AP Psychology
Learning
aversive conditioning
Aversive conditioning is the process of influencing behavior by
means of unpleasant stimuli. There are two ways in which
unpleasant events affect our behavior – as negative reinforcers and
as punishers.
If a child begins reaching for an electrical outlet, some parents let
out a sharp “no” and follow it with a smack on the hand. Soon, the
child begins to associate approaching an electrical outlet with a
loud and mean-sounding rebuke from his/her parents and a smack.
The child will then seek to avoid that in the future by avoiding the
electrical outlets.
behavior modification
Behavior modification is a systematic usage of learning techniques
designed to change behavior and/or feelings.
Rehabilitation, as seen in prison, is often a form of behavior
modification – an approach towards first desocialization (getting rid
of the bad modes of behavior) and then resocialization (inserting
better, socially-acceptable modes of behavior) so that a person can
more easily integrate into society.
biological preparedness
Based on the work of John Garcia, biological preparedness involves a
species-specific predisposition to be conditioned in certain ways and
not others. Garcia attached it to food aversion. We seek to avoid the
food that is bad for us as a survival instinct so natural selection
favored those who avoided foods that make us sick.
Martin Seligman extended the idea of preparedness to phobias.
Some phobias come easily after unpleasant experiences (spiders,
heights, darkness) while other such experiences do not cause
phobias (knives, hot stoves and electrical outlets). The situations
that cause quick development of phobias are likely a product of
evolution and are ingrained.
classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a learning process by which associations
are made between a natural stimulus and a neutral or new
stimulus.
Ivan Pavlov’s landmark study with a dog showed that formally
neutral stimuli can be conditioned to create a response that would
not have been possible before conditioning – in this case, using a
bell or chime to trigger salivation.
classical conditioning: acquisition
Acquisition refers to an initial stage of learning something. Ivan Pavlov
theorized that acquisition to a CR depends on the stimuli occurring
together in time and space. Yet more is required because you are
constantly bombarded by stimuli that can be grouped together. Stimuli
that is unique or unusual has a greater chance of being a CS.
The timing of stimuli presentations also has an impact:
CS-UCS occurring at the same time (simultaneous conditioning).
CS begins right before the UCS and tops at the same time as
the UCS (short-delayed conditioning).
CS begins and ends before the UCS is presented (trace
conditioning).
Short-delayed conditioning tends to be more impactful and likely to lead
to acquisition.
classical conditioning:
backward conditioning
In backward conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is
presented before the conditioned stimulus (CS). This does not prove
to be as effectual as the typical pattern of classical conditioning.
classical conditioning:
conditioned stimulus (CS) and response (CR)
A conditioned stimulus (CS) refers to a once-neutral event that
elicits a given response after a period of training in which it has
been paired with an unconditioned stimulus.
A conditioned response (CR) is a learned reaction to a conditioned
stimulus.
An example would be a young child who has never seen a dog
before so, upon seeing one, is curious. However, when the dog
bites the child, the child will have learned fear of the dog and move
away from one in the future.
classical conditioning:
conditioned taste aversion
You are having dinner with some friends at a new restaurant and you
order the fish of the day (one you’ve never tried) in a delicious lemon
sauce with rice and broccoli. Six hours later, you become incredibly
sick to the point that afterwards, the smell of fish and lemon sauce
make you nauseous.
There were a plethora of things that could have caused the same
nausea but people often attribute such symptoms to the food.
Conditioned taste aversion, established by John Garcia, is the
tendency to combine the food (taste stimuli) and nausea, leading to
an automatic assumption of cause and effect. Garcia attributed this
tendency to part of an evolutionary process, helping us to avoid bad
foods in order to prevent illness or even death.
classical conditioning:
delayed conditioning
Delayed conditioning refers to the introduction of the conditioned
stimulus and its continued engagement until the unconditioned
stimulus is introduced. This is also referred to as forward
conditioning.
So, in Pavlov’s experiment, the bell continues to ring until the food is
presented.
classical conditioning: discrimination
Discrimination is when an organism learns to differentiate between
similar stimuli.
Consider the Little Albert experiment (1920). John B. Watson and
Rosalie Raynor conditioned the baby to fear all little white, furry
items. If Albert could have restricted his fears only to the original
stimuli or things directly associated with it, this would have been an
example of discrimination.
Your dog, over time, learns to distinguish between ordinary cars
driving close to the house and your car driving up to the house, at
which point, he begins barking happily and wagging his tail. This is
a form of discrimination.
classical conditioning: extinction
Extinction is the process of wiping out conditioned responses by
disassociating a particular conditioned stimulus and an
unconditioned stimulus.
It is important to know that conditioned behavior can never be
totally wiped out and can be brought back under the right
circumstances but typically not to the extent that it was before.
classical conditioning: generalization
Generalization is when an organism responds similarly to a range of
similar stimuli. A person who is afraid of small dogs might also be
afraid of animals of a similar size and shape.
The aforementioned Little Albert grew scared of all small, white,
furry things as a result of his conditioning with John B. Watson.
classical conditioning:
higher order conditioning
Higher order conditioning is a sort of add on to the original
conditioning. A second neutral stimuli is added to a conditioned
stimuli to produce a conditioned response. The success of this effort
would be seen by removing the original conditioned stimuli to see if
the subject responds to the new stimuli. Both should create the
same desired response.
classical conditioning:
neutral stimulus (NS)
This is a great example I came across in a psychology website. You
take your toddler to the doctor for an immunization shot. Once in
the room, the doctor presses a button to ask for a nurse to help
administer the shot. The toddler notices the buzzer sound but gives
no importance to it. However, over time and after multiple visits, the
toddler will grow conditioned to associated the previously
insignificant buzzer (neutral stimulus) with the shot and the pain that
ensues.
classical conditioning:
simultaneous conditioning
Simultaneous conditioning is a form of conditioning when the
conditioned stimuli and the unconditioned stimuli are presented
together.
classical conditioning:
spontaneous recovery
Spontaneous recovery refers to the reappearance of an extinguished
response after a period of non-exposure to the conditioned stimulus.
Extinction does not mean that something has been unlearned but
rather the learned behavior has been suppressed.
classical conditioning:
trace conditioning
Trace conditioning is when a subject is presented with a conditioned
stimulus (it begins and ends) before the introduction of the
unconditioned stimulus.
classical conditioning:
unconditioned stimulus (US) and response (UR)
An unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is an event that elicits a certain
predictable response without previous training. For example, a
steak or your favorite food item placed in front of you is going to
cause your mouth to salivate. The steak or favorite food item is the
UCS.
An unconditioned response (UCR) is an organism’s automatic (or
natural) reaction to stimulus. In the above example, the salivating
is the UCR.
contiguity (Ivan Pavlov)
Ivan Pavlov theorized that acquisition is to a conditioned response
depends on stimulus contiguity – a stimuli that occurs together in
time and space.
Yet more is required because you are constantly bombarded by
stimuli that can be grouped together. Stimuli that is unique or
unusual has a greater chance of being a conditioned stimulus.
contingency (Robert Rescorla)
In the 1960s, an American psychologist named Robert Rescorla put
forth an alternative to the classical conditioning first proposed by
Ivan Pavlov. Rescorla suggested that while it was possible for
learning to take place in the way in which classical and operant
conditioning operates but it is not a guarantee. While Pavlov
suggested a contiguity must exist between conditioned and
unconditioned stimuli for learning to take place, Rescorla said it was
more important that a contingency or correlation exist between the
two.
insight
As a part of problem solving, insight is the sudden realization of the
correct answer typically following a series of failed attempts. This is
typically done as a product of trial and error.
instinctive drift
Learning theorists have generally believed that conditioning
concepts can apply to a wide-range of organisms. Recently,
scientists have determined there are biological-based limitations
to how generalized conditioning principles can be.
Instinctive drift is one of the biological constraints on learning,
occurs when an animal’s innate response tendencies interfere with
conditioning processes. Keller and Marian Breland discovered that
some genetic instincts would often interrupt attempts at
conditioning. Teaching raccoons to place a coin in a box worked
until more than one coin was used – the raccoons began to
associate the coins as food itself and began “washing” them
instead of giving them away.
instrumental learning
law of effect
Instrumental learning is another name for operant conditioning,
coined by Edward Thorndike to emphasize this responding as
instrumental to reaching a desired outcome. He placed a hungry
cat in a box with food just outside of it, providing obstacles for the
cat to navigate to get the food.
Over time, the cat gradually got out of the box quicker and to the
food faster. Thorndike called this the law of effect – if a response in
the presence of a stimulus leads to satisfying effects, the
association between the stimulus and the response is
strengthened. This idea was the cornerstone of Skinner’s work
though using different terminology.
latent learning
Latent learning, an example of cognitive learning, is learning that
does not create an immediate or observable change in behavior.
Typically, it does not make itself apparent until a reinforcer emerges.
A person who has ridden with someone to Dallas might not know
the way to get to Dallas (and why would you want to) but there are
various landmarks and significant features that the person would
recognize – things they remember with no intention of doing so. It
will not emerge until later when they are tasked with driving to
Dallas on their own and begin piecing things together.
learning
Learning refers to a relatively durable change in behavior or
knowledge that is due to experience. In everything we do, in every
way we act and react, we are displaying the product of learning.
From a psychological point of view, this focus is on a particularly
type of learning called conditioning which is learning associations
between events that occur in an organism’s environment.
observational learning
Observational learning occurs when an organism’s response is
influenced by its observation of others, called models. Albert
Bandura suggested that classical and operant conditioning can
happen through observation – one learns by watching another’s
conditioning.
Bandura identified four key processes needed in observation learning:
Attention – one can hardly learn without paying attention.
Retention – an ability to remember what may take days,
weeks or months to have the chance to do themselves.
Reproduction – one’s ability to reproduce what has been seen
though reproducing is not a given.
Motivation – one must also be motivated to duplicate what is
observed.
operant conditioning
Operant conditioning is learning is when a certain action is
reinforced or punished for the purposes of increasing or decreasing
the behavior. Pioneered by B.F. Skinner, it is an attempt to regulate
voluntary responses to stimuli.
operant conditioning: chaining
Chaining is learned reactions that follow one another in sequence,
each reaction producing the signal for the next.
For example, swimming is a skill that involves three major acts or
chains that combine to make up the whole swimming pattern – an
arm stroke chain, a breathing chain and a leg-kicking chain. Once
learned, the individual parts are no longer distinguishable but
happen fluidly, as it were, in one motion.
operant conditioning:
escape and avoidance conditioning
Two uses of negative reinforcement that have been studied in detail
are escape conditioning and avoidance conditioning.
Escape conditioning refers to the training of an organism to remove
or terminate an unpleasant stimulus. A child who is given liver for
dinner might balk by whining or gagging. If the liver is removed, the
whining and gagging have become negatively reinforced.
Avoidance conditioning is the training of an organism to withdraw
from or prevent an unpleasant stimulus before it starts. In the
above example, the child whining and gagging as the father takes
the liver from the refrigerator would be an example of avoidance.
operant conditioning:
generalized reinforcer
You are walking down the street one day and you see a guy coming
out of a very nice and expensive red sports car and walking to meet
a beautiful woman dress for a fancy event while the man is dressed
similarly in clothes from a very expensive haberdashery.
The fancy clothes, the beautiful partner and the expensive and fast
sports car are all symbols or generalized reinforcers to the
importance we place on wealth, power, fame strength and
intelligence. Most such reinforcers are culturally based and
reinforced.
operant conditioning:
negative reinforcement
Negative reinforcement is increasing the strength of a given
response by removing or preventing a painful stimulus when the
response occurs.
If walking with a stone in your shoe causes you to limp, removing
the stone (negating it) allows you to walk without pain. More
common negative reinforcers are fear and social disapproval.
operant conditioning:
omission training
Omission training is utilized to get rid of undesirable behaviors, by
taking something the subject enjoys as punishment for certain types
of behavior.
Parents will often ground a child in their room in response to some
action they committed. In doing so, television, computers and
other favorite items are removed so that the child, ideally, has time
to consider what they have done and ensure they don’t do it again.
It is a form of leverage against the child to convince the right path to
take.
operant conditioning:
positive reinforcement/reinforcer
Originally put forth by B.F. Skinner, positive reinforcement is seen
when a response is strengthened because it is followed by the
presentation of a rewarding stimulus.
Examples of positive reinforcers include money, praise and
food/candy. These examples are also known as secondary
reinforcers.
operant conditioning:
Premack principle
As put forth by David Premack (1965), the Premack principle is an
element of operant conditioning that says reliable behavior can be
used as a reinforcer to behavior not as reliable.
Your mother comes into your room and says that the lawn needs to
be mowed (less reliable behavior). Of course, as a teenager with
less than optimal motivation, you moaned. Your mother counters
by saying that a well-mowed lawn means a visit to your favorite
restaurant (very reliable behavior). Sparked by motivation, you do
the best mowing the neighborhood has ever seen.
Not the best way to get something done but it certainly is used.
operant conditioning:
primary and secondary reinforcer
Primary reinforcer is a stimulus that is naturally rewarding, such as
food or water.
Secondary reinforcer is a stimulus such as money that becomes
rewarding through its link with a primary reinforcer.
operant conditioning: punishment
As put forth by B.F. Skinner, punishment is seen when an event
following a response weakens the tendency to make that response.
This can be done with negative stimuli or the removal of a positive
stimuli – one can be spanked (negative) or have privileges taken away
(removal of the positive).
Punishment is not the same thing as negative reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement removes an adverse stimuli (strengthening
response) while punishment presents the same (weakening
response). Punishment is not just what parents or authority figures
do – kids teasing a fellow kid for wearing shoes that are no longer in
style. Punishment as discipline can create side-effects including
wiping out more than the undesirable behavior, creating strong
emotional responses and increasing aggressiveness.
operant conditioning: shaping
Shaping is a technique in which the desired behavior is “molded”
by first rewarding any act similar to that behavior and then
requiring ever-closer approximations to the desired behavior
before giving the reward.
reinforcement schedule:
continuous reinforcement
Continuous reinforcement occurs when every instance of a
designated response is reinforced. However, studies show that such
reinforcement does not create behavior very resistant to extinction.
For example, recent studies have shown that excessive praising with
elementary students ultimately erodes a child’s willingness to try
and elicit such a reinforcement. Even small children understand that
excessive praise is insincere. For high school students, the
omnipresent grades have proven just an unreliable as a form of
reinforcement.
reinforcement schedule:
fixed ratio and interval
A fixed-ratio schedule is a pattern of reinforcement in which a
specific number of correct responses is required before
reinforcement can be obtained. An example of this can be a
person who is paid for each page of information that is typed onto
a word document. The more that is typed, the more that is paid
out.
A fixed-interval schedule is a pattern of reinforcement in which a
specific amount of time must elapse before a response will elicit
reinforcement. The fact that quizzes and tests will spur on activity,
that activity will almost immediately drop off afterwards. These
assessments are given at a fixed-interval schedule.
reinforcement schedule:
partial reinforcement
Also known as intermittent reinforcement, partial reinforcement
occurs when a designated response is reinforced only some of the
time.
According to studies, it appears that partial reinforcement makes
response more resistant to extinction than other forms such as
continuous reinforcement.
reinforcement schedule:
variable ratio and interval
A variable-ratio schedule is a pattern of reinforcement in which an
unpredictable number of responses are required before
reinforcement can be obtained. An example of this can be a
telemarketer who does not know how many phone calls they will
have to make before being successful.
A variable-interval schedule is a pattern of reinforcement in which
changing amounts of time must elapse before a response will
obtain reinforcement. Constantly trying to call a friend when the
line is busy will ultimately produce a reinforcer as soon as the
friend has hung up.
superstitious behavior
Superstitious behavior is the product of a reinforcer or punisher
occurring shortly after an unrelated behavior.
For example, you are walking down the street and a black cat runs in
front of your path. Seconds later, you trip and fall flat on your face.
The fall (reinforcer) is connected to the cat (unrelated behavior) to
condition you to believe there is a connection (black cats are bad
luck).