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Psychology
Learning: Principles and Applications
What is learning?
• Permanent change in behavior that
results from experience
Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov, 1927
• Classical conditioningcontrolling 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.