Learning Chapter 6

1. LearningChapter 6

2. Do Now • Think of a behavior you have learned how to do……ride a bike, dance, etc. • How did you learn how to do it? List each step that occurred in the process. Start with your first exposure to the behavior and finish with successfully completing the learning process. • Think about how you would define learning?

3. Objectives: • Define learning • Identify two forms of learning. • Define and describe the major principles of classical conditioning, including extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination. • Apply the concepts of classical conditioning to human behavior.

4. Definition: Learning • “Learning” is defined in psychology as ‘a relatively permanent behavior changeas a result of experience.

5. More specifically: • A relatively permanent change in a person’s behavior to a given situation brought about by his/her repeated experience in that situation provided the behavior change cannot be explained on the basis of instinct responses, maturation or temporary states (fatigue, drugs).

6. Learning How Do We Learn? Associations Observations Classical Conditioning Associative learning • Pavlov’s Experiments

7. How Do We Learn? • By linking events that occur close together, humans and other animals exhibit associative learning. • This process of learning associations is called conditioning. • There is also cognitive learning, the acquisition of mental information by observing events, watching others, or through language.

8. Classical Conditioning • A stimulus is an event or situation that evokes a response. • In classical conditioning, we learn to associate two stimuli; the unconditioned response to one stimulus becomes the conditioned response to the other.

9. Classical Conditioning This woman has now been conditioned to have a negative response to the flash of light, even before or without the loud noise.

10. Classical Conditioning: Pavlov’s Classic Experiment

11. Classical Conditioning • The unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus which triggers a reflex (automatic response, UR) without conditioning. • The unconditioned response (UR) is an unlearned, natural response to a US. • Example: Food makes dog salivate

12. Classical Conditioning • The neutral stimulus (NS) elicits no response before conditioning. • The conditioned stimulus (CS) is an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with a US, comes to trigger a CR. • The conditioned response (CR) is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus (CS). It is the same action as the unconditioned response, except that it is now triggered by the formerly neutral stimulus (now CS).

13. EXAMPLE: • A stomach virus makes you vomit. • Without knowing you had a stomach virus you ate tuna fish and threw up. • Now every time you think of eating tuna you feel sick to your stomach. • Name the US, UR, NS, CS, CR

14. The famous “Little Albert” experiment • John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920) worked with 11-month old boy. • Initially feared loud noises but not white rats • Presented him with white rat, and just as he reached out to touch it, made a very loud noise just behind his head • After 7 repeats, burst into tears at sight of rat • 5 days later, he had this fear when he saw a rabbit, a dog, and a sealskin coat. • Name the US,UR,NS,CS,CR and the process that occurred 5 days later.

15. Conditioning Processes • Pavlov and his associates identified five major conditioning processes: • Acquisition – • Extinction – • Spontaneous recovery – • Generalization - • Discrimination -

16. Acquisition • Acquisition – initial stage when we associate neutral stimulus + unconditioned stimulus so that neutral stimulus generates the response by itself.

17. Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery • If, following acquisition, the CS occurs repeatedly without the US, it can lead to extinction, the weakening of the CR. • How would this apply to tuna fish example? • After a delay (a few hours more), however, the CS may elicit a spontaneous recovery of a (weakened) CR • How would this apply to tuna fish example?

18. Generalization • Generalization: after conditioning, an organism may respond similarly to stimuli that resemble the CS • A child scared by a red car learns to avoid stepping in front of all vehicles. • How would this apply to tuna fish example?

19. Generalization • Child abuse can lead to general hypersensitivity to the faces of any angry person, not just their abusers.

20. Discrimination • Organisms also learn to discriminate, or distinguish, between a CS and other stimuli. • Consider your responses to a guard dog and a guide dog: would they both make your heart pound with fear?” • How would this apply to tuna fish example?

21. Everyday applications • These techniques are also useful in the treatment of phobias. • Many dog trainers use classical conditioning techniques to help people train their pets. • In one famous field study, researchers injected sheep carcasses with a poison that would make coyotes sick but not kill them. The goal was help sheep ranchers reduce the number of sheep lost to coyote killings. Coyotes ate the carcasses, got sick and afterwards did not kill sheep due to the conditioned association.

22. Objectives: • Define learning • Identify two forms of learning. • Define and describe the major principles of classical conditioning, including extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination. • Apply the concepts of classical conditioning to human behavior.