CHAPTER 2
Learning:
Principles &
Applications
OBJECTIVES
 Describe the principles and techniques of classical
conditioning
 Outline the principles, techniques, and applications
of operant conditioning
 Cite the factors involved in the process of learning
 Apply the principles of learning to human and animal
behavior
KEY TERMS
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Aversive control
Avoidance conditioning
Behavior modification
Classical conditioning
Conditioned response (CR)
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
Discrimination
Escape conditioning
Extinction
Feedback
Fixed-interval schedule
Fixed-ratio schedule
Generalization
Learning
Negative reinforcement
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Neutral stimulus
Operant conditioning
Primary reinforcers
Reinforcement
Response chains
Secondary reinforcer
Shaping
Token economy
Transfer
Unconditioned response (UCR)
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
Variable-interval schedule
Variable-ratio schedule
SUPERSTITIONS
 What do you have?
 What do others have?
 What myths caused this?
 Was it the stimuli- Breaking the mirror caused the bad luck?
OR was other factors that caused the bad luck
 Superstition: Is the result of pairing an unrelated event
(walking under a ladder) with a related event (breaking an
ankle)
SUPERSTITIONS
 Read example
 Dumb and Dumber
CONDITIONING
What is conditioning? Hair or working
out?
Process by which we learn superstitions
and other behavior in our lives
…BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF BEHAVIOR
 Infant
 Hold
yourself
upright
 To walk
 To use your
hands
 Run
 Ride a bike
 Operate a
TV
 Write
 Study




Asking
Bargaining
Being nice
Pouting
 Fears &
how to
overcome
 Learned how
to learn
 Teenage
 Adolescent
 Pre-teen
 Read
 Get what you
want by:
LEARNING
 Learning: A lasting change in behavior that results from
experience
 Why have you learned to fear the dentist?
1. Fear of pain
2. OR because every time you expressed your fears, your parents or
friends gave you special attention and comfort.
3. OR you may never have gone to the dentist, but may have learned to
fear him or her by watching someone else’s reaction.
 These examples represent the 3 basic types of learning that
psychologist have studied
1. Classical conditioning
2. Operant conditioning
3. Modeling
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
 Ivan Pavlov
 Discovery of the principle of classical conditioning
was accidental.
 Was studying the process of digestion
 Wanted to understand how a dog’s stomach prepares to
digest food when something is placed in its mouth.
 Notice that the mere sight or smell of food was enough to
start a dog salivating
 Fascination with what he called “psychic secretions”
 Occurred before the food was presented
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT
 Pavlov (1927)
 Began experiments by ringing tuning fork and then immediately
placing some meat powder on the dog’s tongue
 Why did he choose the tuning fork?
 It was a neutral stimulus
 Neutral stimulus: A stimulus that does not initially elicit a response
 It had nothing to do with the response to meat (salivation) prior to conditioning.
 Only after a few times, the dog started salivating as soon as it heard
the sound, even if food was not placed in its mouth
 Went on to demonstrate that a neutral stimulus will cause a formerly
unrelated response if it is presented regularly just before the
stimulus (here, food) that normally induces the response (salivation)
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT
 Pavlov used term unconditioned to refer to stimuli and to the
automatic, involuntary responses they caused.
 Ex: Blushing, shivering, being startled, or salivating
 Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): An event that elicits a certain
predictable response without previous training
 In the experiment what was the unconditioned stimulus?
 FOOD
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT
 Does the dog have to be taught to salivate when it smells meat?
 Unconditioned response (UCR): A reaction that occurs naturally and
automatically when the unconditioned stimulus is presented.
 In the experiment what was the unconditioned response?
 Salivation
 Under normal conditions, would the tuning fork cause salivation?
 NO, the dog had to be taught, or conditioned, to associate this sound with
food
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT
 An ordinarily neutral event that, after training, leads to a
response such as salivation
 Conditioned stimulus (CS): In classical conditioning, a once-neutral
event that has come to elicit a given response after a period of
training in which it has been paired with an unconditioned stimulus
(UCS)
 The salivation it causes is a conditioned response (CR)
 Conditioned response (CR): In classical conditioning, a learned
reaction to a conditioned stimulus
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT
 A wide variety of events may serve as a conditioned
stimuli for salivation. What events could make the
dog salivate?
 Sight of food
 Experimenter entering the room
 Sound of a tone
 Flash of light
 Controlling an animal’s or person’s responses in this
way so that an old response becomes attached to a
new stimulus is called classical conditioning
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT
 Classical conditioning: A learning procedure in which a
stimulus that normally elicits a given response is repeatedly
preceded by a neutral stimulus (one that usually does not
elicit the response). Eventually, the neutral stimulus will
evoke a similar response when presented by itself.
 Reflex responses
 Occur automatically following a UCS can be conditioned to
occur whenever the correct CS occurs
 Glands=salivation or weeping
 Internal muscles=stomach
 Controlled by the automatic nervous system and very much involved in your
emotions
STIMULUS AND RESPONSE
 Worksheet page 23-24
ZIMBARDO DISCUSSES PAVLOV
 Video
ROVER’S RESPONSE
 Hey Doggie
PAVLOV DOGS
 Handout (gray)
THE OFFICE (CLASSICAL CONDITIONING)
 The Of fice (Jim and Dwight
 Before conditioning, what was the…
 Neutral stimulus
 Computer tone
 Response
 Dwight’s mouth did not taste like nastiness
 Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
 Altoids
 Response
 Nastiness taste in mouth
THE OFFICE (CLASSICAL CONDITIONING)
 During conditioning
 Conditioned stimulus
 Computer tone paired with
 Unconditioned stimulus
 Altoids
 Response
 Nastiness in mouth
THE OFFICE (CLASSICAL CONDITIONING)
After conditioning
 Conditioned stimulus
 Computer tone
 Conditioned response
 Nastiness in mouth
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
 Occurs gradually
 With each pairing of the conditioned stimulus and the
unconditioned stimulus, the learned response, or CR, is
strengthened
 In Pavlov’s experiment, the more frequently the tuning fork
was paired with the food, the more often the tone elicited
salivation-the conditioned response
 Does the timing between the conditioned stimulus (tone) &
the unconditioned stimulus (food) matter?
 Yes, the timing influences learning
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
 Timing:
 Pavlov tried several different conditioning stimulus and
the unconditioned stimulus. Sometimes he presented the
tone before the food. Other times, he presented the tone
at the same time as the food, called simultaneous
conditioning.
 He found that classical conditioning was most reliable
and effective when the conditioned stimulus was
presented just before the unconditioned stimulus. He
found that presenting the CS about half a second before
the UCS gave the best results
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
 Pavlov also explored generalization & discrimination
 Generalization: Responding similarly to a range of similar stimuli
 In this experiment, the dog would respond to a second stimulus similar to
the original CS, without prior training
 Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate at the sight of a circle
(CS), he found that the dog would salivate when it saw an oval
as well.
 Why did the dog salivate with a circle and an oval?
 The dog had generalized its response to include a similar stimulus
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
 Pavlov was later able to do the opposite, to teach the dog to respond
only to the circle by always pairing meat powder with the circle but
never pairing it with the oval.
 Pavlov taught the dog to discriminate
 Discrimination: The ability to respond differently to similar but distinct stimuli
 Generalization and discrimination are complementar y processes and
are par t of your ever yday life.
 Ex: Your friend has come to associate the sound of a dentist’s drill (CS) with
a fearful reaction (CR). After several exposures to a dentist’s drill, your friend
may find that she has generalized this uncomfortable feeling to the sound of
other non-dental drills.
 Later, your friend may learn to discriminate between the sound of a dentist’s
drill and other drills
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
 Do you think that a classically conditioned response is subject to
change?
 What if Pavlov (Jim) stopped presenting the food (Altoids) after
the sound of the tuning fork (computer tone)?
 What type of effect would the sound have on the dog/Dwight?
 The dog/Dwight would no longer associate the sound with the arrival of
the food/Altoids
 No longer elicited the same response
 Pavlov called this effect extinction because the CR had gradually
died out
 Extinction: The gradual disappearance of a conditioned response
because the reinforcement is withheld or because the conditioned
stimulus is repeatedly presented without the UCS (unconditioned stimulus)
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
 Can a spontaneous recover y occur when the CR reappears
when the CS is presented?
 UHHHHHH OOOOOOHHHH
 What’s the CS & CR again?
 CS: Tone of tuning fork
 CR: Salivation
 Yes spontaneous recovery can occur but does not bring the CR
back to its original strength
 Pavlov’s dogs produced much less saliva during spontaneous
recovery than they did during original conditioning
SHOWER TIME!
 Example of extinction and spontaneous recovery
 Every time you are in the shower and the water pressure drops, the
water suddenly turns very hot. You learn to associate the normally
neutral stimulus of a drop in water presser with your automatic
startle reaction to the hot water surge. Even after you finally repair
your plumbing so hot water no longer follows a drop in water
pressure. It may take several showers before you no longer react to a
water pressure change. You eventually extinguish the startle reaction.
 You go away on vacation and when you return, you again react with a
startle whenever the water pressure changes. You have had a
spontaneous recovery of your conditioned startle reaction. After
several showers without any hot water assaults, you no longer have a
reaction; it is extinguished.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
 Classical Conditioning worksheet page 30
THE CASE OF LITTLE ALBERT
 Can a 9-month old child be conditioned to fear objects?
 The Little Albert Experiment
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY
ALBERT?
 Handout (blue)
BABY ALBERT CONDITIONING
 Worksheet
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING & HUMAN
BEHAVIOR
 Children and bed wetting
 1938 O. Hobart Mowrer 7 wife Mollie developed a device called the
bell and pad
 2 metallic sheets, perforated with small holes attached with wires to
a battery-run alarm
 Full bladder (CS)
 Alarm (UCS)
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING & HUMAN
BEHAVIOR
 Taste aversion
 You have eaten something and became ill, now you can no longer
eat or look at the food without becoming nauseated
 John Garcia & R.A. Koelling (1966) first demonstrated this
phenomenon with rats. The rats were placed in a cage with a tube
containing flavored water. Whenever a rat took a drink, lights
flashed and clicks sounded. Then, some of the rats were given an
electric shock after they drank. All the rats showed traditional
classical conditioning; the lights and the sounds became
conditioned stimuli, and they tried to avoid them in order to avoid
shock. The other rats were not shocked, but were injected with a
drug that made them sick after they drank and the lights and
sounds occurred. These rats developed an aversion not to the lights
or the sounds but only to the taste of the flavored water
OPERANT CONDITIONING
 Why are people told never to feed a stray cat?
 Operant conditioning : A form of learning in which a cer tain action is
reinforced or punished, resulting in corresponding increases or
decreases in the likelihood that similar actions will occur again
 YOUR BRO!
 Suppose you have a younger brother who is unhappy because you
seem to be capturing your mother’s attention. He begins to pout and
act aggressively toward you. Right away your mother stops attending
to you to reprimand him. Even though your mother’s attention is
negative, your brother seems to like it. A short time later, he is back
again harassing you and earning another reprimand from your
mother.
 This is an example of operant conditioning!!
OPERANT CONDITIONING
 The term operant is used because the subject (brother)
operates on or causes some change in the environment
 This produces a result that influences whether they will
operate or respond in the same way in the future
 Depending on the ef fect of the operant behaviors, the learner
will repeat or eliminate these behaviors - to get rewards or
avoid punishment
OPERANT CONDITIONING
VS.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
 How experimenter conducts the experiment?
 Classical conditioning: The experimenter presents
the CS and UCS independent of the subject’s
behavior.
 Reactions to the CS are then observed
 Operant conditioning: The subject must engage in a
behavior in order for the programmed outcome to
occur
 In other words, operant conditioning is the study
of how behavior is affected by its consequences
OPERANT CONDITIONING
 Worksheet: 29 & 43
SKINNER BOX
 What psychologist is most closely associated with operant
conditioning?
 B.F. Skinner
 Believed that most behavior is influenced by one’s history of rewards and
punishments.
 Rat
 A rat presses a bar in a Skinner box. The Skinner box is an artificial
environment in which lights, sounds, rewards, and punishments can be
delivered and controlled. Some of the animal’s behaviors, such as bar
pressing, can be recorded by automatic switches
 Pigeon and box
USING OPERANT CONDITIONING
PRINCIPLES
 Gray worksheet with groups
REINFORCEMENT
 EX: Yo what’s up dog, shake hands!
 Every time the the dog lifts its paw up to you, it is given a treat.
 The treat is called positive reinforcement
 Reinforcement: Immediately following a particular response
with a reward in order to strengthen that response
 What type of reinforcers do people respond to?
 Social approval, money, & extra privileges
SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT
 Important factor of Operant conditioning
 Timing and frequency
 Behavior that is reinforced every time it occurs is on a
 Continuous schedule of reinforcement
 Surprisingly in the long run, the best results are not obtained
through continuous schedule but when positive reinforcement
occurs on a partial schedule. Responses are more stable and
last longer
AN EXAMPLE OF REINFORCEMENT
 Big Bang Theory?
4 BASIC SCHEDULES
 Fixed-ratio schedule: A schedule of reinforcement in which a
specific number of correct responses is required before
reinforcement can be obtained
 Ex: Rewarding every 4 th response
 The student who receives a good grade after completing a specified
amount of work.
 People tend to work hard on fixed-ration schedules
 Low morale and few responses at the beginning of each new cycle
because there is such a long way to go before the next reinforcement
4 BASIC SCHEDULES
 Variable-ratio schedule: A schedule of reinforcement in which
a dif ferent number of responses are required before
reinforcement can be obtained each time
 EX: Slot machines, set to pay off after a varying number of attempts
 Gamblers often n overlook this feature and continue to deposit coins
at a high rate
 Believe the more they do, the sooner they will hit the jackpot
 Ratio must be set so casino operators can make a profit
4 BASIC SCHEDULES
 Fixed-interval schedule: A schedule of reinforcement in which
a specific amount of time must elapse before a response will
elicit reinforcement
 The time interval- whether it is seconds, minutes, hours or
days- is always the same
4 BASIC SCHEDULES
 Variable-interval schedule: A schedule of reinforcement in
which changing amount of time must elapse before a
response will obtain reinforcement each time
 Ex: Trying to reach a friend and goes straight to voicemail. The
number of times you continue to try and call will determine
roughly how often you try the phone again…and again
 Pigeon
STUDENT WORKSHEET
 Schedule worksheet
STIMULUS CONTROL
 Wolfe 1936
 Demonstrated this chimpanzees that poker chips have no value for
chimps
 They are not edible and they aren’t very much fun to play with
 Operant conditioning was used to teach chimps to value poker chips
as much as humans
STIMULUS CONTROL
 “Chimp-O-Mat”
 Dispensed peanuts or bananas (primary reinforcers)
 Primary reinforcers: Stimuli that are naturally rewarding, such as food or
water
 To obtain food, the chimps had to pull down on a heavily weighted
bar to obtain poker chips, then insert the chips in a slot machine
 With repetition, the poker chips became conditioned reinforcers.
Their value was evident from the fact that the chimpanzees would
work for them, save them, and sometimes try to steal from one
another
AVERSIVE CONTROL
 People often refer to reinforcement only to pleasant
consequences of behavior
 Psychologists refer to reinforcement as anything that
increases the frequency of an immediately preceding behavior
 Aversive control: The process of influencing behavior by
means of unpleasant stimuli
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
 Negative reinforcement: Increasing the strength of a given
response by removing or preventing a painful stimulus when
the response occurs
 Negative reinforcement follows and takes away, or negates an
aversive stimulus
ESCAPE CONDITIONING
 Escape conditioning: The training of an organism to remove or
terminate an unpleasant stimulus
 Consider the case of a child who hates liver and is
served it for dinner-thoroughly repulsive experience.
She whines about food and gags while eating it. At
this point, her mother removes the liver. The gagging
and whining behavior has been thus negatively
reinforced, and the child is more likely to gag and
whine in the future when given an unpleasant meal .
 Escape learning because the behavior has enabled the child to
escape the liver meal
AVOIDANCE CONDITIONING
 Avoidance Conditioning: The training of an organism to
remove or withdraw from an unpleasant stimulus before it
starts
 If the girl’s past whining and gagging behavior had
stopped the mother from even serving the liver, we
would identify the situation as avoidance
conditioning; the child would have avoided the
unpleasant consequences in advance.
PUNISHMENT
 Most obvious form of aversive control is not negative
reinforcement, but punishment!
 EX: If you want to stop a dog from pawing at you when it wants
attention, you should loudly say “No!” when it paws at you.
 EX: Sending a child to his/her room every time he harassed you
would be an appropriate punisher; this unpleasant stimulus would
have discouraged him from repeating the behavior
PUNISHMENT VS . NEGATIVE
REINFORCEMENT
 In punishment, an unpleasant consequence occurs and
decreases the frequency of the behavior that produced it…
 Negative reinforcement and punishment operate in opposite
ways
 In negative reinforcement, escape or avoidance behavior is
repeated, and increase in frequency
 In punishment, behavior that is punished decreases or is not
repeated
PUNISHMENT
 Who you gonna call?
 (Although more for obedience Stanley Milgram’s experiment)
LEARNING STRATEGIES
 Read page 38-40
 Learning strategies, learning to learn, learned helplessness
LEARNING COMPLICATED SKILLS
 Shaping: A technique of operant conditioning in which the
desired behavior is “molded” by first rewarding any act similar
to that behavior and then requiring closer and closer
approximations to the desired behavior before giving the
reward
 Read 40-42
MODELING
 Read page 42-43
 Modeling
 Observation learning
 Disinhibition