Introduction To Psychology Lecture 5 Learning PDF

INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY LECTURE 5 Learning Lecturer: Nur Amalina Hasan KPJ University College Learning Outcome At the end of this lecture, you should be able to:  Name the three assumptions of behaviourism.  Compare and contrast the differ...

INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY LECTURE 5 Learning Lecturer: Nur Amalina Hasan KPJ University College Learning Outcome At the end of this lecture, you should be able to:  Name the three assumptions of behaviourism.  Compare and contrast the different learning perspectives.  Explain the conditions for learning. What is Learning? What is Learning?  Learning is defined as any relatively permanent change in behaviour brought about by experience or practice.  Behaviourism is a systematic approach to the understanding of behaviours. Behaviourism  Behaviourists insist that psychologists should study only observable, measurable behaviours.  Assumptions:  Behaviour is learned as a result of stimulus-response (cause and effect)  Internal mental states is useless in explaining behaviour  Behaviour is determined by the environment Assumptions of Behaviourists 1. Behaviour is learned as a result of stimulus- response (cause and effect).  All behaviours have causes.  Example:  “Animals deprived of food will increase the rates of behaviours that lead to food.” Assumptions of Behaviourists 2. Internal mental states is useless in explaining behaviour.  Example: Q: Why did she yell at him? A: She yelled because she was angry. Q: How do you know she was angry? A: We know she was angry because she was yelling.  Circular reasoning – therefore behaviourists prefer simply to describe what the individuals do instead of inferring what they are trying to do or what they are feeling while they do it. Assumptions of Behaviourists 3. Behaviour is determined by the environment  Outcome of the behaviour will determine how often the behaviour will occur in the future.  Example: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant- chief, and yes, even beggar-man thief—regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary” (Watson, 1925, p. 82) Learning Theories  Classical Conditioning  Operant Conditioning  Observational Learning Classical Conditioning Examples:  Cringing when you see a flash of lighting because you know a boom of thunder is coming.  Smelling incense reminds you of your grandparents’ house.  Listening to Lagu Raya puts you in a happy mood.  Avoiding a certain food because you once felt ill after eating it.  After several cycles of chemotherapy, approaching the building evokes nausea. The Story of Classical Conditioning  Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was interested in digestion, when he stumbled upon “psychic reflexes”.  Dogs were presented with meat powder and had their saliva collected via a surgically implanted tube in their saliva glands.  Over time, he noticed that his dogs begin to salivate at the sight of the handler or even by a clicking noise produced by the device that distributed the meat powder, even before the meat powder was presented. Classical Conditioning  Classical conditioning involves forming an association between two stimuli resulting in a learned response. Important Terms of Classical Conditioning  Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is a stimulus that naturally triggers a response  Unconditioned response (UCR) is the unlearned response that occurs in response to the UCS.  Neutral stimulus (NS) is a stimulus that does not produce any effect.  Conditioned stimulus (CS) is a previously neutral stimulus that, after pairing it with the UCS, elicits a conditioned response (CR).  Requires a naturally occurring stimulus Classical Conditioning that will automatically elicit a response 1. Before Conditioning UCS UCR No NS Response Classical Conditioning 2. During Conditioning  The neutral stimulus is paired with the UCS. The neutral stimulus is now called the conditioned stimulus (CS). NS UCS UCR Classical Conditioning 3. After Conditioning  Once the association has been made between the UCS and the CS, the CS now elicits the CR, without the presence of the UCS. CS CR  Little Albert  “Little Albert” experiment was conducted by J. B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner.  Little Albert, 9 months old, was exposed to a series of stimuli, including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, and various masks.  Albert did not show any initial fear response to any of the objects that he was shown.  Watson then made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer the next time Albert was exposed to the rat.  Now, whenever he saw the rat, he immediately showed signs of fear, and also generalised this fear to other objects, which shared similar characteristics to the rat (family dog, fur coat, cotton wool, etc.) Operant Conditioning  Thorndike’s Law of Effect  Thorndike observed how cats would escape from home- made puzzle boxes.  He found that repeated trials of ineffective responses occurred less frequently and successful responses occurred more frequently, so cats escaped more and more quickly.  A learning curve is a graph of changes in behaviour that occur the course of learning. Operant Conditioning  Thorndike’s Law of Effect  This tendency for behaviours to be affected by their consequences is called the law of effect. Operant Conditioning  B. F. Skinner  Referred to as the father of operant conditioning  He found that when animals were rewarded for performing a behaviour, they learned to perform that behaviour more frequently. Skinner Box Operant Conditioning Reinforcement Punishment (Increase behaviour) (Decrease behaviour) Add stimulus Add stimulus Positive to to (add stimulus) increase behaviour decrease behaviour Remove stimulus Remove stimulus Negative to to (remove increase behaviour decrease behaviour stimulus) Example: Tommy is playing with a screwdriver. He sees a power outlet on the wall. “Hmmm... I wonder what will happen if I put the screwdriver into the plug?” BZZZZZTTTT!!! *Sparks Fly!* Tommy will never poke a power outlet again! This is an example of ________________________. Operant Conditioning Examples:  Positive Reinforcement  Giving chocolate to a child, who is well behaved  Negative Reinforcement  Headache goes away with panadol  Positive Punishment  Spanking after a child runs to the street  Negative punishment  No dessert after throwing food at sibling Observational Learning  Also known as social learning (Bandura et al., 1963).  Albert Bandura stated that we also learn behaviour from the environment through the process of observational learning.  Individuals who are being observed are called models, and they provide examples of behaviours to observe and imitate.  Bobo Doll Experiment (Bandura et al., 1963) Watched a cartoon Watched an adult character violently violently attacking Watched a neutral attacking an an inflated “Bobo” film. inflated “Bobo” doll. doll.  Bobo Doll Experiment (Bandura et al., 1963) Results: Children who watched films with attacks on the doll, went on to attack the Bobo doll, using many of the movements that they had just seen. Observational Learning Examples: Vicarious Conditioning  Behaviours can be learned vicariously.  Meaning, we can learn behaviours by watching someone else get classically or operantly conditioned. Example: Remember Tommy? He put the screwdriver into the plug. Imagine that Sam watched this. Fortunately for Sam, he does not have to be zapped directly to learn this. He will probably never put a paperclip into a wall outlet. He learned by watching. He was punished vicariously. Summary  Behaviourism is the psychological study of observable, measurable behaviours.  There are three assumptions:  Behaviour is learned as a result of stimulus-response (cause and effect)  Internal mental states is useless in explaining behaviour  Behaviour is determined by the environment  Classical conditioning explains that learning involves forming an association between two stimuli  Operant conditioning explains that learning is the result of consequences  We can learn behaviours by watching as explained by Observational Learning Theory