeatedly with the
neutral stimulus, the neutral stimulus then becomes the conditioned
stimulus

▪ (5) Conditioned Response (CR)

▪ The response to the CS becomes the same as to the UCR
 ▪ Stimulus Generalization
▪ Tendency to respond to a stimulus that is only similar to original
conditioned stimulus

▪ Anxiety response to sound

8 Dentist drill
▪ May react with slight anxiety to similar sounding machine
8 Coffee grinder

▪ Applied to human behavior by John Watson in the 1920s

▪ Little Albert

▪ Demonstrating classical conditioning of a phobia

▪ Introduced to white, fuzzy animals
▪ Watson paired white rat with loud noise (UCS)
▪ Little Albert became startled and cried
▪ Fear is UCR
▪ After repeated pairings of the rat (CS) and the loud noise (UCS),
Little Albert would cry when exposed to any white, fuzzy animal
(NS)
▪ Fear of rat is now CR

▪ Conditioned Emotional Response

o Any classically conditioned emotional response to a previous neutral
stimulus
 ▪ Seen in advertising
▪ Vicarious Conditioning
o Becoming classically conditioned by simply watching someone else
respond to a stimulus
▪ Conditioned Taste Aversion
o Inability to eat a food that you’ve had a bad experience with
o Used in Aversion Therapy
▪ Aversion found with substances or foods eaten prior to nausea
being induced

8 OPERANT CONDITIONING
▪ Theoretical Perspective:
▪ The process of creating or reducing behavior based on
consequences or reinforcers
8 Thorndike’s Law of Effect
8 If an action is followed by a pleasurable
consequence, it will tend to be repeated
8 If an action is followed by an unpleasant
consequence, it will NOT tend to be repeated

▪ Behavior is determined by its consequences

8 Reinforcements or punishments

▪ B. F. Skinner
▪ Coined the term Operant Conditioning
8 Operant Behavior
8 Voluntary behavior to operate in the world
8 Learning of such behavior is Operant Conditioning

▪ The Concept of Reinforcement

▪ Reinforcement: To strengthen
8 Anything, that when following a response, causes that
response to be more likely to happen again
8 Reinforcement is the key to learning
▪ Skinner Box

➢ REINFORCEMENT
▪ Reinforcer
▪ Items or events that when following a response will strengthen it
▪ Types of Reinforcers
▪ Primary Reinforcer
▪ Secondary Reinforcer
8 Primary Reinforcer
8 Satisfies a basic need
 8 Secondary Reinforcer
8 Gets reinforcing properties from being associated
with primary reinforcers in the past

▪ Types of Reinforcements
▪ Positive Reinforcement will increase
▪ Negative Reinforcement will decrease

8 Positive Reinforcement
8 Reinforcement of a response by the ADDITION or
experience of a pleasurable consequence
8 Negative Reinforcement
8 Reinforcement of a response by the
REMOVAL of an unpleasant consequence

8 PUNISHMENT
▪ Punishment
▪ Any event or stimulus that, when following a response, causes that
response to be less likely to happen again
▪ Types of Punishments
▪ Punishment by Application
▪ Punishment by Removal
▪ Punishment by Application
▪ Positive Punishment
8 Adding UNDESIRABLE/UNPLEASANT stimuli
▪ Punishment by Removal
▪ Negative Punishment
▪ Removing/Avoiding DESIRABLE/PLEASANT stimuli

8 COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY

▪ Uses learning principles in combination with an emphasis on thought
processes
▪ Latent Learning
▪ Insight Learning
▪ Learned Helplessness
▪ Latent Learning
▪ Learning that remains hidden until its application becomes useful
▪ A cognitive map is developed but remains hidden (latent) until there
is a reason to demonstrate the knowledge
▪ Learning happens without reinforcement, and then later affects
behavior
▪ Tolman’s Maze-Running Rats
8 Teaching three groups of rats the same maze, one at a time
(Tolman & Honzik, 1930b)
8 Group 1
 8 Rewarded each time at end of maze
8 Learned maze quickly
8 Group 2
8 In maze every day; only rewarded on 10th
day
8 Demonstrated learning of maze almost
immediately after receiving reward
8 Group 3
8 Never rewarded
8 Did not learn maze well

▪ Insight Learning
▪ The sudden perception of relationships among various parts of a
problem, allowing the solution to the problem to come quickly
8 Cannot be gained through trial-and-error learning alone
8 “Aha” moment
▪ Köhler’s Smart Chimp
8 Faced with problem of how to retrieve banana placed just
outside of reach of extended arm with stick in hand
8 Two sticks in cage
8 Fitted one stick into the other and retrieved banana
 ▪ Learned Helplessness
▪ A tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a
history of repeated failures in the past
▪ Positive Psychology
8 Focuses on the adaptive, creative, and psychologically more
fulfilling aspects of human experience rather than on mental
disorders
▪ Seligman’s Depressed Dogs
8 Intention was to study escape and avoidance learning
8 Presented a tone followed by harmless, but painful electric
shock to one group of dogs
8 Dogs harnessed, so unable to escape shock
8 Assumed dogs would learn to fear sound of tone and later
try to escape from tone BEFORE being shocked
8 Second group of dogs not conditioned

8 Had apparently learned in original tone/shock situation that

there was nothing they could do to escape the shock
8 When placed in situation where escape was possible did
nothing
8 Learned to be “helpless”
8 Believed they could not escape, so did not try

8 OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
▪ Refers to the notion that humans can learn new behaviors through
observation of models
▪ Bandura and the Bobo Doll (Bandura et al., 1961)
 8 Experimenter and model interacted with toys in front of a
preschool child
8 Condition 1:
8 Model interacted with toys in nonaggressive
manner, ignoring presence of Bobo doll
8 Condition 2:
8 Model became very aggressive with Bobo
doll
8 When left alone, children modeled behavior and actions they
had been exposed to

▪ Four Elements
▪ Attention
8 Learner must first pay attention to the model
▪ Memory
8 Learner must be able to retain the memory of the action
▪ Imitation
8 Learner must be capable of imitating actions of the model
▪ Desire
8 Learner must have motivation or desire to perform the action