Chapter 6 - Learning PDF

Chapter 6 - Learning What Is and What Isn’t Learning? Reflexes – a motor or neural reaction to a specific stimulus in the environment Ex: moving your hand quickly if you touch something hot and it burns, or squinting your eyes after leaving a dark room and walking outside in the sun...

Chapter 6 - Learning What Is and What Isn’t Learning? Reflexes – a motor or neural reaction to a specific stimulus in the environment Ex: moving your hand quickly if you touch something hot and it burns, or squinting your eyes after leaving a dark room and walking outside in the sun Instincts – unlearned knowledge, involving complex patterns of behavior Ex: Birds migrating south for the winter, bears hibernating Learning – a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience Ex: Riding a bike, driving, calculus Associative Learning Associative learning occurs when an organism makes connections between stimuli or events that occur together in the environment In other words, establishing a relationship between things or events Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning are three types of associative learning Classical Conditioning The most famous example of classical conditioning is that of Ivan Pavlov and his experimentation with dogs Interestingly, pioneering the field of psychology’s research of classical conditioning wasn’t what he was trying to do He was actually a physiologist trying to learn about the body’s biological functions and was originally measuring the amount that a dog salivated in response to particular foods He measured their drool objectively by surgically implanting tubes to collect the saliva from the dogs to later be transferred to a measurement container Classical Conditioning But he noticed after a while that they’d start to salivate just by seeing the food Then over time, Pavlov noticed that the dogs would start to salivate when they saw a food bowl (even if it was empty) and then they would salivate when they heard the researchers’ foot steps Why? They were expecting to be fed He wanted to learn more about this, so he essentially trained dogs to associate things that are normally unrelated to food with food Ex: Pavlov trained the dogs to associate the sound of a bell with being fed to the point where the dog would hear the bell and start salivating expecting the food to follow (because it always did) Here’s What That Looks Like Classical Conditioning I bet you’ve been classically conditioned before – Sound familiar? Classical Conditioning As you now realize, humans can be conditioned as well You’ve probably seen this on TV shows before as well… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtTE70Psktw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4_l2oe22U Components to Classical Conditioning Unconditioned stimulus – stimulus that elicits a reflexive response Conditioned stimulus – stimulus that elicits a response due to its being paired with an unconditioned stimulus Unconditioned response – natural (unlearned) behavior to a given stimulus Conditioned response – response caused by the conditioned stimulus Another Example in Humans The situation: You’re in the car with a friend and they notice a police car behind them. They become unhappy when they notice the car. Turns out, they’ve been pulled over by the police and received speeding tickets in the past, so now the sight of a police car makes them uncomfortable. Identify the following: Unconditioned stimulus: Conditioned stimulus: Unconditioned response: Conditioned response: Another Example in Humans Unconditioned Stimulus: Getting a speeding ticket Conditioned Stimulus: Sight of a police car Unconditioned Response: Negative feelings Conditioned Response: Feeling nervous/frustrated/uncomfortable. Higher Order/ Second Order Conditioning Higher order conditioning – using a conditioned stimulus to condition a neutral stimulus Basically what this does is teach the subject/participant a process This is where two, somewhat unrelated stimuli are combined to condition a subject/participant to expect a particular outcome For Example Let’s say you have a dog named Max. Max loves to go outside. When you say “Do you want to go outside?!” to Max, he gets very excited (jumping, panting, running between you and the door, etc.). Eventually you change your routine to first grabbing Max’s leash, then asking him if he wants to go outside. Again, he gets very excited. After a while, all you have to do is grab his leash and he’ll expect to go outside and become excited. In this case, he’s learned the process of hearing/seeing you grab his leash, then asking him if he wants to go outside, then actually going outside. So now he’s come to understand that the leash is the first part of the equation that eventually leads to him going The Process Acquisition – when an organism learns to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus During acquisition, the neutral stimulus begins to elicit the conditioned response, and eventually the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus capable of eliciting the conditioned response by itself So for Pavlov, this is when the dogs are learning to associate the sound of a bell with food The Process Extinction – decrease in the conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with the conditioned stimulus There is a gradual weakening and disappearance of the conditioned response the longer the association is not reinforced So again with Pavlov’s dogs, this is when the dogs hear the bell, are expecting to be fed, but aren’t fed. Over time the association between the bell and food will become weaker and eventually cease to exist (i.e. after a while, the bell won’t make the dog expect to be fed) The Process Spontaneous recovery – the return of a previously extinguished conditioned response following a rest period Sometimes a creature (human or non-human) may remember an association after it has been extinct Again with Pavlov’s dogs, after showing them one day that the bell will not lead to being fed, if the researchers rang the bell a couple of days later, the dogs might remember the association between the bell and food even though the association has been absent for a period of time The Process Stimulus Discrimination – ability to respond differently to similar stimuli In terms of sound, animals (and people) are able to respond differently for similar sounds Again, for Pavlov’s dogs, the sound of the feeding bell was different from a doorbell, so the dog was able to distinguish between the feeding bell and doorbell and respond differently The Process Stimulus Generalization – demonstrating the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus Essentially the opposite of stimulus discrimination However, it usually only takes a few errors to differentiate between sounds So for Pavlov’s dogs, it’d be if they would expect to be fed when they heard both the feeding bell and the doorbell when only the feeding bell signified food The Process Habituation – when we learn not to respond to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly without change Essentially learning to ignore something that is repeatedly present So for Pavlov’s dogs it might be learning to ignore a researcher’s constant whistling instead of responding to it (as most dogs do) Behaviorism Behaviorism – the idea that all behavior can be studied as a simple stimulus-response reaction, without regard for internal processes Inspired by Pavlov’s work with his dogs John B Watson thought we were no different from Pavlov’s dogs… our behaviors are largely the result of conditioned responses His experiments involved work with human participants And his most common line of research centered around this baby he called Little Albert John B Watson Mainly, what he did was condition an infant to fear certain things Rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks, cotton wool, and a white rat Then he conditioned the baby to associate each of these things with the emotion of fear So if the child began to play with the rat, Watson would hit a piece of metal with a hammer. The loud noise would scare the child and eventually he associated the rat with that loud noise and became afraid of the rat Then the child showed signs of stimulus generalization and the fear spread to other things that resembled the rat, like a rabbit and fur coat John B Watson Why did he want to produce fear in a child? Why did he generate this phobia in a baby? Answer: Freud Freud suggested that phobias are caused by deep hidden conflicts in the mind Thanks to Watson, we now know this probably isn’t the case Little Albert’s phobias were the direct result of conditioning He had no fear prior to the experiment and after the association ended, extinction occurred and he no longer feared rats, rabbits, or fur coats Operant Conditioning Operant conditioning – form of learning in which the stimulus/experience happens after the behavior is demonstrated So essentially, behavior comes first, then it’s rewarded But how is it different from classical conditioning? Let’s use the example of a dog. For classical conditioning, hearing a bell is a signal for food. The dog expects the food after hearing something. In this case the dog has done nothing. For operant conditioning, you tell the dog to sit. He sits and then is given a treat. He’s completed an action to be rewarded with a treat Operant Conditioning B. F. Skinner understood that classical conditioning is limited leaving out new behaviors Skinner believed that behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior: the reinforcements and punishments The law of effect – behavior that is followed by consequences satisfying to the organism will be repeated and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences will be discouraged Operant Conditioning Skinner’s experiments consisted of putting animals in a box where they were to pull a lever if they were hungry and food would be dispensed. He studied the frequency that his subjects would pull the lever to determine if they learned that this particular behavior resulted directly in getting food Operant Conditioning But operant conditioning is not foolproof… if not executed correctly, you might not get the desired results For example: Mathew has a dog named Sigmund (named after Sigmund Freud because of his ridiculous behavior). He used operant conditioning to try to train Sigmund to not bark every time someone walked past the window of the house. Instead of learning that not barking will get him a treat, Sigmund learned to wait to get the treat before barking. So now, immediately after eating the treat, Sigmund barks. Reinforcement Positive reinforcement – adding a desirable stimulus to increase a behavior Ex: Getting paid for going to work (and actually doing the work), high grades, Negative reinforcement – taking away an undesirable stimulus to increase a behavior Ex: Your car dinging to remind you to put on your seatbelt, your iPhone constantly bothering you to update your IOS, your laptop constantly bothering you to install new updates Punishment Positive punishment – adding an undesirable stimulus to stop or decrease a behavior Ex: When a student is texting in class and the teacher calls them out (and embarrasses them in front of their classmates) Negative punishment – taking away a pleasant stimulus to decrease or stop a behavior Ex: When children fight and the parents take the children’s favorite toy away Positive and Negative Reinforcement and Punishment Operant Conditioning Example This can also be found on popular TV shows… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA96Fba-WHk Reinforcers Primary reinforcer – has innate reinforcing qualities (e.g., food, water, shelter) Secondary reinforcer – has no inherent value unto itself and only has reinforcing qualities when linked with something else (e.g., money, gold stars, poker chips) Observational Learning Observational learning – learn by watching others and then imitating, or modeling, what they do or say Social learning theory – people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling Bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation Observational Learning Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBqwWlJg8U Observational Learning It can occur in a number of different ways, but these are the three most common: 1. Learning a new response 2. Choose whether or not to imitate the model based on what you saw happen to the model 3. Learn a general rule that you can apply to other situations Observational Learning Vicarious learning – learning that is derived from indirect sources such as hearing or observation, rather than direct, hands-on, instruction Vicarious reinforcement – process where the observer sees the model rewarded, making the observer more likely to imitate the model’s behavior Vicarious punishment – process where the observer sees the model punished, making the observer less likely to imitate the model’s behavior