Learning

Learning questions

What is Behaviorism? Who was Pavlov? What is classical conditioning? What is UCS, UCR, CS, CR? (same card) What is acquisition? extinction? What is stimulus generalization? What is stimulus discrimination? What was the Baby Albert experiment? What is spontaneous recovery? What is Operant Conditioning? Who was BF Skinner? What is positive reinforcement? Negative Reinforcement? Positive

punishment? Negative punishment? Aversive stimulus? Fixed ratio schedule, variable ratio schedule? Primary vs secondary reinforcers? Who was Albert Bandura and his Bobo doll experiment? What is social learning theory?

What is Behaviorism?

Major perspective - studies scientifically observable behaviors, not unconscious drives.Names: Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, BanduraIncludes classical, operant and social learning theoryNurture, not nature

Classical Conditioning

It all started with:

Ivan Pavlov

What is classical conditioning?

When your brain and nervous system make an association between 2 stimuli (things).

Example: food and a bellA song and making out with your “friend”

(Ivan Pavlov)

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): (the meat) a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response.

Unconditional Response (UCR): (drooling to meat) the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the UCS.

Conditioned Response (CR): (drooling to the bell) the learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS): (the bell) an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with the UCS, comes to trigger a response.

e

1. Sara is watching a storm. A bolt of lightening is followed immediately by a huge crash of thunder and makes her jump. This happens several more times. The storm starts to move away and there is a gap between the lightening bolt and the sound of thunder, yet Sara jumps at the lightening bolt.

What is the:UCS UCRCSCR

2. Steve's mouth waters whenever he eats anything with lemon in it. One day, while seeing an advertisement showing lemons, his mouth begins to water.

What is the:UCS UCRCSCR

Come up with your own examples of Classical

Conditioning

What is the Little Albert experiment?

John Watson classically conditioned a baby to fear a white rat. Then the baby feared all furry things.

John B. Watson

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own special 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, merchant-chief, and yes, beggar man or thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

Pavlov spent the rest of his life outlining his ideas. He came up

with 5 critical terms that together make up classical conditioning.

AcquisitionExtinctionSpontaneous RecoveryGeneralizationDiscrimination

Acquisition (pairing food with bell)The initial stage of learning.The phase where the neutral stimulus is

associated with the UCS so that the neutral stimulus comes to elicit the CR (thus becoming the CS).

Does timing matter?

•The CS should come before the UCS

•They should be very close together in timing.

ExtinctionThe diminishing of a conditioned response.Will eventually happen when the UCS does

not follow the CS.Dog stops drooling to bell

Is extinction permanent?

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance. After a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Dog drools to bell again

Generalization

We fear things similar to the original stimulus (Little Albert)

Stimulus Generalization

The Baby was given the rat while Watsonsounded a loud, scary clank.. Now the babyis afraid of all furry things.

DiscriminationThe learned ability to distinguish between a

CS and other stimuli that does not signal UCS. Dog drools to a bell, but not a gong

How can we apply classical conditioning?

Applications of Taste Aversiontreating alcoholism,

using the drug Antabuse causes nausea and violent

vomiting when combined with alcohol

attempts to create a taste aversion to alcohol

Problem: alcoholics tend to stop taking Antabuse so they can drink again but when used properly,

Antabuse does reduce total amount of alcohol consumed

Applications of Taste Aversionhumane methods of

controlling predators, agricultural pests? coyotes & wolves ate sheep

carcasses laced with nausea-inducing poison; developed aversion to sheep meat wolves penned with sheep

later seemed to fear it!

The Garcia effect?

People get sick after eating at a restaurant so they won’t eat at that restaurant, even if they know the food was safe.

What is operant conditioning?

Behaviors are a result of reinforcements and punishments.

B.F. Skinner is the famous guy.

Edward Thorndike

Law of Effect: rewarded behavior is likely to recur.

Cat in box

Thorndike’s Puzzle BoxEdward Thorndike

(1874-1949): created a puzzle box: cage with latched door that could only be opened by pressing lever inside cats became quicker and

quicker to press lever once they figured it out

Law of Effect: rewarded behaviors are more likely to be repeated

B.F. Skinner

C’mon gimmie a kiss!

B.F. Skinner

Most influential behaviorist Envisioned a utopian society based upon his theories Skinner Box Ping-pong playing and airplane flying pigeons

Shaping – training with rewards

Skinner Box

How are these similar?

What is Shaping?

Gradually reinforcing a behavior until perfect. (ex: feed pigeon for turning 30 deg, then 60 deg, eventually full circle)

Reinforcement – increasing desired behavior

Positive Reinforcement – giving something to increase a behavior (example?)

Negative Reinforcement – taking away something bad to increase a behavior (example?)

Punishment – reducing behavior

- positive punishment giving something bad to reduce a behavior (example?) spanking = aversive stimulus

- negative punishment – (omission training) taking away something good to reduce a behavior

(example?)

ANSWER CHOICES ARE POSITIVE

PUNISHMENT, NEGATIVE

PUNISHMENT, POSITIVE

REINFORCEMENT, NEGATIVE

REINFORCEMENT

The following are examples of what???

Spanking a child for writing “crip” on your car door.

Giving candy for correct answers.

Nagging and nagging until you do the dishes.

THE CHILD IS _____ _____ THE PARENT FOR GETTING CANDY.

THE PARENT IS _____ ______ THE CHILD FOR WHINING.

Child whines and cries until he gets his candy at the

store.

Taking away cell phone privileges to reduce low

grades.

Stop jamming toothpicks up one’s fingernails in

exchange for information

Draw a cartoon representing

Positive, negative punishmentPositive, negative reinforcement 4 cartoons

Can all animals be taught anything?

What is Instinctive drift?

Animals will drift (or revert) back to instinctual behaviors while performing tasks.

Example: Pigs will deposit coins in a piggy bank but will push the coins through the mud and flip it around on its way.

Behaviorists successfully taught a raccoon to deposit wooden coins into a metal container for food reinforcement. But soon the raccoon started rubbing the coins together and dipping them (not dropping them) into the container. It was performing the motor program raccoons use to "wash" food in a stream. This interfered with the trick to such an extent the Brelands had to give up on it. Instead, they trained the raccoon to "play basketball." The basketball was so large that the raccoon did not attempt to wash it.

Reinforcement Schedules

Continuous Reinforcement

Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.

Quick Acquisition

Quick Extinction

Partial Reinforcement

Reinforcing response part of the time.

The acquisition process is slower.

Greater resistance to extinction.

Fixed-ratio SchedulesA schedule that reinforces a response only

after a specified number of responses.

Example: I give cookie monster a cookie every FIVE times he sings “C is for cookie”.

Variable-ratio Schedule

A schedule of reinforcement that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.

Fixed-interval ScheduleA schedule of reinforcement that reinforces a response only after a specified (fixed) time has elapsed.

Example: I give Bart a Butterfinger every ten minutes after he moons someone.

Variable-interval ScheduleA schedule of reinforcement that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.

Pop Quizzes

Summary

Continuous reinforcement – reinforce every time (best for animals)

Partial reinforcement

FI VR VIFR

Schedules of reinforcement

Fixed – predictableVariable – not predictable (varies)

Ratio – every 3 responses, every 10 responses

Interval – time every month, 4 minutes

Fixed-ratio schedule FRVariable-ratio schedule VRFixed-interval FIVariable-interval VI

1. _______________ Paid 10 dollars for every 20 puzzles solved

2. _______________ Studying for a class that has surprise quizzes

3. _______________ Slot machines are based on this schedule

4. _______________ Doing 20 pushups a day to stay fit

Fixed-ratio schedule FRVariable-ratio schedule VRFixed-interval FIVariable-interval VI5. _______________ Playing Bingo

6. _______________ Getting a paycheck at the end of 2 weeks

7. _______________ A strike in bowling

8. _______________ Calling your mechanic to see if your car is fixed

9. _______________ Frequent flyer program where you get points every 100 m.

10. ______________ Waiting for a sunny day to go to the beach

11. ______________ Wife is watching boxing match with husband-she receives a kiss at the end of every 3-minute round

What is Social Learning Theory?

Albert Bandura: Bobo doll. We learn by observing the behavior of others and from imagining the consequences of our own behavior.

Social Learning Theory Cont.

Modeling: we imitate people who we Resemble Identify with View as successful

Vicarious Reinforcement and Punishment

Bobo doll experiment

Albert Bandura allowed children to watch an adult play with a bobo doll.

The experimental group watched a video of an adult playing violently with the doll

The control group watched a boring video.The experimental group children imitated the

violent behavior.

Insight Learning: This is an extension of the term, insight which was identified by Wolfgang Kohler while studying the behavior of chimpanzees. He said that insight learning is a type of learning or problem solving that happens all-of-a-sudden through understanding the relationships of various parts of a problem rather than through trial and error.

Sultan, one of Kohler's chimpanzes, learned to use a stick to pull bananas from outside of his cage by putting pieces of stick together. Given two sticks that could be fitted together to make a single pole that was long enough to reach the bananas, aligned the sticks and in a flash of sudden inspiration, fitted the two sticks together and pulled in the bananas. He didn't do this by trial and error, but had a sort of sudden inspiration or insight.

Classical Conditioning(to tune of You Are My

Sunshine)

You are my Pavlov, The dogs of Pavlov

You paired the food with the lights and bells

Response was very involuntaryYou taught

classic conditioning well

OPERANT CONDITIONING

His name is Skinner, oh BF Skinner

You put the lab rats inside your box

With reinforcements, and even punishments

Consequences shape the response

Learning Quiz

1. The major perspective that studies how our behaviors are shaped by our environment isa. psychodynamic b. behaviorismc. humanistic d. biomedical

2. Classical conditioning was studied by

a. Pavlov b. Bandura c. Freud d. Skinner

3."Little Albert," a very young boy, was conditioned to be afraid of a rat. He also became fearful of white furry rabbits and bearded men. This is an example of

a.spontaneous recovery b. higher order conditioningc. extinction d. stimulus generalization

4. A team coach who benches a player for poor performance is using

a. aversive conditioning b. modelingc. negative reinforcement d. punishment

5.Advertisers try to use higher order (classical) conditioning by

a. pairing images that evoke good feelings with pictures of their productsb. sounding loud tones at key points in the adc. reducing fear or anxiety as they repeatedly show the same commerciald. associating the UCS with a cognitive response

6. _____ occurs when making a response removes an unpleasant event.

a. positive reinforcement b. extinctionc. negative reinforcement d. punishment

7. Your young niece has a temper tantrum in the store when you two are shopping. If you buy her a toy you are

a. being practical b. being kindc. encouraging more tantrumsd. discouraging more destructive behaviors

8. He was famous for the Little Albert experiment

a. Albert Bandura b. Sigmund Freudc. Ivan Pavlov d. John Watson

9.The Little Albert experiment illustrated

a. How fears can be learnedb. generalizationc. unethical experimentationd. all of the above

10. Which of the following is an example of shaping?

a. A dog learns to salivate at the sight of a box of dog biscuitsb. A new driver learns to stop at an intersection when the light changes to redc. A parrot is rewarded first for making any sound, then for making a sound similar to “Laura,” and then for “speaking” its owner's named. A psychology student reinforces a laboratory rat only occasionally, to make its behavior more resistant to extinction

11. People who get sick after eating at a restaurant STILL won’t eat at that restaurant even when they know it wasn’t the restaurant’s fault. This is called

a. instinctive drift b. Garcia effectc. secondary conditioning d. Cheech and Chong syndrome

12. Parents nag and nag you until your grades go up. They stop nagging when your grades go up. This isa. positive reinforcement b. negative reinforcementc. positive punishment d. negative punishment

13. Every time you call your boyfriend he’s depressed angry and disappoints you in every way. As a result, you don’t call him anymore. The boyfriend is unknowingly _____ you for calling him.

a.positively reinforcingb.negatively reinforcingc. positively punishingd. negatively punishing

14. Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment illustrated

a.negative reinforcementb.social learning theoryc. classical conditioning d. operant conditioning

15. Many psychologists cite Bandura’s research to illustrate how

a. teens conform to fashion fadsb. introverted personalities succeed in high schoolc. exposure to violent TV and games leads to violent behaviord. abused women justify staying with their husbands.