Learning

Chapter 6

PSY101

Eastern Gateway Community College

 This chapter covers the major theories of learning:

• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Social Learning Theory

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

Classical Conditioning (CC)

 This approach was developed by Ivan

Pavlov. Pavlov was not originally a
psychologist—he was a physiologist who
studied how dogs digested their food.
Whoa!
 In the course of this research, he noticed
that his dogs would salivate when he
entered the lab even though he had no
food. He assumed that they had
“associated” him with food and that the
salivation was occurring to prepare for
eating. Pavlov was intrigued by this and
couldn’t leave it alone. He shifted his
research to investigating this
phenomenon.
 Pavlov’s Dog
Pavlov assumed that if the animals had associated
him with the sight of food he could condition them to
salivate to any stimulus, as long as it had first been
paired with food.
Now, everything in the CC process has a label. Pay
close attention!

FOOD ---------------------> SALIVATION

Unconditioned Unconditioned
Stimulus Response
(UCS) (UCR)

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY Food naturally elicits the salivation response. Elicit
means involuntary. You do not teach or condition an
animal to salivate to food. It happens naturally—it is
an inborn natural reflex. It is unconditioned.
CC takes advantage of this natural process by pairing a Neutral
Stimulus (NS) a bell, with the UCS (food). Each pairing is called a
trial. So, look at the labels below:
Bell Pavlov’s
Neutral Stimulus
(NS)
Dog (cont.)
The bell has no influence on the animal.

CC involves pairing the NS (Bell) with the UCS (Food)

NS-------------UCS------------->UCR
(BELL) (FOOD) (SALIVATION)
(Each paring of the bell and the food is called a trial)

After several trials one tests to see if conditioning occurred.

So, the bell is presented alone, and hooray it causes salivation!
BELL----------------->SALIVATION
(CS) (CR)
Note: The bell is now called a Conditioned Stimulus. The
salivation is now called a Conditioned Response. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY
 Pavlov also studied some other important phenomena.
They are discussed below:

Stimulus Generalization - This occurs when the

response spreads to other similar stimuli. So. for
instance, Pavlov’s dog once conditioned, may salivate to
other similar bell tones. Consider a real-life human
example: A child is stung by a bee. Afterwards, he may
not only fear bees but all flying insects.
Stimulus Discrimination - This occurs when the animal
salivated to only one particular bell tone and no other.
Consider a real-life human example: A man is bitten by a
Golden Retriever. He now fears Golden Retrievers but
no other breed.
Extinction - Pavlov wanted to find out what would
happen if he kept presenting the bell (CS) without
presenting the food (UCS). Over time the salivation
response decreased until it stopped. Essentially, it was
“turned off” as the animal’s nervous system learned
that the bell no longer signaled food. It would be a
waste of vital energy to produce saliva for no good
reason. So, it stops!
Spontaneous Recovery - After extinction had occurred
Pavlov decided to see what might happen if he rang the
bell again. Low and behold the salivation returned. It is
if the animal never forgot it—the response was always
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
there—it had been learned!
 Behaviorism
Now, John B. Watson, while developing
Behaviorism, had read Pavlov’s work and was
quite impressed. Remember from Chapter 1 that
Watson stated that the focus of psychology
should be on observable behavior and that
everything about the human being had been
learned.
He decided to use CC principles to condition a
young infant (“Little Albert”) to fear a white lab rat.
Initially, Little Albert had no fear of the rat. It was
Watson’s goal to create an environmental event
that would lead to the development of fear of the
rat. So, each time the rat came near, Watson
would bang a loud noise behind Albert’s head.
This created a natural fear response (Albert would
be startled and cry). After a few pairings (trials) of
the rat and the loud noise Watson tested to see if
the rat alone would produce fear in Albert and, of
course, it did. Watson had the environmental
evidence he was looking for to support his theory
of Behaviorism.
Classical Conditioning Defined
So, here is a breakdown of the CC
terminology. Initially the rat is a neutral
stimulus (NS)—it has no effect on
Albert. The loud noise, however,
naturally causes fear in Albert. It is an
unconditioned stimulus (UCS). The fear
is an unconditioned response (UCR).
Each pairing of the rat and the loud
noise is a trial. After a few trials Watson
tested to see if conditioning occurred. It
did! Now, the rat is a conditioned
stimulus (CS) and the fear is a
conditioned response (CR).

One more thing—stimulus

generalization was noted in this This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

study. Albert became afraid of some

other white furry things (e.g., Santa
Claus mask, rabbit).
A precursor to the development of Operant
Conditioning (see below) can be seen in the
work of E.L. Thorndike and his work with cats.
Pre-Operant Conditioning
This gentleman would place hungry cats in
“puzzle boxes” outside of which was a plate of
food. The job of the cat was to figure out how to
escape via a latch system whereby upon escape
he would be allowed to eat a bite of food. The
food served as a reward for the escape
behavior. As soon as the animal had its reward
Thorndike would place it back in the box, start a
stopwatch, and time how long the animal took
to escape the 2nd time, 3rd time, etc.
Thorndike noted that the escape time
decreased on each successive trial indicating
that learning was taking place.
Based on this research Thorndike developed the
“Law of Effect” which essentially states that This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
behaviors which are followed by positive
consequences tend to be repeated.
Operant Conditioning—B.F. Skinner
Skinner coined the term “operant.” It means
to “operate on one’s environment”, or quite
simply, to “behave.” In this form of
conditioning behaviors are emitted or
voluntary. Behaviors are then followed by
either a reinforcement (reward) or a
punishment.
Skinner conducted his research on rats and
pigeons in the famous “Skinner Box” and
stated that the results gathered in his
laboratory investigations applied to human
beings. Yes, he believed that humans, rats,
and pigeons, all learned in the same manner.
So, in this theory behaviors are
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shaped/controlled via reward and
punishment
Reinforcement and Punishment
Here is a breakdown on the types of
reinforcement and punishment that he
investigated.

 REINFORCEMENT--Reinforcement increases
the chances that a behavior will be repeated
 PUNISHMENT--Punishment decreases the
chances that a behavior will be repeated
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 There are two types of each:
Positive Reinforcement/Negative Reinforcement
Positive Punishment/Negative Punishment
REINFORCEMENT
Positive (+) Something pleasant is added to one’s PUNISHMENT
life that increases the chances the behavior will be
repeated (e.g., money for a day’s work). Positive (+) Occurs when something
Negative (-) Occurs when we engage in a behavior unpleasant is added to our life (e.g., getting
which removes (subtracts, takes away) something screamed at for misbehavior).
unpleasant from our life (e.g., taking 2 aspirin to Negative (-) Occurs when something pleasant
get rid of a headache—if it works, we repeat the is removed from our life (e.g., taking away a
behavior in the future). So, the behavior (operant) kids I-phone for being disrespectful).
is aspirin taking. It removes the unpleasantness of
the headache. Getting rid of the pain reinforces
aspirin taking behavior—you will do it again the
next time you have a headache! Wow!
Many students see the word “negative” here and
think it’s punishment. It is not! Remember, it’s a
form of reinforcement so the likelihood of a
behavior being repeated is increased.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

 Partial and Continuous
Reinforcement

Partial reinforcement occurs when a

behavior is reinforced every once in while,
not after each behavior that has been
emitted. Think about scrape off lottery
tickets. You don’t win each time—that
would be continuous reinforcement and it
would bankrupt the lottery! So, they let
you win every once in a while, by giving
you a little back. This keeps you playing!
Partial reinforcement takes 4 different
forms—they are all considered “Schedules
of Reinforcement” and discussed on the
next slide.

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Schedules of Reinforcement-Skinner placed his animals on different
schedules of reinforcement to see their effects on behavior (e.g., bar
pressing in the Skinner Box).
Interval Schedules—These are based on
Ratio Schedules-In a ratio schedule the animal only responding (bar pressing) at the right time in
receives the reward after a certain number of bar order to get the reward. Again, there are 2
presses. There are 2 types: types:

a) Fixed Ratio—The animal must press the bar a a) Fixed Interval—In this schedule the animal
specific number of times before a reward is will learn to press the bar after a specific
delivered. So, you could place the rat on a FR20 amount of time has passed. So, if we had a FI 30
schedule in which, over time, the animal would second schedule the animal would learn to start
learn to press the bar 20 times in a row to get pressing the bar at around 28 -30 seconds. Only
the reward.
after the 30 second mark does the reward
b) Variable Ratio-In this schedule the number of become available.
bar presses is not fixed—it usually averages out
to a certain number—however the animal does b) Variable Interval-In this schedule the time
not know how many presses will produce the varies as to when the reward becomes
reward. available. So, the animal keeps “checking” (bar
pressing) to see if they will indeed receive the
reward.
 Now, your text presents the schedules
with human, not animal, examples. Make
sure to read these and pay attention to
which one’s result in the highest amount of
responding.

It is important to note that Skinner did not

believe in free will. We behave to either
obtain rewards or to avoid punishments.
Thus, thoughts (cognitions) were not
important to him.

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 Latent
Learning
Read/Study in text..

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 Social Learning Theory
Proposed by Albert Bandura, in this model we
learn by observing others behavior. It is
sometimes referred to as observational
learning or modeling theory.
In this model Cognition is important!!! This
means that we “think” before we model—we
decide if we will model a behavior or not.
Here is the general rule:
We are more likely to model a behavior when
the model has been reinforced for that
behavior; we are less likely to model a
behavior when the model has been punished
for that behavior.
Bandura demonstrated his theory in the
classic “Bo-Bo” doll study in which children This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

modeled an adult’s aggressive actions

towards an inflatable doll.