Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 1
Name:_________________________________
Chapter 5: Learning Notes
Introduction
 ________________________: process by which expertise or practice result in relatively permanent change in
behavior or potential behavior
o Encompasses classroom learning and studying, but also covers other forms of learning like turning off
the lights when you leave a room, locking the door when you leave the house and learning how to dance
 ________________________: acquisition of specific patterns of behavior in the presence of well-defined stimuli
o Basic form of learning
 EX: a dog getting their leash when their owner puts on their shoes
 Dog knows that they are going for a walk because of past experiences
Section 1: Classical Conditioning
 Pavlov’s Conditioning Experiments
o Classical conditioning was discovered on accident by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
o ___________________physiologist who was studying digestive processes
o Wanted to measure how much a dog would salivate when food was paced in their mouths so he placed
tubes into the ____________________________________glands
 Noticed that the dogs would salivate when they heard the feeders footsteps and before they
were even fed
 Changed experiment and set out to teach dogs to salivate when a bell was sounded before they
were fed
 Learned to salivate at the sounds of the bell
 Elements of Classical Conditioning
o _______________________________conditioning involves pairing a response that is usually triggered
from one stimuli with a different neutral stimuli
o Pavlov’s experiment illustrated the 4 basic elements of Classical Conditioning
 1. ____________________________________________ Stimulus (US): stimulus that causes an
organism to respond a specific way
 EX: Food
 2. _____________________________________________(UR): a response that takes place in an
organism whenever an unconditional stimulus occurs
 EX: salivation
o Classical Conditioning is also known as _______________________________ Conditioning
 Reflexive behaviors happen because of a neutral stimuli
 EX: when you get anxious during a scary movie because you have heard the same eerie
music in other scary movies
o Classical conditioning is contrasted with __________________________Conditioning or Instrumental
Conditioning
 Selected behaviors are practiced to gain a reward or avoid punishment
Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 2

 EX: teaching a dog to sit and then rewarding them with a treat
 Will sit again to receive another reward
o 3. __________________________________ (CS): originally neutral stimulus that is paired with an
unconditional stimulus and eventually produces desired response in an organism when presented alone
 EX: ringing bell
o 4. __________________________________Response (CR): after conditioning, the response an organism
produces when only a conditioned stimulus presented
 EX: hearing the bell and then salivating
Classical Conditioning in Humans
o Human beings learn behaviors through classical conditioning
o ______________________________fears and anxieties are learned or conditioned
 Cats, spiders, snakes, heights, closed spaces
o Wolpe discovered that they could be unlearned or conditioned
 ___________________________________ Therapy: conditioning technique designed to
gradually reduce anxiety about a particular object or situation
 Step 1: teaches patient deep muscle relaxation techniques
 Step 2: Construct a list of situations that cause a variety of levels of fear and anxiety
o Rate them form 1-100
 Step 3: enter into deep relaxation and imagine the least stressful situation and work
their way up
o Classical Conditioning is Selective
o Humans must be prepared to develop __________________________responses and phobias for
survival
 Likely to be scared of heights and falling and dying them about a flower
 Preparedness also underlies conditioned Food (or Taste) Aversion
o Conditioned avoidance of certain foods id there is only one pairing of conditioned and unconditioned
stimuli
 Only need to get sick from food poisoning to not eat that food again
Section 2: Operant Conditioning
 Elements of Operant Conditioning
o ____________________________________________: behavior designed to operate on the
environment in a way that will gain some kind of desired or avoid something unpleasant
o Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)
 American psychologist and educator
 Cat and Puzzle Box Experiment
 Put hungry cats in a box where they could see and smell their food
 Each time the cat would be placed in the box it would take less and less time to get out
of the box to eat
o ________________________________________: stimulus that follows a behavior and increases the
likelihood that the behavior would be repeated
o Punishers: stimulus that follows a behavior and decreases the likelihood that the behavior will be
repeated
Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 3
o
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______________________________: Thorndike’s theory that behavior consistently rewarded will be
“stamped in” as a learned behavior, and behavior that brings about discomfort will be “stamped out”
 Also, known as principle of reinforcement
Types of Reinforcement
o Positive and Negative Reinforcement
 __________________________ Reinforcements: any event whose presence increases the
likelihood that an ongoing behavior will occur
 Adds something
 EX: food, pleasant music, anything rewarding
 ____________________________ Reinforcements: any event whose reduction or termination
increases the likelihood that ongoing behavior will recur
 Subtract something unpleasant
 EX: Animal learning to press a button to open a cage door to escape loud noises
o Punishment
 Punishment: any event whose presence decreases the likelihood that ongoing behavior will
recur
 EX: fine for speeding or littering
 Punishments should be…
 Effective, it must be imposed properly
 _________________________—be punished right away
 Sufficient—make sure punishment sis proportionate to action
 __________________________—punish each and every time they misbehave
 Significant drawbacks to punishments
 Punishments only suppress behavior—doesn’t teach more desirable behavior
 Punishments often stir up __________________________________ emotions that can
impede learning the behavior we want to be substituted
o EX: when children are scolded for mispronouncing a word child may become
frightened and confused and then they may mispronounce more words because
they are distracted
 ___________________________________________ may convey the notion that
inflicting pain on other is justified
 As a method for controlling behavior, punishment is one of the least pleasant options because it
is ineffective and can have negative side effects
 _______________________________________________: learning a desirable behavior
to prevent the occurrence of something unpleasant such as punishment
Operant Conditioning is Selective
o Some behaviors are easier to train than others
o Leaning was most successful in situation that would occur in natural training sessions
 EX: eating with silverware v. hands
Superstitious Behavior
o Humans learn __________________________________________ through Operant Conditioning
 EX: If we are wearing a pair of shoes and win a basketball game you might want to wear those
shoes to every game
Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 4
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Learned Helplessness
o __________________________________________________: failure to take steps to avoid or escape
from an unpleasant or averse stimulus that occurs as a result of previous exposure to unavoidable
painful stimuli
 EX: children raised in abusive homes where punishment is unrelated to child’s behavior often
developed a sense of powerlessness
 Even when child is removed from environment and in a relatively normal environment
the child still remains listless, passive and indifferent
 Little attempt to seek reward or avoid discomfort
Section 3: Comparing Operant and Classical Conditioning
 Response Acquisition
o Classical Conditioning
 Requires repeated pairings of _________________________________________Stimulus and
_______________________________________stimulus
 Each pairing builds on the learners previous experience
 Response Acquisition: the “building phase” of conditioning during which the likelihood
or strength of the desired response increases
 Each pairing of Conditioned Stimulus and Unconditioned Stimulus is called a
_________________
 For the best learning trials should occur and a
______________________________interval of time...not too many to close together or
far apart
o Operant Conditioning
 Most difficult but the behavior taught is usually a _______________________ trait such as not
talking while someone else is talking
 Need to wait until the subject lands on the correct response on their own
 Can be a __________________________process
 There are ways to speed up the process and make it more likely that the desired response will
happen
 Increase ____________________________________
 Reduce or eliminate the opportunities for making the wrong choice
 ___________________________________: reinforcing successive approximations to a
desired behavior
o Rewarding each step in learning a behavior and setting the expectations a little
higher each time
 EX: reward for being to class on time, then a reward for being to class
on time and in uniform, finally a reward for being to class on time, in
uniform and working on the Do Now
Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 5
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Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
o How long does a learned behavior last, and once lost can it be recovered?
o Classical Conditioning
 _________________________________________________: a decrease in the strength or
frequency of a learned response because of failure to continue pairing the Unconditioned
Stimulus and Conditioned Stimulus (Classical Conditioning) or withholding of reinforcement
(operant conditioning)
 Eventually you are desensitized, or no longer sensitize to certain things after
experiencing them so much
 ____________________________________________________: the reappearance of an
extinguished response after the passage of time, without further training
 Extinction does not erase conditioned responses, extinction occurs because new learning
interferes with pervious learned response
 We overcome this interference with renewal effect
o Operant Conditioning
 Extinction happens when the reinforcement is being _____________________________
 Does not result in immediate decrease in frequency
 Extinction does not erase the response forever
 Spontaneous recovery may occur
 Will advert back to pervious _____________________________but is capable of still
demonstrating learned behavior
 The stronger the _________________________learning the longer it takes to stop
action from being preformed
 The greater the variety of settings in which learning takes place the
_______________________to extinguish
 Behaviors learned through _________________________________________rather
than reinforcement are especially harder to distinguish
Generalization and Discrimination
o Classical Conditioning
 Remember the Little Albert and white rat experiment?
 Later tried to show him a white RABBIT and he was still frightened, cried and tried to crawl away
 ___________________________________________________________: the transfer of
a learned response to a different but similar stimuli
 Albert was afraid of the rabbit because it looked like the white rat
 _____________________________________________________________________: learning to
respond to only one stimulus and to inhabit the response to all other stimuli
 If they would have given Albert the white rat, rabbit, cotton balls and other white fluffy
things and only made the loud sound when he touched the rat he would be able to
discriminate the only “scary” item as the rat
o Operant Conditioning
 Stimulus Generalization
 EX: the skills you learn in ping pong you may generalize when playing badminton or
tennis
 ____________________________________________________________: giving a response
that is somewhat different from the response originally learned from the stimulus
 EX: a baby who called everyone “mama” might start using word like “gaga” and “baba”
because they should similar—generalized as the same thing
Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 6
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Discrimination
 Only reinforcing a very specific response and only in the presence of a specific stimulus
 EX: only showing praise to a baby that says “mama” will stop saying gaga and baba
New Learning Based on Original Learning
o Higher-Order Conditioning in Classical Conditioning
 Conditioning based on pervious learning; the ______________________________ stimulus
serves as an unconditioned stimulus for further training
 EX: Pavlov was able to get his dogs to salivate at the sight of a black square
o Originally they would salivate when they heard bell but now he would show
them a black square and then ring the bell
o The black square became the object that made them salivate not the bell
 Difficult to achieve because it races against extinction
o Secondary Reinforces in Operant Conditioning
 _________________________________ Reinforcer: a reinforcer that is rewarding in itself, such
as food and water
 _________________________________ Reinforcer: a reinforcer whose value is acquired
through association with other primary or secondary reinforcer
 EX: money
 Just holding the paper doesn’t do much for you, but being able to buy things is what you
want money for
Contingencies
o Classical Conditioning
 ______________________________________: reliable “if- then” relationship between 2 events
such as Conditioned Stimulus and Unconditioned Stimulus
 EX: If I hear a loud sound and get shocked but sometimes when I hear the sound I don’t
get shocked, then I will be startled every time I hear a loud sound
 ____________________________: a process whereby conditioning prevents conditioning to a
second stimulus even when the two stimuli are presented simultaneously
 EX: if you add a flash of light to the above example they only showed fear when the
heard the sound…they had be conditioned to be scare of the sound not the later added
light
o Operant Conditioning
 _____________________________________________________________________: in operant
conditioning, the rule for determining when and how often reinforcers will be delivered
 A fixed-Interval
o Correct response is reinforced after a ____________________ length of time
since the last reinforcement
o EX: Midterms and final exams—student stress peak right before them and then
drop dramatically when they are over
 Variable-Interval Schedule
o Reinforced after _________________________lengths of time following the last
reinforcement
o EX: giving students candy at different time periods with no pattern in mind
 Fixed-Ratio Schedule
o Reinforced after a _______________________ number of correct response
o EX: getting paid only for working 4 hr shifts. Work less than 4 hrs don’t get paid
and if you work 6hrs you only get paid for one 4 hr shift
Psychology
Chapter 5 Notes
Ms. Litza
Page 7
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Variable-Ratio Schedule
o _________________________number of correct responses must occur before
reinforcement is presented
o EX: Casino slot machine
 You will win but you have no idea of when
 There is always a chance of hitting a jackpot so the temptation to play is
high
Section 4: Cognitive Learning
 Latent Learning and Cognitive Maps
o ____________________________________________________: learning that depends on mental
processes that are not directly observable
 How we learn our way around building or neighborhood, we learn what to expect from a given
situation, abstract concepts, etc
o ____________________________________ Learning: learning that is not immediately reflected in a
behavior change
 Learn something but don’t use it right away…use it later on when it makes sense to use it
o _________________________________________________________: learned mental image of a spatial
environment that may be called on to solve problems when stimuli is the environment change
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Insight and Learning Sets
o ______________________________: learning that occurs rapidly as a result of understanding all the
element of a problem
 The sudden coming together of elements of a situation
 “oohhhh that makes sense now” moments
o Pervious learning can also be used to speed up new learning
o _________________________________________: ability to become increasingly more effective in
solving problems as more problems are solved
 With practice and experience problem solving becomes easier and easier
Learning by Observing
o Many psychologists believe that leaning comes from conditioning
 Others believe that is stems from social learning theories
o _________________________________________________________: emphasizes that ability to learn
by observing a model or receiving instructions, without firsthand experience by the learner
 We can learn a behavior without ever doing it
o ________________________________________________________: learning by observing other
people’s behavior
 By watching someone else do something we can do it to
o Vicarious Reinforcement and Vicarious Punishment
 ______________________________________________________ or
_________________________________________________ experiences by model that affects
the willingness of other to perform behaviors they learn by observing those models
 Will or will not do something because of the consequences that are experienced by
others