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Chapter 6
Learning
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Learning
• Learning is any relatively permanent change in
behavior that is based upon experience.
• It is an area of psychology that seems simple to
evaluate but is quite complex.
• Both internal and external factors can influence
and interfere with an organism’s learning.
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Module 6.1
• Behaviorism
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Behaviorism
• Behaviorists insist that psychologists should
study only observable, measurable behaviors,
not mental processes.
• There exists a wide range of views among
researchers who call themselves behaviorists.
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Behaviorism
• Methodological behaviorism
– Methodological behaviorists study only events
that they can measure and observe.
– They sometimes use those observations to
make inferences about internal events.
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Behaviorism
• Methodological behaviorism
– From observing how an animal behaves in the
presence of certain stimuli, a methodological
behaviorist infers the presence of an
intervening variable.
– This cannot be directly observed yet links a
variety of procedures to a variety of possible
responses.
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Behaviorism
• Methodological behaviorism
– If a monkey shows its teeth or makes loud
noises after placement of a stuffed animal or
a larger monkey of the same species in its
cage, and to a recording of growling noises of
a predatory cat, the methodological
behaviorist infers the presence of fear
(intervening variable).
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Behaviorism
• Methodological behaviorism
– What measurements would you take to infer
the presence of intervening variables such as:
• Hunger?
• Affection?
• Anger?
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Behaviorism
• Radical behaviorism
– Radical behaviorists believe that internal
states are caused by external events or
genetics.
• The ultimate cause of behavior is
observable events, not internal states.
• Most vague discussions of mental states
are rephrased into descriptions of behavior.
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Behaviorism
• The rise of behaviorism
– In the early 1900s, the structuralists used the
technique of introspection to study
psychology.
– They asked subjects to describe their own
experiences in order to study thoughts and
ideas.
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Behaviorism
• The rise of behaviorism
– Behaviorists deemed it useless to ask people
to describe their private experiences.
– The accuracy of these reports was impossible
to gauge.
– Behaviorists insisted that psychology deal
with observable and measurable events only.
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Behaviorism
• The rise of behaviorism
– Jacques Loeb argued that all animal and most
human behavior could be explained with
stimulus-response psychology.
• This explains behavior in terms of how
each stimulus triggers a response.
• Flinching from a blow and shading one’s
eyes from strong light are stimulusresponse behaviors.
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Behaviorism
• The rise of behaviorism
– More complex patterns of behavior are the
sum of changes of speed and direction
elicited by various stimuli.
– Modern behaviorists believe that behavior is
produced by stimuli and responses, plus the
effects of natural physiological states (hunger,
tiredness, etc.)
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Behaviorism
• The rise of behaviorism
– The behaviorists carried on the tradition of
asking questions about animal learning
previously abandoned by comparative
psychologists.
– Early behaviorists thought it was possible to
determine the basic laws of learning by
studying how animals learn.
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Behaviorism
• The assumptions of behaviorism
– Behaviorists are deterministic
• We live a universe of cause-and-effect. Our
behavior is part of that universe, so it must
have identifiable causes.
• If enough is known about an individual’s
experiences, influences, and genetics, we
can predict behavior.
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Behaviorism
• The assumptions of behaviorism
– Mental explanations are ineffective.
• Q. Why is she smiling?
• A. She is smiling because she is happy.
• Q How do you know she is happy?
• A. We can tell she is happy because she is
smiling.
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Behaviorism
• The assumptions of behaviorism
– Circular reasoning arises when the presence
of internal states is inferred based on
behavior.
– The influence of this perspective can be seen
in the American legal system. Witnesses are
discouraged from inferences about what they
saw; they are encouraged to describe
appearance and behavior.
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Behaviorism
• The assumptions of behaviorism
– The environment predominates.
• The strongest influence on behavior is
outcome.
• The environment selects and perpetuates
successful behaviors, as evolution selects
successful animals.
• Behaviorists neither deny nor emphasize
heredity.
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Behaviorism
• People dismiss behaviorism.
• They reject the notion that thoughts, beliefs and
emotions are the effect and not the cause of
behavior.
• Behaviorists argue that past outcomes of
behaviors cause the thoughts, beliefs and
emotions.
• Can you support the idea that thoughts, beliefs
and emotions exist independently of your
experiences?
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Module 6.2
• Classical Conditioning
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Pavlov and Classical Conditioning
• Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist who won a Nobel
Prize for his research on digestion.
• His original description of classical conditioning
was a by-product of this research. He did not
set out to discover classical conditioning.
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Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov noticed that the dogs he used in research
salivated upon the sight of the lab workers who
fed them.
– He concluded that this reflex was
“psychological” - based on the dog’s previous
experiences.
– Further testing demonstrated that the sight of
food produced the same effect as giving the
same amount of food to the dog.
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Classical Conditioning
• Based on tentative acceptance of the salivation
reflex, Pavlov described this response as a
“conditional reflex.”
• The term was mistranslated into English as
conditioned reflex.
• This mistake created the terminology now used
to describe classical conditioning.
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Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov started with the unconditioned reflex of
salivation to food. He hypothesized the
presence of an automatic connection.
– The dogs had an unconditioned reflex of
secretion of digestive juices to food.
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Classical Conditioning
• A buzzer is a neutral stimulus. It elicits attention
to the sound, but no automatic connection.
– The dogs lifted their ears and looked around
when the buzzer sounded, but did not
salivate.
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Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov hypothesized that animals transfer a
response from one stimulus to another – a new
learned connection.
– If a buzzer always preceded the food, the
buzzer would begin to elicit the reflex of
salivation.
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Classical Conditioning
• After a few pairings of the buzzer with the food,
the dogs salivates as soon as the buzzer
sounded.
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Classical Conditioning
• Terminology
– Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)  An event
that consistently and automatically elicits an
unconditioned response.
– Unconditioned Response (UCR)  An action
that the unconditioned stimulus automatically
elicits.
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Classical Conditioning
• Terminology
– Conditioned Stimulus (CS)  Formerly the
neutral stimulus, now paired with the
unconditioned stimulus, elicits the same
response. That response depends on
consistent pairing with the UCR.
– Conditioned Response (CR)  The response
elicited by the conditioned stimulus due to
training. Usually it resembles the UCR.
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Classical Conditioning
• Factors that enhance conditioning
– Conditioning is quicker when the conditioned
(neutral) stimulus is unfamiliar. If you are
habituated to (used to) the neutral stimulus, it
will take longer to form a connection.
– Conditioning is facilitated when people are
made aware of the connection between the
CS and the UCS. Having been informed of
the conditioning procedure they are
conditioned faster.
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Concept Check
A puff of air is blown into a rabbit’s eye just after a
musical tone is played. After several repetitions of
this procedure, the rabbit closes its eye when the
musical tone is played.
What are the:
Air puff
– UCS
– UCR
Closing the eye
– CS
Musical tone
– And CR?
Closing the eye to the tone
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Concept Check
• A TV commercial for Mega Burger shows a
delicious cheeseburger. A classic rock song is
played during the commercial. You see the
commercial several times, and now when the
song is playing on the radio, you get hungry.
What are the:
– UCS
Cheeseburger
– UCR
Hunger
– CS
Rock song
– And CR?
Hunger at sound of song
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Concept Check
• When the training starts, the CS elicits
no
response and the UCS elicits ________.
the UCR
__________
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Concept Check
• After the training, the CS elicits ________
the CR and
the UCS elicits ________.
the UCR
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Classical Conditioning
• The processes of classical conditioning
– The process that establishes a conditioned
response is acquisition.
– To extinguish a classically conditioned
response, the conditioned stimulus is
repeatedly presented without the
unconditioned stimulus. This is referred to as
extinction.
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Classical Conditioning
• The processes of classical conditioning
– A rabbit is conditioned to blink its eye.
Repeated presentation of a musical tone is
followed by a puff of air directly blown in its
eye. After a few repetitions, the rabbit blinks
when the tone sounds. (Acquisition)
– The tone is repeatedly played without the air
puff. Gradually, the rabbit stops blinking.
(Extinction)
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Classical Conditioning
• The processes of classical conditioning
– Extinction does not erase the association
between the CS and the UCS.
– If the puff of air is presented again to the
rabbit without warning, it blinks the next time
the tone is played.
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Classical Conditioning
• The processes of classical conditioning
– The temporary return of an extinguished
response is spontaneous recovery.
– The rabbit acquires the response. The
response is then extinguished through the
repeated presentation of the tone with no air
puff. Hours after the experiment, the rabbit
hears a musical tone. It blinks.
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Concept Check
To deal with your conditioned response to the
song from the Mega Burger commercial, what
steps would you take to produce extinction? What
steps would you take to produce spontaneous
recovery?
To produce extinction, play the song repeatedly with
no image of the cheeseburger.
To produce spontaneous recovery, watch the
commercial once a few days after the extinction
procedure has been completed.
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Classical Conditioning
• The processes of classical conditioning
– Stimulus generalization is the extension of a
conditioned response from the training
stimulus to similar stimuli.
– Baby Hannah is conditioned to smile and
laugh at the title screen with dark background
and white writing that precedes a funny song
and cartoon on her “Baby Genius” DVD. She
also smiles and giggles at the FBI Warning
screen on movie DVDs.
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Classical Conditioning
• The process of classical conditioning
– Discrimination is the development of different
responses to two stimuli because they
produce two different outcomes.
– Gradually Hannah stops laughing at the FBI
Warning screen because the song and
cartoon do not follow it.
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Classical Conditioning
• Explanations of classical conditioning
– The process of classical conditioning is more
complex than it might seem.
– The association is not merely a transfer of
response from one stimulus to the other. The
conditioned stimulus is a signal to the organism.
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Classical Conditioning
• Explanations of classical conditioning
– Temporal contiguity aids the process of
conditioning. The sooner the UCS occurs
after the presentation of the CS, the faster the
CR is acquired.
– The CR is acquired more quickly when the CS
precedes the UCS. This is forward
conditioning.
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Classical Conditioning
• Explanations of classical conditioning
– In trace conditioning, the CS stops before the
UCS is presented. This is a relatively
ineffective method.
– Backward conditioning (UCS follows by the
CS) rarely produces a response.
– The phenomenon of blocking shows that it’s
difficult to condition the same response to
more than one stimulus.
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Classical Conditioning
• Explanations of classical conditioning
– When rats experience an electric shock (a
UCS) they jump and shriek.
– After being conditioned to a buzzer preceding
the shock (a CS) they freeze in place at its
sound, a typical alarm response in rats.
– The CS prepares the animal for a UCS.
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Classical Conditioning
• Conditioning, contiguity and contingency
– A conditioned response develops only if there
is predictability or contingency.
– The UCS is more likely to occur after the CS.
– The learner discovers the event that predicts
the outcome. It is unclear whether any actual
complex thinking results from this process.
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Understanding Addiction
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Classical Conditioning
• Classical conditioning is thought by those
unfamiliar with psychology to simple, mechanical
learning.
• It is in fact a complex form of learning that
requires processing of information by the
learner.
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Module 6.3
• Operant Conditioning
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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning
• In 1911 Edward Thorndike developed a simple,
behaviorist explanation of learning.
• He used a learning curve, a graph of the
changes in behavior that occur over successive
trials of an experiment, to record how quickly
cats learned to escape from a maze.
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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning
• The cats’ learning curve indicated a slow and
consistent progress towards the solution.
• But cats would learn more quickly if the
response selected produced an immediate
escape.
• The cats would try many different behaviors and
learn to select the one that produced escape.
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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning
• Overall it appeared to Thorndike that the cats
were not “understanding” the connections
between the solution and the escape. There was
no sudden increase in the learning curve to
support that assumption.
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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning
• Thorndike observed that the escape from the
box acted as a reinforcement for the behavior
that led to it.
– A reinforcement is an event that increases the
future probability of the most recent response.
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Thorndike’s Law of Effect
• “Of several responses made to the same
situation, those which are accompanied or
closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will,
other things being equal, be more firmly
connected to the situation, so that, when it (the
situation) recurs, they will be more likely to
recur.”
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Operant Conditioning
• The type of learning that Thorndike studies has
come to be known as operant or instrumental
conditioning.
– The process of changing behavior by
following a response with a reinforcement.
– The subject’s behavior determines and is
affected by a specific outcome.
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Operant Conditioning
• Operant conditioning differs from classical in that
the former, the subject’s behavior affects the
outcome.
• Classical conditioning influences visceral,
reflexive, and involuntary responses, while
operant conditioning applies to skeletal, somatic,
and voluntary responses.
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Processes of Operant Conditioning
• In operant conditioning, extinction occurs if
responses stop producing reinforcements.
– A child for whom you are babysitting whines
until you give him a cookie. If you stop giving
the child cookies, he will eventually stop
whining.
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Processes of Operant Conditioning
• Stimulus generalization occurs when a new
stimulus is similar to the original reinforced
stimulus. The more similar the new stimulus is
to the old, the more strongly the subject will
respond.
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Processes of Operant Conditioning
The child for whom you are babysitting falls
and scrapes his knee. He is crying
inconsolably. You give him a cookie. He
continues to whine and cry on and off all
afternoon, stopping for brief periods after you
give him a cookie. The stimulus of his whining
has generalized to crying and whining. You
are responding to both.
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Processes of Operant Conditioning
• Discrimination occurs when someone is
reinforced for responding to one stimulus but not
another. The individual will respond more
vigorously to one than to the other.
– If you stop giving the child cookies when he
cries but continue when he whines, he will
whine much more often than he will cry.
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Processes of Operant Conditioning
• A stimulus that indicates which response is
appropriate or inappropriate is called a
discriminative stimulus.
– The child for whom you baby-sit does not
whine for cookies when his mother is present,
because she never gives in to his whining. As
soon as she leaves, he begins whining for a
cookie. The presence of his mother has
become a discriminative stimulus.
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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning
• A stimulus’ power to encourage some responses
and discourage others is known as stimulus
control.
– When his mother is present, the child for
whom you baby-sit asks her politely for juice
and crackers. When his mother is absent, he
whines for cookies. The presence or absence
of one stimulus after another signals to him
which behaviors will or will not be reinforced.
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Processes of Operant Conditioning
• Thorndike noted that some responses are more
easily learned than others. The cats learned to
escape from the mazes relatively quickly, but
learned to scratch themselves on cue slowly and
inconsistently.
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B.F. Skinner and the Shaping of Behavior
• B.F. Skinner is the most influential of all radical
behaviorists.
• He demonstrated many potential applications of
operant conditioning.
• He was a firm believer in parsimony, seeking
simple explanations in terms of reinforcement
histories, and avoiding the inference of complex
mental processes.
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Shaping Behavior
• Shaping establishes new responses by
reinforcing successive approximations to it.
• Skinner used an “operant chamber” (referred to
as a “Skinner box” by others) into which he put
the animal he wished to train by shaping.
• Gradually the animal was reinforced for
behaviors that approached the target activity
until it fully performed the behavior.
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Shaping Behavior
• To make a pigeon turn in a complete clockwise
circle, Skinner would first reinforce the pigeon
with food for just turning a few degrees to the
right. When the pigeon began turning to the right
regularly, he would cease reinforcing until the
pigeon turned a few more degrees in that
direction. When that behavior was established,
he’d wait until the pigeon turned further to the
right, and reinforce that movement, until finally
the pigeon turned in a complete circle.
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Chaining Behavior
• This an operant conditioning method in which
behaviors are reinforced by opportunities to
engage in the next behavior
– The animal learns the final behavior, and then
the next to last, and so on, until the beginning
of the sequence is reached.
– Eating is an example of a chained behavior in
humans. We first learn to eat with utensils,
and gradually acquire the preceding activities
of getting and preparing food.
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Increasing and Decreasing the Frequency of
Responses
• A reinforcement is an event that increases the
probability that a response will be repeated.
• A punishment is an event that decreases the
probability of a response.
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Reinforcement and Punishment
• A reinforcement is either the presentation of a
desirable item such as money or food, or the
removal of an unpleasant stimulus, such as
verbal nagging or physical pain.
• A punishment is the removal of a desirable
condition such as driving privileges or the
presentation of an unpleasant condition such as
physical pain.
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Reinforcement and Punishment
• Most people respond better to both immediate
reinforcement and immediate punishment.
• Most punishments are given in American society
for behaviors that are immediately reinforcing.
The punishments may or may not occur.
• The threat of punishment under these conditions
is not an effective tool for changing behavior.
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Reinforcement and Punishment
• Punishment tends to be ineffective except for
temporarily suppressing undesirable behavior.
• Mild, logical, and consistent punishment can be
informative and helpful.
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Concept Check
Most people who speed are not put off this
infraction by the threat of a speeding ticket and
fine. Based on what you have learned about the
efficacy of punishment as a training method, why
do you think this is?
Because the threat of the punishment is highly
uncertain – very few people get pulled over
relative to the number who speed – and the
behavior is very immediately gratifying.
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Reinforcements and Punishments
• The presentation of an event that strengthens or
increases the likelihood of an event is called
positive reinforcement.
– A parent praises a child for excellent
performance on a test.
– A waiter receives an extra large tip for good
service.
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Reinforcements and Punishments
• Punishment is referred to as passive avoidance
learning because in response to punishment an
individual learns to avoid the outcome by being
passive.
– A child learns to avoid the punishment of
being sent to his room for the evening by not
teasing his little sister.
– A woman avoids distress by not calling her
sister who always says cruel things whenever
they talk.
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Reinforcements and Punishments
• Omission training occurs when the lack of a
response produces reinforcement. Producing
the response also leads to a lack of
reinforcement.
– This is sometimes referred to as negative
punishment.
• Parents tell a teenager that if she breaks
curfew again, she will lose her driving
privileges for a month.
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Reinforcements and Punishments
• Escape learning or active avoidance learning
occurs if the responses lead to an escape from
or an avoidance of something painful.
– This is sometimes referred to as negative
reinforcement.
• A teenager cleans his room to avoid
listening to any more of his dad’s nagging.
• A babysitter gives a cookie to a child to
stop his whining.
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Concept Check
• What type of learning has occurred?
Your little brother locks you in his room and
plays the Barney theme song at full volume until
you tell him what Mom and Dad are giving him
for his birthday.
Escape learning (or negative reinforcement)
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Concept Check
• What type of learning has occurred?
You win a $1,000.00 scholarship for your high
GPA.
Positive reinforcement
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Concept Check
• What type of learning has occurred?
• You put on your sunglasses because the bright
sun is making your eyes hurt.
Escape learning (or negative reinforcement)
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Concept Check
• What type of learning has occurred?
• Your professor deducts points from your final
grade if you are late to class.
Negative punishment (omission training)
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Concept Check
• What type of learning has occurred?
• You send flowers to your sweetheart because
you always get extra affection and compliments
after you do so.
Positive reinforcement
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Concept Check
• What type of learning has occurred?
• You really want to pass this class so you never
have to sit through it again.
Avoidance learning (or negative reinforcement)
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What Constitutes Reinforcement?
• A reinforcer increases the likelihood of the
preceding response.
– This can be confusing because it leads to a
circular explanation.
– It can also be confusing because although
generally a reinforcer is a pleasant event, it
doesn’t have to be.
– What constitutes a “pleasant event” can be
hard to define or vary from person to person.
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What Constitutes Reinforcement?
• Many reinforcers satisfy biological needs, such
as hunger.
• Addictive behaviors don’t seem to give much
pleasure to the addict (although they may be
negatively reinforcing - done to avoid the
unpleasant condition of not having access to the
drug.)
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What Constitutes Reinforcement?
• Some reinforcers don’t satisfy any immediate
need, but represent a future opportunity to have
greater access to resources (such as a good
grade – you can’t eat it, but getting many of
them may raise your chances of having more to
eat later in your life.)
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What Constitutes Reinforcement?
• The Premack Principle
– The Premack Principle states that the
opportunity to engage in a preferred behavior
will be a reinforcer for any less preferred
behavior.
• A person who prefers going to the movies
to going to museums can be reinforced for
extra trips to the museum with free movie
passes.
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What Constitutes Reinforcement?
• The disequilibrium principle
– The disequilibrium principle states that each
person has a preferred pattern of dividing time
between various activities. If one is unable to
engage in that pattern a return to it will be
reinforcing.
• A person who must work overtime for the
next three weekends makes an extra effort
to finish up the assigned work to return to
his preferred activity of playing golf.
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Concept Check
Using the disequilibrium principle and positive
reinforcement, how would you encourage more
studying in a child who is getting poor grades due
to insufficient studying?
Determine the child’s preferred after school activity
and tie set amounts of time spent doing that activity
to the completion of a minimum number of minutes
of hours studying.
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What Constitutes Reinforcement?
• Unconditioned reinforcers meet primary,
biological needs and are found to be reinforcing
for almost everyone. Food and drink are
unconditioned reinforcers.
• Conditioned reinforcers are effective because
they have become associated with
unconditioned reinforcers. Money and grades
are conditioned reinforcers.
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Learning What Leads to What
• Thorndike had a strictly mechanical view of
reinforcement. An animal that receives
reinforcement for a behavior will perform it more
frequently. No learning takes place without
reinforcement, and understanding of the reason
for the behaviors is not necessary.
– A rat learns to run a maze because food is
present at the end of the alleys that lead to
the exit from the maze.
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Learning What Leads to What
• In contrast, the idea of latent learning suggests
that learning may occur in animals without being
demonstrated until the reward is presented.
– A rat is left to explore and sniff around in a
maze. When presented with the possibility of
a reward of food, he runs the maze as fast as
the rat that was painstakingly trained with
rewards to run it.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• Schedules of reinforcement are rules of for
delivery of reinforcement
– Used to maintain learned behaviors that might
be extinguished if reinforcement ceased.
– Continuous reinforcement schedules provide
reinforcement every time a response occurs.
– However, outside of the laboratory,
reinforcement rarely follows every occurrence
of a desired behavior.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• Most schedules of reinforcement are
intermittent. Some responses are reinforced and
others are not.
• One of the two categories of intermittent
reinforcement is ratio - delivery of reinforcement
depends on the number of responses given.
• The other category of intermittent reinforcement
is interval - delivery of reinforcement depends
on the amount of time since the last
reinforcement.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• A fixed-ratio schedule provides reinforcement
only after a certain (“fixed”) number of correct
responses have been made. A laboratory rat
being reinforced for hitting a lever after every 5
hits is being reinforced on an FR-5 schedule.
– The local gourmet coffee shop gives you a
card that says if you buy 9 coffee drinks you
will get the 10th beverage for free.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• A variable-ratio schedule provides reinforcement
after a variable number of correct responses,
usually working out to an average in the long
run. A baseball player who has a .333 batting
average is reinforcing fans with hits on a VR-3
schedule.
– Slot machines, like all gambling, provide a
particularly compelling form of variable ratio
reinforcement to the player.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• A fixed-interval schedule provides reinforcement
for the first response made after a specific time
interval. A person who is paid every two weeks
is reinforced for work on a fixed interval
schedule.
– You receive your local newspaper at the
same time every day. You probably have a
good idea of when to start checking for it. This
is a fixed interval schedule.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• A variable-interval schedule provides
reinforcement after a variable amount of time
has elapsed.
– If your newspaper delivery person is very
inconsistent about delivery times, showing up
one day at 5:00AM, the next day at 7:30AM,
etc., your paper is delivered on a variable
interval schedule.
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Schedules of Reinforcement
• extinction of responses tends to take longer
when an individual has been on an intermittent
schedule rather than a continuous schedule.
• One explanation for this difference is that the
lack of reinforcement does not signify the
complete cessation of reinforcements to the
individual who’s been on an intermittent
schedule.
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Concept Check
• Name the reinforcement schedule
• You receive e-mail from your friend who is
studying in France this semester at about an
average of 1 note every 4 days.
Variable interval
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Concept Check
• Name the reinforcement schedule
• Your very reliable oven bakes a batch of cookies
in 10 minutes.
Fixed interval
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Applications of Operant Conditioning
• A wide variety of applications exists for the
techniques of operant conditioning including:
– Animal training for performance, military, and
helper animals.
– Persuasion in political and commercial
enterprises.
– Psychological treatment, through the use of
applied behavior analysis or behavior
modification.
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Applications of Operant Conditioning
• In behavior modification, the clinician determines
which reinforcers sustain an undesirable or
unwanted behavior.
• The clinician tries to change the behavior by
reducing the opportunities for reinforcement of
the unwanted behavior and providing reinforcers
for a more acceptable behavior.
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Operant Conditioning
• Some people are disturbed by the idea that
positive reinforcement might influence behavior.
• You wouldn’t work hard in a course or a job if
your performance didn’t matter and all the
grades or bonuses were given without regard to
quality.
• Operant conditioning provides a useful and
powerful way to improve behavior.
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Module 6.4
• Other Kinds of Learning
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Conditioned Taste Aversions
• If learning occurs reliably after just one trial, it is
hard to know if the learning was a result of
classical conditioning or operant conditioning
– One kind of learning that occurs after a single
trial is an association between eating
something and getting sick.
– This is conditioned taste aversion.
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Conditioned Taste Aversions
– Many species appear to have a built-in
predisposition to associate illness with food
that was consumed, even if some time has
elapsed between the consumption of the
substance and the onset of the illness.
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Birdsong Learning
• The beautiful songs of male birds may be
delightful to our ears, but they are serious
business for the bird
– The songs are crucial for soliciting attracting a
suitable mate.
– They are also a warning to potential invaders
of the singer’s territory.
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Birdsong Learning
• Some species of songbird are especially
dependent on the process of hearing live songs
of older males in order to develop a normal
song.
• There is a sensitive period early in the bird’s life
during which the song is learned most readily.
• The young bird also learns better from a live
male than from a tape recording, and will not
learn the songs of other species.
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Birdsong Learning
• Birdsong learning resembles human language
learning in some ways.
– It requires a social context, has an optimal
period for learning early in life, starts with a
kind of babbling, and tends to deteriorate if
the individual becomes deaf later in life.
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Birdsong Learning
• It differs from classical conditioning in that the
song the baby male bird learns from is not an
unconditioned stimulus – it elicits no response.
• It differs from operant conditioning in that during
the sensitive period there is no apparent
reinforcement of the learning.
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Social Learning
• The social-learning approach, defined by Albert
Bandura, states that we learn many behaviors
before we attempt them for the first time.
– Much learning, especially in humans, results
from observing the behaviors of others and
from imagining the consequences of our own.
– Two of the chief components of social
learning are modeling and imitation.
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Social Learning
• Bandura and his assistants did experiments in
which children watched films in which adults
either did or did not attack an inflated “Bobo”
doll.
– Children who saw the aggressive versions of
the films were more likely to repeat those
actions when left alone with a similar toy.
– The implication was that the children were
imitating the aggressive behavior they had
just seen.
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Social Learning
• There has been great interest in the work of
Bandura because of the controversy over effects
of violence in TV programs and movies.
• It is unclear if direct relationship exists between
televised/cinematic violence and violent
behavior. People vary widely in susceptibility to
the influence of violent imagery.
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Vicarious Reinforcement and Punishment
• Another aspect of the social learning approach
is the idea that we are more likely to imitate
behaviors of others we’ve seen rewarded and
less likely to imitate behaviors that create
unpleasant results for others.
• This substitution of others’ experiences for one’s
own is vicarious reinforcement or vicarious
punishment.
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Vicarious Reinforcement and Punishment
• The effectiveness of vicarious reinforcement and
punishment resembles that of direct
reinforcement and punishment.
• Vicarious reinforcement appears to be more
effective than vicarious punishment in creating
behavioral change.
• Some people may be more able to avoid
identifying with others whose behaviors brought
about painful or unpleasant consequences.
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Self-Efficacy in Social Learning
• We imitate people we admire.
• Advertisers routinely use endorsements from
celebrities and sports figures, and images of the
happy, healthy, affluent people that most of us
would like to be.
• We do not model ourselves after every
admirable figure. We imitate others only when
we have a sense of self-efficacy, and perceive
ourselves as also being able to perform the task
successfully.
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Learning
• Classical conditioning, operant conditioning,
conditioned taste aversions, and social learning
represent a diverse set of influences on human
behavior.
• Your everyday behavior is in large part a product
of the combined effects of these processes.
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