Learning
What is Learning?
 a relatively permanent change
in an organism’s behavior due
to experience
Behaviorism
 The psychological domain that argues that
psychology should be an objective science
1849-1936
• Was going to follow
his father into the
Russian Orthodox
priesthood
• Received a medical
degree at age 33
• Russia’s first Nobel
Prize in 1904
Pavlov
 Russian scientist that  Problem: Dogs would
studied the affect of
start salivating before
salivation on digestion they got food.
 Solution: Forget the
digestion, let’s study
learning!
Learning
 Pavlov noticed the dogs  What did the dogs do?
salivated naturally when
they ate.
 He paired bringing food
with ringing a tone.
 After a while he rang the
tone, but didn’t bring
food.
Classical Conditioning
 A form of learning
where an organism
learns to associate
stimuli
 Placing a neutral
signal before a
naturally occurring
reflex.
Pavlov’s Dogs
Neutral Signal- sound
of a tone
Naturally Occurring
Reflex- salivating in
response to food
4 Parts of Classical Conditioning
 Unconditioned Stimuli
(UCS)- something that
causes a natural
response
 Conditioned Stimuli (CS)a previously neutral
stimuli that, after
learning, produces the
natural response
 Unconditioned Response
(UCR)- what happens
 Conditioned Response
naturally as a result of
(CR)- same as UCR, but in
the UCS
response to the CS
4 Parts of Pavlov
 UCS-
 CS-
 UCR-
 CR-
4 Parts of Pavlov
 UCS- Food
 CS- Tone
 UCR- Salivation
 CR- Salivation
Examples of Classical Conditioning
Every time someone flushes a toilet in the apartment building, the
shower becomes very hot and causes the person to jump back. Over
time, the person begins to jump back automatically after hearing the
flush, before the water temperature changes.
An individual receives frequent injections of drugs, which are
administered in a small examination room at a clinic. The drug itself
causes increased heart rate but after several trips to the clinic,
simply being in a small room causes an increased heart rate.
Another example of classical conditioning is known as the
appetizer effect. If there are otherwise neutral stimuli that
consistently predict a meal, they could cause people to
become hungry, because those stimuli induce involuntary
changes in the body, as a preparation for digestion. There’s a
reason it’s called the “dinner bell,” after all
Other examples?
 Flinching when seeing lightning
 Shocking animals after a tone
Classroom Classical Conditioning
I need a VolunteerNow identify the UCS, UCR, CS, and CRUCS- water squirted in volunteers face
UCR- flinch or squint (reaction)
CS- sound of word CAN
CR- flinch or squint, reaction to when any form of
can word or similar word
Parts of Learning
Parts of Learning- how people develop learned
responses through classical conditioning
 Acquisition- gaining learning of the stimulus-response
relationship
 The conditioned stimulus must come within half a
second of the unconditioned stimulus for a
relationship to be formed
 Acquisition teaches organisms to prepare for good or
bad events
 Extinction- when the CS is no longer paired with the
UCS, learning is lost
 Spontaneous recovery- after extinction, if one
waits awhile, learning can come back
Generalization
 Conditioned responses occurring for similar
stimuli (even ones that aren’t conditioned)
 Example: Children fearing cars and learn to
avoid motorcycles and trucks as well
 A dog is trained to run to his
owner when he hears a whistle.
 After the dog has been
conditioned, he responds to any
sound similar to a whistle.
Discrimination
 The ability to tell the difference between stimuli
 Distinguish between a CS and a stimulus that does
not trigger a response
 Example: Being afraid of pit bulls but not beagles
Examples of Classical Conditioning
John Watson- a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University
Assignment:
In your comp book activity section, identify the UCS,
UCR, CS, and CR
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI
(John Watson, Little Albert)
 http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?title=The_Offic
e_Conditioning&video_id=247611
(The Office)
John Watson Little Albert
Watson’s experiments proved that through classical conditioning, emotions
and behaviors can be taught humans.
The Office
Journal #10
 Explain a time in your life when you
have been classically conditioned to
do something.
 Explain the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR.
 How can people use classical
conditioning to their advantage (hint:
think advertising)
Aversive Conditioning
 Using classical conditioning to keep animals
(people) away from harmful substances
 Developed by Garcia after studying taste
aversions in rats
 What things won’t you eat any more?
How does learning help us survive?
We can teach generalization,
discrimination, and aversion
We can teach to warn away from
dangers
We can teach what we know- parents,
teachers, coaches, etc…
What has been learned can potentially be
changed by new learning- counseling,
rehabilitation, etc…
Applications of Classical Conditioning
 Teaching people new things
 Psych Therapy
 Therapeutic application in humans- helping to
get rid of fears and anxiety
• Pair a stimulus CS that elicits fear with a
stimulus US that elicits positive emotion UR.
• Example:
A person with a fear of snakes, but loves
strawberry ice cream is shown a snake and then
given ice cream. While the person is busy eating
the ice cream, classical conditioning helps
associate the snake with good feelings.
Bed Wetting- a child sleeps on a pad with a wire mesh that
when wet causes a bell to ring. US The child wakes up. UR
After several repetitions of this cycle, in which the bedwetting has caused him to be awakened by the bell, the child
associates the sensation of pressure in his bladder with
waking up. In a short time, the need to urinate now a CS
becomes sufficient in itself to awaken the child now a CR so
he or she gets up to go to the restroom.
Aversive ConditioningCounselors sometimes provide people who abuse alcohol
with aversive experiences that may reverse their positive
associations with alcohol
Predation Control- Conditioning Coyotes not to eat the
sheep. Took sheep meat US and sprinkled it with a
chemical CS that would produce a stomachache UR in
the coyotes. After the coyotes ate the treated meat, they
avoided the live sheep CR .
Operant Conditioning
 A type of learning that teaches using
reinforcement and punishment
B.F. Skinner
 English major who decided to study psychology
as a graduate student
 Focused on Thorndike’s law of effect: rewarded
behaviors will likely be continued
 Taught animals tricks
Principles of Operant Conditioning
 Reinforcement- Something that causes a
behavior to increase
 Positive- good behavior results in a reward
 Negative- good behavior results in taking away
something bad
 Punishment- Something that causes a
behavior to decrease
Shaping
 When behavior is
trained through closer
and closer
approximations
Types of Reinforcement
 Primary- innately
satisfying (meets a
need)
 Food
 Secondary- paired
with primary to
become satisfying
 Money
 Immediatehappens right now
 Get a treat for
answering a question
 Delayed- reward
comes in the future
 Graduating high
school
Reinforcement Schedules
 Fixed-interval- behavior
 Fixed-ratio- behavior is
is reinforced for the first
reinforced after a specific
desired response after a
number of responses
specific time
 You can take a break from
homework after completing 2
assignments
 Baking time on a cake
 Variable-interval Variable-ratiobehavior is reinforced for
behavior is reinforced
the first desired response
after an unpredictable
after a variable time
amount of responses
length
 Traveling salesperson
 Getting e-mail
Punishment
 Reduces behavior
 Applying something
undesirable
 Why?
 Taking away
something desirable
Motivation
 Extrinsic-
 Intrinsic-
 Outside of you
 Inside of you
 Rewards and
punishments
 Event is valuable for
its own sake
Legacies of BF Skinner
 Computers at school
 Rewards at
school/work
 Child-rearing
Cognition in learning
 Sometimes we learn
without being
conditioned
 Known as latent learning
Observational Learning
 We learn things from
watching others
 Monkey see, monkey
do
Albert Bandura
 Bobo Doll experiment  http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=eqNaLe
 Children watched a
rMNOE
video of an adult
beating up a Bobo
doll
 Children beat up the
Bobo doll
Biological Basis?
 Mirror Neurons- fire
when perform an action
or see someone else
doing it
 Provides the foundation
for observational
learning