Lecture 8

Learning
 What Is • Learning: the acquisition, from experience, of
new knowledge, skills, or responses that result
Learning? in a relatively permanent change in the state of
the learner
 • Habituation: a general process in which
repeated or prolonged exposure to a
stimulus results in a gradual reduction
Non-Associative in responding
• Sensitization: a simple form of learning
Learning that occurs when presentation of a
stimulus leads to an increased response
to a later stimulus
Associative • Classical Conditioning

Learning • Operant Conditioning

 • Rejected the mind as the cause of
behaviour
• demonstrated how the environment, or

Ivan Pavlov external stimuli, could come to control

behavior
• Conducted laboratory studies with dogs
• Contributed significantly to our
understanding of classical conditioning
 • Unconditioned stimulus (US)
• Something that reliably produces a naturally
occurring reaction in an organism

The Basic • Unconditioned response (UR)

• Reflexive reaction that is reliably produced by

Principles of an unconditioned stimulus

• Conditioned stimulus (Conditioned Stimulus)

Classical • Stimulus that is initially neutral and produces a

reliable response in an organism

Conditioning
• Conditioned response (CR)
• Reaction that resembles an unconditioned
response but is produced by a conditioned
stimulus
 • Acquisition: phase of classical conditioning
when the Conditioned Stimulus and the US are
presented together
Acquisition, • Extinction: gradual elimination of a learned
response that occurs when the US is no longer
Extinction, presented
• Second-order conditioning: conditioning where
Spontaneous the Conditioned Stimulus is paired with a
stimulus that became associated with the US in
Recovery an earlier procedure
• Spontaneous recovery: tendency of a learned
behaviour to recover from extinction after a
rest period
 • 1st order
• Pair NS and US to produce UR
• CS will produce CR
• EX: Pair bell and food to produce salivation; bell
Second order will produce salivation after conditioning
• 2nd order
Conditioning • Pair new NS and CS to produce CR
• Produces a new CS which elicits the CR
• EX: Pair light with bell to produce salivation;
light will produce salivation after conditioning
Generalization and Discrimination
• It wouldn’t be very adaptive for an organism if each little change in the Conditioned
Stimulus–Unconditioned Stimulus pairing required an extensive regimen of new learning
• Generalization: process by which the Conditioned Response is observed even though the
Conditioned Stimulus is slightly different from the original one used during acquisition
• Discrimination: capacity to distinguish between similar but distinct stimuli
Classical Conditioning and Fear
• Refers to a particular type of
learning where a certain
environmental stimulus becomes
connected with an aversive
stimulus.

• The amygdala plays an important

role in fear conditioning
John B. Watson
In 1919 Watson published “Psychology as the Behaviourist Views it” and made the following main points:
1. Human psychology has failed to live up to its natural science aspirations and has failed to address
problems that vitally concern human interest.
2. The failure to replicate findings using the introspective method is a serious and irresolvable flaw in
psychology’s claims to have scientific method.
3. Consequently, one must dispense with consciousness and the introspective method if psychology is
to achieve a scientific status and if it is to yield useful, practical findings.
4. The behavior of animals and man can be investigated without appeal to consciousness and must be
viewed as being equally essential to a general understanding of behavior
Conditioned Emotional
Responses: The Case
of Little Albert

• Watson and Rayner (1920)

conditioned a 9-month-old
baby (Albert) to fear a white
rat (by striking a steel bar
whenever he was presented
with the rat).
Operant Conditioning
Edward
Thorndike

• The shift from anecdotal to

comparative methods
• Studied cats, dogs and chicks in
order to understand learning
• Made use of enclosures called
puzzle boxes

Image: New York Public Library

Digital Collection
The Development of Operant
Conditioning: The Law of Effect
• Edward Thorndike (1874–1949) focused on instrumental behaviours; he created a puzzle
box to show the law of effect.
• Law of effect: principle that behaviours that are followed by a “satisfying state of
affairs” tend to be repeated and those that produce an “unpleasant state of affairs”
are less likely to be repeated
• Operant conditioning: type of learning in which the consequences of an organism’s
behaviour determine whether the behaviour will be repeated in the future
Puzzle Boxes

• Placed animals (cats, birds etc.)

inside boxes that needed to be
manipulated in order to escape
• Cats first placed in the box behaved
disorganized, chaotic and random
• But when you placed the same
cat in the same box multiple
times, they became more
orderly and efficient
• Eventually they knew how to
get out of the box
immediately.
• His work had important implications
for understanding learning
B. F. Skinner

• B.F. Skinner felt that there was something missing

from the work of Watson and Pavlov
• The environment needed to be explored.
• He developed the Skinner box and looked at the
concept of rewards
• The principle of reinforcement: A principle stating
that any behaviour that is rewarded will be
repeated and any behaviour that is not rewarded
won’t be repeated.
Reinforcement
• Operant behaviour: behaviour that an organism produces that has some impact on the
environment

• Reinforcer: any stimulus or event that functions to increase the likelihood of the
behaviour that led to it
Punishment
• Punisher: any stimulus or event that functions to decrease the likelihood of the
behaviour that led to it
• Positive punishment and negative punishment
Types of Reinforcers
• Primary reinforcers satisfy biological needs.
• Examples: food, comfort, shelter, warmth
• Secondary reinforcers are associated with primary reinforcers through classical
conditioning.
• Examples: verbal approval, trophies, money
The Basic Principles of Operant Conditioning
• Discrimination, generalization, and the importance of context
• Learning takes place in contexts, not in the free range of any plausible situation
• Discriminative stimulus: a stimulus that indicates that a response will be reinforced
• Same response in a different context likely produces a different outcome
• Extinction
• More complicated in operant conditioning than in classical conditioning
• Depends, in part, on how often reinforcement is received
• Schedules of reinforcement: organism responds in the pattern with which
reinforcement appeared
• Interval schedules are based on time intervals between reinforcements.
• Ratio schedules are based on the ratio of responses to reinforcements.
 Schedules of reinforcement
• Fixed-interval schedule (FI)
• Variable-interval schedule (VI)
• Fixed-ratio schedule (FR)
• Variable-ratio schedule (VR)
 Simple Interval Schedules
• Schedules based on time
• Fixed-Interval (FI) Schedule
• The first response after a fixed amount of time following the previous
reinforcement is reinforced and a new interval begins
 Simple Interval Schedules
• Variable-Interval (VI) Schedule
• The length of the interval changes unpredictably From one
reinforcement to the next
• Lengths of Variable Interval schedule vary around some mean value
 Ratio Schedules
• Based on number of responses emitted
• Fixed-ratio (FR) schedule
• Reinforcement occurs each time a set number of responses of a
particular type is emitted.
 Ratio Schedules
• Variable-ratio (VR) schedule
• The number of responses required to produce reinforcement changes
unpredictably from one reinforcement to the next.
Cognitive Elements of Operant
Conditioning
• Edward Tolman (1886–1959) saw operant conditioning as
means–ends relationship
• Latent learning: condition in which something is learned
but is not manifested as a behavioural change until
sometime in the future
• Cognitive map: mental representation of the physical
features of the environment
The Neural Elements
of Operant
Conditioning
• There are structures and
pathways in the brain that
deliver rewards through
stimulation.
Observational Learning
Observational
Learning
• Observational learning:
learning by watching the
behaviour of others
• Diffusion chain:
Bobo

• Albert Bandura
• Aggressive
Observational
Learning
• Found that
observational Learning
was responsible for
producing behaviours
Neural Elements
of Observational
Learning
• Mirror neurons fire to
produce observational
learning in humans as well as
other animal species.
• Represented in the
frontal and parietal lobes
 Modelling and Treatment
• Modelling healthy behaviour
can help people to overcome
problems, especially those
associated with fear and
Anxiety.
 Implicit Learning
• Implicit learning: learning that takes place largely without awareness of the process or
the products of information acquisition
 Factors that Facilitate Learning
• Timing
• Context
• Awareness and Attention
• Social networking and multi-tasking
• Sleep