Download General Psychology 1

Theories of Learning
Introduction – Chapter 1
August 24-26, 2005
Classes #2-3
Five Schools of Behaviorism
Watson
 Hull
 Tolman
 Bandura
 Skinner

Watson’s Methodological Behaviorism

The study of observable behavior


A natural science approach
Law of Parsimony
A conditioned phobia…
 Watson and Raynor (1920)
 Behavioral psychologists John Watson and grad
assistant Rosalie Raynor taught an 11-month old
infant to become afraid of a gentle white
laboratory rat




At the beginning of the study, “Little Albert” was
unafraid of the white rat and played freely with the
animal
While he was playing with the rat, the experimenters
frightened the child by making a loud noise behind him
The baby was startled and began to cry
They repeated this several times
 Thereafter,
he avoided the rat and would cry
whenever it was brought close to him
“Little Albert”
In Pavlovian terms, a bond had been
established between the sight of the rat
(CS) and the arousal of Albert's
autonomic nervous system (CR)
 Once this S-R bond was fixed, fear could
also be elicited by showing Albert any
furry object…
 Little Albert became fearful of other
furry animals, Watson's hair, a sealskin
coat, even a bearded Santa Claus mask

Little Albert experiments…
Hull’s Neobehaviorism



Idea of
operationally
defining internal
variables
Challenged
Watson’s beliefs
Agreed that there
was a clear S  R
connection but did
not feel that it
must be just an
observable
connection
Tolman’s Cognitive Behaviorism
S  R “molar” theory
 Gestalt principles


Although Tolman emphasized the importance
of innate appetites and aversions in behavior
he was equally emphatic on the importance of
learning, in which he stressed the role of
cognitive variables
Cognitive Learning
Focus on the role of thinking processes in
learning
 Theory based on unseen internal factors
rather than on external factors


Skinner was very much against these theories
but lets look at one…latent learning…
Latent Learning

Tolman and Honzik (1930)
 Took three groups of rats and had them run a
maze



Group 1
 Reinforced every time they found their way out of
the maze (food box) for ten days
Group 2
 Never reinforced (no food at the end)
Group 3
 Reinforced only after day 10 of the experiment (no
food for 10 days then food on day 11)
They formed a cognitive map…

On day 12, they timed the three groups to
see which group would make it through
the maze the quickest…

Which group do you think was the
fastest?
Albert Bandura
(1925-present)





Pioneering researcher in
observational learning
Was born in the small town
of Mundare in northern
Alberta, Canada
He received his bachelors
degree in Psychology from
the University of British
Columbia in 1949
He went on to the
University of Iowa, where
he received his Ph.D. in
1952
In 1953, he started
teaching at Stanford
University and continues to
work at Stanford to this day
Social Learning Theory

Also called observational learning, this is
learning that occurs by observing and
imitating others (the person being observed is
referred to as the model)
 Major components involved in
observational learning
 Attention
 Retention
 Reproduction
 Motivation
 Self-efficacy
Major Components

Attention


Retention


If you are going to learn anything, you have to be paying
attention. Likewise, anything that puts a damper on attention is going
to decrease learning If, for example, you are sleepy, groggy, drugged,
sick, nervous, etc you will learn less. Likewise, if you are being
distracted by competing stimuli
Second, you must be able to retain -- remember -- what you have
paid attention to
Reproduction


You have to have the ability to reproduce the behavior in the first
place.
For example: Some people can watch Olympic ice skaters all day long,
yet not be able to reproduce their jumps, because they can’t ice skate
at all! On the other hand, if they could skate, their performance would
in fact improve if they watch skaters who are better than they are
Major Components

Motivation

Bandura feels that even with all this you’re still not going
to do anything unless you are motivated to imitate, i.e.
until you have some reason for doing it

Bandura mentions a number of motives:
 Past reinforcement
 Past rewards
 Promised reinforcements
 Incentives that we can imagine
 Vicarious reinforcement
 Seeing and recalling the model being reinforced

Self-Efficacy
 Having a sense that you can do it well
Reciprocal Determinism

Reciprocal influence of environmental
events, observable behavior, and “person
variables”
Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1963)
The “Bobo" Doll Experiment

Note : Bandura did a large number of variations on the
“Bobo doll” experiment…we’ll look at a few

Phase 1
 Pre-schoolers were divided into two groups and put
into two separate rooms and allowed to play with
"attractive" toys while “Bobo” an unattractive
inflatable, adult-sized, egg-shaped balloon creature
(the kind that bounces back after it's been knocked
down) sat by itself at the far end of the rooms
Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1963)
The “Bobo" Doll Experiment

Phase 2



Phase 3


Group 1: While playing with the attractive toys the
children witnessed adults enter the room and start
beating the daylights out of the clown
Group2: While playing with the attractive toys the
children witnessed adults enter the room and play nicely
with Bobo
The attractive toys were taken away from each group
Results: What happened next?
Poor Bobo…
Bandura (1965)
The “Bobo" Doll Experiment



In the 1965, version kids watched films of adults beating on Bobo
– but each had different endings…
Film 1:
 Adult praised and rewarded with candy and soda by another
adult who was heard saying, “You’re a strong champion”
Film 2:
 Adult is scolded by another adult, “You’re very bad” or “Hey
there, you big bully, you quit picking on that clown”
Who cares about what a kid does to a
"Bobo" doll?

Well, that’s what the critics said…”those
things are made to punched aren’t they?”

Responding to criticism that Bobo dolls were
supposed to be hit, Bandura did a film of a
young woman beating up a live clown


When the children went into the other room, what
should they find there but -- the live clown!
They proceeded to punch him, kick him, hit him with
little hammers, and so on…
Don’t let your husband watch those violent
movies…

Loye, Gorney, & Steele (1977)

Participants:


Procedures:

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
183 married males; 20-70 years old
Watch one of five TV “diets” for 20 hours over a one week
period
Unknown to participants, their wives were secretly observing
and recording their behavior
 “Helpful” vs. “hurtful” behaviors when not viewing TV
Results:


Viewers of violent programming increased in aggressive mood
and “hurtful behavior”
Viewers of prosocial programs decreased in aggressive mood
and demonstrated an increased “emotional arousal” from the
TV viewing
Limitations

There is one clear limitation to this study…
Is Television To Blame?

Hundreds of studies say yes! Why?
 Social Learning Theory says:

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People become immune to the horrors of violence
They gradually come to accept violence as a
way to solve problems
They imitate the violence they observe on
television
They identify with certain characters
Space Blaster
Doomsday Version 2.5
Social Learning Theory of Aggression
 Theory
that aggressive behavior is
learned through:

Direct Reward
(example: father buys son an ice cream after he wins a
fight)

Observing Others Being Rewarded for
Aggressiveness
(example: a television character wins the girl of his
dreams as a result of killing several people)
Glamorizing Violence
 Plagens,



et al. (1991)
Typical American child sees 200,000 acts of
violence on TV by age 18
Children who watch a lot of violent TV are more
violent towards peers
Experimental studies, in which violence is
controlled, also find effects of watching
violence
Other studies have found…

By the end of elementary school, a typical
American child will have seen:


8,000 murders
More than 100,000 other acts of violence.
2003 study found 534 separate episodes
of prime-time violence during a 2 week
period.
 The most violent TV shows are targeted to
children (e.g., cartoons).

Violent Video Games

Several studies have shown significant results
indicating that playing violent video games is
associated with a history of property destruction
and hitting other students…
 Anderson & Dill (2000)
 College students randomly assigned to play a
violent video game (Wulfenstein) later had
more aggressive thoughts and feelings than
those who played a nonviolent game
(Tetrix)
Videos

Dilemma for parents about letting
children watch television and play video
games



parents find video a good babysitter
parents believe video can sometimes be
educational tool
Experts suggest parents turn off the TV
to avoid exposing children to video
violence
Videos
Most “good guys” are male white heroes
 Women/females portrayed as victims or
adoring friends—not as leaders
 Content of video games even worse than than
that of television


more violent, sexist, racist
Videos

Content of video games crucial reason
behind great concern of developmental
researchers
-
research shows that violent TV and video games
push children to be more violent than they
normally would be

computer games probably worse, as children are doing
the virtual killing
Can have positive effect…

Friedrich and Stein (1972):


The Mister Rogers Study:
 Showed a preschool group Mister Rogers every
weekday for four weeks
 During the viewing period, children from less educated
homes became more cooperative, helpful, and more
likely to state their feelings
Other studies:

Children, especially males, who watched educational television
became teens who earned higher grades, read more
Conclusion:
Application of Bandura’s Theory

Prosocial behavior


Bandura feels it can be used to promote prosocial
behavior – helping behavior
Violence in schools

Bandura feels his theory applies to today’s violent times
as well
Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism
 The
organism learns a response by
operating on the environment…
 Operant

Conditioning
A type of learning in which voluntary
(controllable and non-reflexive)
behavior is strengthened if it is
reinforced and weakened if it is
punished (or not reinforced)
Operant Conditioning

Response comes first and is voluntary
unlike classical where stimulus comes first
and response is involuntary
 Classical: S  R
 Operant: S  R  S
that becomes
RS
The Skinner Box
Soundproof chamber with a bar or key
that could be manipulated to release a
food or water reward
 Specifically, the conditioning chamber was
a stable plexi-glass box with a response
lever, reinforcement delivery tube, and
various means for stimulus presentation
 In Skinner's early experiments, a rat was
placed in the conditioning chamber and
when it pressed the response lever, it
received a pellet of food

Shaping:
Reinforcing successive approximations

Responses that come successively closer
to the desired response were reinforced…



Skinner referred to this as his “Behavioral
Technology”
Taught pigeons “unpigeon-like” behaviors
Walking in Figure 8, playing ping-pong, and
keeping a “guided missile” on course by
pecking at a moving target displayed on a
screen…but most proud of getting them to
hoist an American flag and then to salute it
B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
In the Lab…