robert c. bolles and evolutionary psychology

An Introduction toAn Introduction toTHEORIES of LEARNINGTHEORIES of LEARNING

CHAPTER

An Introduction to Theories of Learning, Ninth EditionMatthew H. Olson | B. R. Hergenhahn

Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.All Rights Reserved

Robert C. Bolles and Evolutionary Psychology

15

Ninth Edition



Darwin's Theory and Darwin's Theory and Evolutionary PsychologyEvolutionary Psychology

• Natural Selection and Adaptations First, there is natural variability within a species.

Second, only some individual differences are heritable.

Third (Buss et al., 1988):”Organisms with particular heritable attributes produce more offspring, on average, than those lacking these attributes.”




• Adaptations Defined as a physiological or anatomical structure, a biological process, or a behavior pattern that, historically, contributed to the ability to survive and reproduce.




• Misconceptions about Adaptations Evolutionary fitness, defined in terms of reproductive success, often does not depend on an individual’s physical fitness as we commonly think of the term.

It is also important to dispel the common notion that evolution has some ultimate goal toward which it is headed.




• Misconceptions about Adaptations Natural selection means that organisms possessing adaptive traits in a given environment will tend to survive and reproduce, period.

The current use of a biological structure for a specific purpose does not necessarily mean that the structure evolved for that purpose.



Robert C. Bolles (1928—1994)Robert C. Bolles (1928—1994)



Major Theoretical ConceptsMajor Theoretical Concepts

• Bolles on Reinforcement Learning involves the development of expectancies.

Seeing lightning and expecting thunder exemplifies a S-S, expectancy.

Expecting to hear the sound of a bell when a doorbell is pressed exemplifies a R-S expectancy.




• Innate Predispositions Innate S-S relationship is when a young infant displays fear of a loud noise, suggesting that the infant expects a dangerous event to follow.

Innate R-S expectancies are exemplified by the stereotyped behavior many species of animals show in the presence of food, water, danger….




• Contrast Bolles with the empirical principle of equipotentiality Implies that laws of learning apply equally to any type of stimulus and any type of response.

Ignores the evolutionary history of a species.




• Motivation Restricts Response Flexibility Bolles placed great importance on the motivational state of the organism.

R-S expectancies are more limited because motivation produces response bias.




• The Niche Argument Bolles (1988): “animals have an obligation, an imperative, to learn this and to not learn that depending on their niche and how they fit into the overall scheme of things…. A learning task which capitalizes on an animal’s a priori predisposition to behave in certain ways is likely to be a glowing success. That is the niche argument.” (pp. 12–13)



The Biological Boundaries of The Biological Boundaries of LearningLearning

• Petrinovich and Bolles (1954): one group of rats turned left and a second group turned right in a T-maze. Half of the rats in each group were deprived of water and were reinforced with water; the remaining rats were deprived of food and earned food reinforcement.




• Petrinovich and Bolles (1954) Results: Thirsty rats earning water reinforcers learned the task faster.

Why would the kind of reinforcer (food versus water) influence learning efficiency?




• Petrinovich and Bolles (1954) Second Experiment• Rats were again deprived of either water or food. They were reinforced with water or food, respectively, for whatever choice they initially made.• On the second trial, they were reinforced only for making the opposite response.




• Petrinovich and Bolles (1954) Second Experiment• Third trial, they were reinforced only for making a response opposite to the choice on the second trial, and so on.




• Petrinovich and Bolles (1954) Second Experiment Results• Hungry rats reinforced with food performed better at the task.• Why was water the better reinforcer in Experiment 1 and food the better reinforcer in Experiment 2?




• Bolles explanation: The niche argument Rats are foragers. Their evolutionary history prepared them to look for water in the same place it was previously. Water is a stable resource.

Their evolutionary history prepared them to look for food in different locations. Food is a variable resource.



Petrinovich and Bolles (1954)




• Escape and Avoidance Species-specific defensive reactions (SSDRs) include freezing, fleeing, screaming, leaping up, and aggressing.

The closer the response required of an animal in an experiment is to what that animal would do naturally in that situation, the more readily the response will be learned.




• Escape and Avoidance Rats are not likely to learn lever press response to escape from shock.




• Operant Conditioning and the Misbehavior of Organisms Animal Behavior Enterprises. By using operant techniques, the Brelands were able to train a wide variety of animals to perform many different tricks



Misbehavior of OrganismsMisbehavior of Organisms

• Brelands (1961) concluded, “It seems obvious that these animals are trapped by strong instinctive behaviors, and clearly we have here a demonstration of the prepotency of such behavior patterns over those which have been conditioned” (p. 684).



Misbehavior of OrganismsMisbehavior of Organisms

• The Brelands called the tendency for innate behavior patterns gradually to displace learned behavior instinctual drift.




• Autoshaping Pigeon was reinforced at certain intervals, regardless of what it was doing, and if a disk was illuminated just prior to the presentation of the reinforcer, the pigeon learned to peck at the disk.

The question is, Why did the pigeon learn to peck at the disk when it had never been reinforced for doing so?




• Conditioned Taste Aversion: Garcia and Koelling (1966) Group 1: Bright, noisy water ->shock: Developed an aversion to the water

Group 2: Bright, noisy water -> nausea: No aversion to the water




• Conditioned Taste Aversion: Garcia and Koelling (1966) Group 3: Saccharin solution -> shock: No aversion to saccharin

Group 4: Saccharin solution ->nausea: Developed an aversion to saccharin



John Garcia—Discovered the John Garcia—Discovered the Garcia EffecGarcia Effectt



Biological Behaviorism Biological Behaviorism

• Timberlake asserts that laboratory research in learning already makes accommodations for the natural propensities of species

• Much lab behavior is over-determined.• Timberlake’s overdetermination principle is not a condemnation of instrumental and operant procedures. It is an important caution.



William Timberlake William Timberlake



Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology and Human BehaviorHuman Behavior

• We are still the product of thousands of years of evolution.

• We sometimes display innate predispositions to attend to some stimuli rather than to others and to learn some kinds of expectancies more readily than others.




• The Development of Phobias Öhman and Mineka (2001, 2003) argue that some phobias are acquired rapidly because they are mediated by nonconscious, automatic learning processes.

We may learn fears about spiders and snakes differently than we learn fears about guns or identity theft.




• Mate Selection Buss and colleagues surveyed more than ten thousand people from thirty-seven diverse cultures to determine if there are universal features that are valued in potential mates.



David M. BussDavid M. Buss




• Characteristics Valued in a Mate MALES AND FEMALES VALUE MOST HIGHLY • Kindness–Understanding Intelligence




• Characteristics Valued in a Mate MALES VALUE MORE THAN DO FEMALES • Good looks • Youth

FEMALES VALUE MORE THAN DO MALES • Good Earning Capacity • Industriousness




• Mate Selection Perhaps we find some people attractive just because they smell good to us.

(MHC) is a combination of genes that mediates many aspects of our immune responses–reflected in our body odor.

We prefer the scents of people with MHCs that are different from our own.




• Language Natural development of Creole languages from rudimentary Pidgin… without instruction.

Specific Language Impairment.

robert c. bolles and evolutionary psychology

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