PSY402 Theories of Learning

1. PSY402Theories of Learning Chapter 11 – Learned Helplessness

2. Learned Helplessness Theory • Seligman – depression is learned. • Depression occurs when people believe: • Failures are due to uncontrollable events. • Failure will continue as long as events are beyond their control. • Depression arises from helplessness.

3. Animal Research • Step 1 -- three groups of dogs: • Inescapable shock – no control. • Escapable shock -- terminated if the dog pressed a panel. • No shock • Step 2 – 10 trials of signaled avoidance training in shuttle box. • 2/3 of inescapable shock dogs did not learn to jump during step 2.

4. Helplessness in Humans • Hiroto – three groups of college students: • Uncontrollable group – wrongly told that pushing button would end noise. • Escapable group – pushing button ended noise. • Control – no noise. • Tested using finger shuttle box. • Uncontrollable group did not escape

5. Characteristics of Helplessness • Motivational impairment – unable to initiate voluntary behavior. • Mice in water maze. • Nonspecific – carries over to a variety tasks and test situations. • Intellectual impairment – incapable of benefiting from future experience – even if they jump, don’t learn. • Emotional trauma – neg. affect.

6. Studies of Depressives • Show similar results to learned helplessness studies. • Depressed individuals do not escape noise, responding like inescapable non-depressed individuals. • Depressed individuals do not adjust likelihood of succeeding upward when they experience success. • They credit chance not skill.

7. Criticisms of Seligman’s Theory • There is more to depression than learned helplessness. • Helplessness subjects described the task as a skill task, even though acting as if it were a chance task. • Failure to replicate performance deficits in humans – facilitation of performance instead. • May be due to attributions.

8. Attribution Theory • Causal attributions of failure have three dimensions: • Internal-external – internal traits or characteristics vs environmental forces • Stable-unstable – past causes will persist vs new forces will determine future outcomes • Global-specific – outcome relates only to one task vs outcome effects everything.

9. Attributional Model of Depression

10. Two Kinds of Helplessness • Personal helplessness – an individual’s inability causes failure. • Universal helplessness – the environment is structured so that no one can control future events. • Abramson -- both kinds lead to depression. • Vary on external-internal dimension. • Low self-esteem only with personal.

11. Severity of Depression • Depression can be transient if attributed to global but changing conditions. • Severe depression occurs when attributions are: • Internal • Global • Stable • Better if external, specific, unstable.

12. Hopelessness Depression • Hopelessness – the expectation that desired outcomes will not occur. • Learned helplessness -- no control over undesired outcomes. • Accounts for anxiety without depression. • Anxiety – possibility that a person may have no control over negative events. • Depression occurs when certain.

13. Pessimism • Pessimistic explanatory style – attributional style predicts susceptibility to depression. • Langer – a perceived control is basic to human functioning. • Optimists – feel they can control events, more successful. • Pessimists – believe they have no control over events.

14. Cognitive View of Phobia • Bandura – two kinds of expectancy maintain a phobia: • Stimulus-outcome expectancy – about the nature of the stimulus. • Response-outcome expectancy – about the likely result of behavior. • Why does phobia produce behavior with negative outcomes? • Efficacy expectancy – belief that one cannot execute a particular action.

15. Self-Efficacy • Types of information used to establish self-efficacy: • Personal accomplishments, success. • Task difficulty, amount of effort. • Observations of success/failure of others – vicarious modeling. • Emotional arousal – we feel less able to cope when agitated or tense. • Efficacy predicts approach behavior.

16. Criticisms of Efficacy View • Efficacy expectations may be epiphenomenal – arise with anxiety but do not affect responding. • Three types of anxiety: • Cognitive – affects self-efficacy • Physiological – affects physiology • Behavioral – affects responding. • Lang – contribution of each depends on prior experience and situation.

17. Contemporary Theories • Shift from global theories to theories about specific aspects of learning. • Global theories were about operant responding not classical conditioning. • An animal’s biology influences whether, what, and how fast it can learn. • Cognitive view requires emphasis on specific cognitive processes.

18. Stimulus-Substitution Theory • What is the nature of the CR – is it just the UCR of is it different? • Pavlov – stimulus-substititon theory: • The CS stimulates the same areas of the brain as the UCS, producing the same response. • Activation of CS with UCS establishes neural connection between brain areas.

19. Conditioned Opponent Response • The CR and UCR are often different: • CR of fear is different than UCR of pain. • Siegel – best evidence of difference: • Morphine (UCS) produced analgesia, reduced pain (UCR) • Light or tone (CS) produced hyperalgesia, increased pain (CR). • Rats remove paws from heat quickly with CS, slowly with UCS. • Insulin (glycemia) works the same way

20. Conditioning and Drug Tolerance • Elimination of a CS results in a stronger response to the UCS, drug. • Extinction of responding to environ-mental cues strengthens drug response • Changing the context in which a drug is administered increases response to the drug. • Novel environment does not elicit an opponent CR.