Psychology

Learning: Principles and Applications

What is learning?

• Permanent change in behavior that results from experience

Classical Conditioning

• Pavlov, 1927

• Classical conditioning-controlling an animal’s or a person’s responses in a way so that an old response becomes attached to a new stimulus

• Infamous dog experiment

Dog Experiment

• Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)-a stimulus that leads to a certain response without previous training. (saliva)

• Unconditioned response (UCR)-response that occurs naturally & automatically (smell of food causes saliva)

Dog Experiment

• Conditioned Stimulus (CS)-ordinarily neutral stimulus that after training leads to a response (sound with food)

• Conditioned Response (CR)-learned response

Counter conditioning

• Conditioned stimulus is paired up with some other stimulus that elicits a response incompatible with the unwanted response

• Pairing up something wanted with something that was learned to be unwanted

Operant Conditioning

• Learning from the consequence of behavior

• A response becomes more likely to occur or less so, depending on its consequences

• Falls under the behaviorist school

B. F. Skinner & Reinforcement

• B.F. Skinner- 1974

• Based on rewards and punishment

• Reinforcement-a stimulus or event that affects the likelihood that behavior will be repeated (positive & negative)

Positive v. Negative

• Positive reinforcement means pleasant consequence

• Negative reinforcement means the removal of something unpleasant

• If someone nags you all the time to study but stops nagging when you comply, your studying is likely to increase-b/c you will then avoid the nagging.

Kinds of reinforcers

• Primary reinforcers– Satisfy biological

needs

– Water, food, stroking of skin

• Primary punishers– Pain, extreme heat

• Secondary reinforcers– Money, praise, good

grades, awards, gold stars

• Secondary punishers– Scolding, demerits,

fines, bad grades

Consequences of Behavior

• Response to a behavior can lead to 1 of 3 possibilities:– A neutral consequence neither increases nor

decreases the probability that the response will recur

– Reinforcement strengthens the response of makes it more likely to recur.

– Punishment weakens the response or makes it less likely to recur.

Extinction & Generalization

• Extinction– Previous learned

response stops

• Generalization– Responses may

generalize to stimuli that were not present during the original learning situation but resemble the original stimuli

Timing is everything

• To teach a new response, continuous reinforcement is must. Subject will learn response quickly.

• But to make sure a response is resistant to extinction an intermittent schedule is better.– Praise but not all the time.

Shaping

• Reinforcement is used to sculpt new responses out of old responses.

• Teaching something/someone to do something that they never did and would never do on their own.

• Start off slow, gradually requiring responses that resemble what you want in the end.

• My dog and cleaning toys.

Operant conditioning in real life

• When punishment fails:– When administered

inappropriately or mindlessly

– When recipient of punishment responds with fear, anxiety, or rage

• Effectiveness of punishment is often temporary, depending heavily on the presence of the punishing person or circumstance

• Misbehavior is hard to punish immediately

• Punishment conveys little info

• An action intended to punish may instead be reinforcing because it brings attention.

But rewarding has its downfall too

• “Feel good about themselves” sickness• Extrinsic reinforcers

– Outside source – Money, praise, thumbs up

• Intrinsic reinforcers– Inside source– Being proud of what you do, a sense of

accomplishment

Observational Learning

• Learning by watching what others do and what happens to them for doing it

How do we learn?

• Feedback-result of an action

• Transfer-taking already known skills and using them to do something else

• Practice-repeating tasks helps in binding responses together

• Latent learning-occurs w/out reinforcement– Child setting table after

watching mom

Learning to Learn

• Harry Harlow, 1949.

• When learning you learn how to use strategies for solving similar problems and tasks.

• Example: reading directions

Helplessness, Laziness

• Caused by feeling that you have no effect on the world.

• Feeling is a cause of depression. (Seligman, 1978

• Senior year.

Modeling

• Most learning occurs through imitating others

• Little children and pretending to fix things around the house.