● How Do We Learn?

Learning Objectives

● Define learning
● Identify three types of learning processes
● Describe the nonassociative learning processes: habituation and sensitization. Explain the significance of
each.
● 6.7 Watson Introduced Behaviorism
● John B. Watson developed the school of thought known as _____behaviorism_____, which emphasized
environmental effects on observable behaviors.
● Behaviorism was a reaction against psychology’s earlier focus on conscious and unconscious
mental processes.
● Watson believed that for psychology to be a science, it had to stop focusing on mental events that
could not be observed directly.
● 6.1 Learning Results from Experience
● ____learning____: a relatively enduring change in behavior, resulting from experience
● Learning is distinguished from memory:
● Learning: how we adjust our behavior based on associations between stimuli, actions, or
consequences, or based on repeated exposure to stimuli
● Memory: how we acquire, store, and retrieve knowledge about facts, events, places, and
skills
● Associations develop through conditioning, a process in which environmental stimuli and behavioral
responses become connected.
● 6.2 Nonassociative Learning Involves Habituation and Sensitization
● ______habituation______: a decrease in behavioral response after repeated exposure to a stimulus
● This is especially true if the stimulus is neither harmful nor rewarding.
● _____dishabituation_____: an increase in a response because of a change in something familiar
● 6.2 Nonassociative Learning Involves Habituation and Sensitization
● ______sensitization______: an increase in behavioral response after exposure to a stimulus
● Stimuli that most often lead to sensitization are those that are threatening or painful.
● Aplysia: a type of marine invertebrate studied by Kandel and colleagues
● Sensitization and habituation in Aplysia alters neurotransmitter release in the presynaptic
membrane
● How Do We Learn Predictive
Associations?

Learning Objectives

● Define classical conditioning

● Differentiate between the UR, US, CS, and CR
● Describe acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination, and second order
conditioning
● Describe the Rescorla-Wagner model of classical conditioning, including the role of prediction errors
● 6.3 Classical Conditioning Is Learning What Goes Together
● We learn predictive associations through conditioning, the process that connects environmental stimuli to
behavior.
● Psychologists study two types of associative learning:
● Classical conditioning
● Operant conditioning
● 6.3 Classical Conditioning Is Learning What Goes Together
● Ivan Pavlov conducted basic research on the salivary reflex, an automatic response when a food stimulus is
presented to a hungry animal.
 ● Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for his research on the digestive system.
● Pavlov noticed the dogs salivated as soon as they saw the bowls that usually contained food, suggesting a
learned response.
● 6.3 Classical Conditioning Is Learning What Goes Together
● CC
● ____classical____ (_____Pavlovian_____) conditioning: a neutral object comes to elicit a response when
it is associated with a stimulus that already produces that response
● 6.3 Classical Conditioning Is Learning What Goes Together
● Elements of a typical Pavlovian experiment
● Conditioning trials: a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus are paired to produce a
reflex (e.g., salivation)
● ____neutral____ stimulus: anything the animal can see or hear as long as it is not
associated with the reflex being tested (e.g., a ringing bell)
● Unconditioned stimulus (US): a stimulus that elicits a response, such as a reflex,
without any prior learning (e.g., food)
● Test trials: the neutral stimulus alone is tested, and the effect on the reflex is measured
● Pavlov used the metronome sound to measure the salivary reflex.
● 6.3 Classical Conditioning Is Learning What Goes Together
● _____unconditioned_____ ____response____ (UR): a response that does not have to be learned, such
as a reflex
● _____unconditioned_____ _____stimulus_____ (US): a stimulus that elicits a response, such as a reflex,
without any prior learning
● ____conditioned____ ____stimulus____ (CS): a stimulus that elicits a response only after learning has
taken place
● ______conditioned______ ____response____ (CR): a response to a conditioned stimulus; a response
that has been learned
● 6.4 Learning Is Acquired and Persists
Until Extinction
● ______acquisition______: the gradual formation of an association between the conditioned and
unconditioned stimuli
● The critical element in the acquisition of a learned association is time, or contiguity.
● The CR is stronger when there is a very brief delay between the CS and the US.
● Scary music begins to play right before a frightening scene in a movie—not during or after.
● 6.4 Extinction
● Extinction inhibits the associative bond but does not eliminate it.
● Animals must learn when associations are no longer adaptive.
● ______extinction______: a process in which the conditioned response is weakened when the
conditioned stimulus is repeated without the unconditioned stimulus
● ______spontaneous______ recovery: a process in which a previously extinguished conditioned response
reemerges after the presentation of the conditioned stimulus
● The recovery will fade unless the CS is again paired with the US.
● 6.4 Spontaneous Recovery
● Spontaneous recovery: a process in which a previously extinguished conditioned response reemerges
after the presentation of the conditioned stimulus
● The recovery will fade unless the CS is again paired with the US.
● 6.5 Learning Involves Expectancies
and Prediction
● Classical conditioning is a way that animals come to predict the occurrence of events that prompted
psychologists to try to understand the mental processes that underlie conditioning.
● Robert Rescorla argued that for learning to take place, the conditioned stimulus must accurately
predict the unconditioned stimulus.
● Rescorla-Wagner model: a cognitive model of classical conditioning; it holds that the strength of
the CS-US association is determined by the extent to which the unconditioned stimulus is
unexpected
 ● 6.5 Prediction Errors
● Prediction error: the difference between the expected and actual outcomes
● A positive prediction error strengthens the association between the CS and the US.
● A negative prediction error weakens the association between the CS and the US.
● 6.6 Learning Shapes Both Conditioned and Unconditioned Stimuli
● Stimulus ______generalization______: learning that occurs when stimuli that are similar, but not identical,
to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response
● Stimulus ______discrimination______: a differentiation between two similar stimuli when only one of them
is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus
● Concept Learning
● 6.6 Second-Order Conditioning
● ____second____-order conditioning: a CS becomes associated with other stimuli associated with the US;
this phenomenon helps account for the complexity of learned associations
● Second-order conditioning helps account for the complexity of learned associations, especially in
people.
● How Do the Consequences of an
Action Shape Behavior?

Learning Objectives

● Define operant conditioning

● Distinguish between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative
punishment
● Identify factors that influence the acquisition of operant behaviors
● Distinguish between schedules of reinforcement
● 6.7 Operant Conditioning Is Learning Actions from Consequences
● _____operant_____ _____conditioning_____ (instrumental conditioning): a learning process in which
the consequences of an action determine the likelihood that it will be performed in the future
● B. F. Skinner chose the term operant to express the idea that animals operate on their
environments to produce effects.
● 6.7 Law of Effect
● Edward Thorndike performed the first reported carefully controlled experiments in comparative animal
psychology using a puzzle box.
● ______law_of_effect______: any behavior that leads to a “satisfying state of affairs” is likely to
occur again, and any behavior that leads to an “annoying state of affairs” is less likely to occur
again
● 6.8 Reinforcement Increases Behavior, Punishment Decreases Behavior
● Thirty years after Thorndike, Skinner developed a more formal learning theory based on the law of effect.
● Like Watson, Skinner objected to the subjective aspects of Thorndike’s law of effect: States of
“satisfaction” are not observable empirically.
● 6.8 Reinforcement Increases Behavior, Punishment Decreases Behavior
● An operant chamber that allowed repeated conditioning trials without requiring interaction from the
experimenter
● Contained one lever connected to a food supply and another connected to a water supply
● 6.8 Reinforcement Increases Behavior, Punishment Decreases Behavior
● Skinner believed that behavior occurs because it has been reinforced.
● ____reinforcer____: a stimulus that follows a response and increases the likelihood that the
response will be repeated
● Reinforcement—positive or negative—increases the likelihood of a behavior.
● ____positive____ ______reinforcement______: the administration of a stimulus to increase the
probability of a behavior being repeated
● ____negative____ _____reinforcement_____: the removal of a stimulus to increase the
probability of a behavior being repeated
● 6.8 Reinforcement Increases Behavior, Punishment Decreases Behavior
● Punishment reduces the probability that a behavior will recur.
● _____positive_____ ______punishment______: the administration of a stimulus to decrease the
probability of a behavior recurring
● _____negative_____ _____punishment_____: the removal of a stimulus to decrease the
probability of a behavior recurring
● 6.9 When Is Parental Punishment Effective?
● Reinforcement and punishment have the opposite effects on behavior.
● Reinforcement increases a behavior’s probability, while punishment decreases its probability.
● For punishment to be effective, it must be reasonable, unpleasant, and applied immediately so the
relationship between the unwanted behavior and the punishment is clear.
● Punishment often fails to offset the reinforcing aspects of the undesired behavior.
● Research indicates that physical punishment is often ineffective, compared with grounding and time-outs.
● Many psychologists believe that positive reinforcement is the most effective way of increasing
desired behaviors while encouraging positive parent-child bonding.
● 6.10 Learning Shapes Actions and Reinforcers
● Sometimes animals take a long time to perform the precise desired action. What can be done to make them
act more quickly?
● _____Shaping_____: an operant-conditioning technique that consists of reinforcing behaviors that
are increasingly similar to the desired behavior
● Successive approximations: start with any behavior that even slightly resembles the
desired behavior
● 6.10 Learning Shapes Actions and Reinforcers
● _____primary_____ Reinforcers: satisfy biological needs
● Inherently reinforces stimuli
● _____Secondary_____ Reinforcers: do not satisfy biological needs
● Must be established through classical conditioning
● e.g., money (CS) is associated with rewards such as food, security, and power (US)
● 6.11 Can You Challenge Superstitious Behaviors?
● The scientific study of superstition
● B. F. Skinner started the scientific study of superstitious behavior.
● The pigeons developed a number of superstitious behaviors that they normally would not perform.
● Because these pigeons were performing particular actions when the reinforcers were given, their
actions were accidentally reinforced.
● Associating events that occur together in time
● Animals and humans tend to associate events that occur together because the brain is compelled
to understand things.
● Pigeons develop behaviors that look like superstitions, and people look for reasons to explain
outcomes; the observed association serves that purpose.
● Critical thinking helps us to distinguish legitimate/illegitimate associations.
● 6.12 Operant Conditioning Is Influenced by Value and Timing
● David Premack theorized about how a reinforcer’s value could be determined.
● The key is the amount of time an organism, when free to do anything, engages in a specific
behavior associated with the reinforcer.
● _____Premack_____ principle: using a more valued activity can reinforce the performance of a less valued
activity
● 6.12 Operant Conditioning Is Influenced by Value and Timing
● Effect of delay between action and consequence:
● Longer delays result in unlearning
● e.g., delaying food after pressing a lever
● _____Temporal_____ Discounting: when the value of a reward diminishes over time
● e.g., preferring to have $10 now than $20 a year from now
● 6.13 Operant Conditioning Is Influenced by Schedules of Reinforcement
● How often should reinforcers be given?
 ● _____continuous_____ reinforcement: a type of learning in which behavior is reinforced each
time it occurs
● ____partial____ reinforcement: a type of learning in which behavior is reinforced intermittently
● ______fixed_ratio______ Schedule (FR): occurs when reinforcement is provided after a
certain number of responses have been made
● ______variabel_ratio______ Schedule (VR): occurs when reinforcement is provided
after an unpredictable number of responses
● ______fixed_interval______ Schedule (FI): occurs when reinforcement is provided after
a certain amount of time has passed
● ______variable_interval______ Schedule (VI): occurs when reinforcement is provided
after the passage of time, but the time is not regular
● 6.13 Operant Conditioning Is Influenced by Schedules of Reinforcement
● Continuous reinforcement is highly effective for teaching a behavior. If the reinforcement is stopped,
however, the behavior will extinguish quickly.
● _____________partial-reinforcement_extinction_effect_____________: the greater persistence
of behavior under partial reinforcement than under continuous reinforcement
● Explains why gambling is so addictive
● 6.13 What Associative Learning Has in Common
● Classical conditioning: noticing patterns between stimuli
● Learned association: association between CS and US
● Operant conditioning: requires an action that has a consequence
● Learned association: association between action and consequence
● Similarities across associative learning:
● Both involve forming associations
● Both depend on function of neurotransmitter dopamine
● Classical and operant conditioning interact in guiding behaviors
● Stimuli acquire value through classical conditioning and can then act as reinforcers/punishers in
operant conditioning
● 6.14 Learning Is Influenced by Biology and Evolution
● Pavlov’s original explanation for classical conditioning was that any two events paired together would
produce a learned association.
● Pavlov and his followers believed that the association’s strength was determined by factors such as
the intensity of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.
● However, in the mid-1960s, a number of challenges to Pavlov’s theory suggested that some conditioned
stimuli were more likely than others to produce learning.
● In other words, contiguity was not sufficient to create CS-US associations.
● 6.14 Conditioned Taste Aversions
● Psychology shows that certain pairings of stimuli are more likely to become associated than others.
● ________conditioned_taste_aversion________: the association between eating a food and getting sick
● A response occurs even if the illness was caused by a virus or some other condition.
● This is especially likely to occur if the food was not part of the person’s usual diet. A food aversion
can be formed in one trial.
● Animals that associate a certain flavor with illness, and therefore avoid that flavor, are more likely to
survive and pass along their genes.
● Learned adaptive responses may reflect the survival value that different auditory and visual stimuli
have based on potential dangers associated with the stimuli.
● 6.14 Biological Constraints
● Animals have a hard time learning behaviors that run counter to their evolutionary adaptation.
● Marian Breland and Keller Breland (1961) used operant-conditioning techniques to train animals,
but ran into difficulty when they chose tasks that were incompatible with innate adaptive behaviors.
● Conditioning is most effective when the association between the response and the reinforcement is similar
to the animal’s built-in predispositions.
● Psychologist Robert Bolles (1970) argued that animals have built-in defense reactions to
threatening stimuli.
● _______biological_preparedness_______: Psychologist Martin Seligman argued that animals are
genetically programmed to fear specific objects.
● For example, people are predisposed to feel wary of outgroup members.
● 6.15 Dopamine Activity
Underlies Learning from Rewards
● People often use the term reward as a synonym for positive reinforcement.
● Dopamine is an important component of the neural basis of reward.
● Dopamine release sets the reward value of:
● the unconditioned stimulus (classical conditioning)
● the reinforcer (operant conditioning)
● When hungry rats are given food, they experience an increased dopamine release in the nucleus
accumbens, a structure in the basal ganglia of the limbic system.
● The greater the hunger, the greater the dopamine release.
● More dopamine is released under conditions of deprivation than under conditions of no deprivation.
● 6.15 Dopamine Activity
Underlies Learning from Rewards
● Drugs that enhance dopamine activation increase the reward value of stimuli.
● Activities like watching funny cartoons and listening to music can increase dopamine activity in the nucleus
accumbens.
● Is dopamine responsible for the subjective feeling of pleasure (liking) we get from rewarding activities?
● Psychologists Terry Robinson and Kent Berridge introduced an important distinction between the wanting
and liking aspects of reward.
● For example, a smoker may want a cigarette yet may not especially like it.
● Dopamine appears to be especially important in wanting a reward.
● 6.15 Dopamine and Prediction Error
● Wolfram Schultz et al. examined how dopamine responds during classical conditioning.
● When monkeys unexpectedly received juice after a light or tone, they experienced a positive
prediction error and showed high dopamine activity in reward regions of the brain.
● After learning the association, the absence of juice produced a negative prediction error along with
high dopamine activity.
● Dopamine signals prediction errors, which reflect important changes in the environment.
● 6.16 Phobias and Addictions Have
Learned Components
● Classical conditioning helps explain many behavioral phenomena.
● Among the examples are phobias and addictions
● 6.16 Phobias
● ________: an acquired fear out of proportion to the real threat of an object or of a situation
● _____________: the process of classically conditioning animals to fear neutral objects; the
responses include specific physiological and behavioral reactions
● ________: may be a hardwired response to fear that helps animals deal with predators
● 6.16 Phobias: Case Study of “Little Albert”
● “Little Albert” was presented with neutral objects (a white rat, rabbit, dog, and costume masks) that
provoked a neutral response.
● During conditioning trials, when Albert reached for the white rat (CS), a loud clanging sound (US)
scared him (UR).
● Results: Eventually, the pairing of the rat (CS) and the clanging sound (US) led to the rat’s
producing fear (CR) on its own. The fear response generalized to other stimuli presented with the
rat initially.
● Conclusion: Classical conditioning can cause phobias
● Watson planned to conduct extinction trials to remove the learned phobias, but Albert’s mother
removed the child from the study.
● 6.16 Drug Addiction
● Classical conditioning also plays an important role in drug addiction.
● Environmental cues associated with drug use can induce conditioned cravings.
 ● Unsatisfied cravings may result in withdrawal, an unpleasant state of tension and anxiety, coupled
with changes in heart rate and blood pressure.
● The sight of drug cues leads to activation of the prefrontal cortex and various regions of the limbic
system, and produces an expectation that the drug high will follow.
● 6.16 Drug Addiction
● Psychologist Shepard Siegel (2006) believed that exposing addicts to drug cues was an important part of
treating addiction.
● He believed exposure helps extinguish responses to the cues and prevents them from triggering
cravings.
● Tolerance: The body has learned to expect the drug in that location and compensates by altering
neurochemistry or physiology to metabolize it.
● Conversely, if addicts take their usual large doses in novel settings, they are more likely to
overdose because their bodies will not respond sufficiently to compensate.
● How Do We Learn from
Others?

Learning Objectives

● Define social learning

● Define the observational learning processes of modeling and vicarious learning
● Define instructed learning
● 6.17 Social Learning Occurs Through Observation and Instruction
● _____________: the acquisition or modification of a behavior after exposure to another individual performing
that behavior
● Social learning is a powerful adaptive tool for humans and animals.
● 6.17 Bandura’s Observational Studies
● Psychologist Albert Bandura’s studies in the 1960s suggest that exposing children to violence may
encourage them to act aggressively.
● 6.17 Research Since Bandura’s Studies
● A meta-analysis by Gentile et al. in 2007 concluded that across many studies exposure to violent media
increases the likelihood of aggression.
● However, longitudinal studies suggest that additional variables, such as personality, poverty, or parental
neglect may affect both TV viewing habits and violent tendencies.
● ________: the imitation of observed behavior
● Modeling is effective only if the observer is physically capable of imitating the behavior.
● Good and bad role models
● _____________: learning the consequences of an action by watching others being rewarded or punished for
performing the same action
● 6.17 Vicarious Learning
(Reinforcement and Conditioning)
● Bandura demonstrated vicarious learning in his Bobo-doll studies.
● When children observed adults that were punished for playing aggressively with the bobo-doll, they were,
themselves, less likely be aggressive with the doll later on.
● When adults were rewarded for their aggressive behavior, observing children were more likely to be
aggressive with the doll.