Learning

1. Learning Chapter 8 Part 2

2. Operant conditioning • Respondent behavior - occurs as an automatic response to stimulus • Behavior operates on the environment producing rewarding or punishing stimuli • Law of effect - rewarded behavior is likely to recur

3. Skinner box • AKA “operant chamber” • Box has bar or lever that animal presses or pecks to release a reward • Device to record responses

4. Shaping behavior • Reinforcers gradually guide actions toward a desired behavior • By shaping nonverbal organisms to discriminate between stimuli, a psychologist can also determine what they perceive,(can a dog distinguish colors?)

5. Con’t • Successive approximations = you reward responses that are ever closer to the desired behavior • Sometimes we unintentionally reinforce unwanted behaviors (Billy example pg 328)

6. Types of reinforcers • Reinforcement = any behavior that strengthens or increases the frequency of a preceding response. • Positive reinforcers = tangible rewards, praise or attention. • Reinforcers are not always positive

7. Positive reinforcement • Presenting a typically pleasurable stimulus after a response • Food, praise, attention, approval, money, prizes, etc

8. Negative reinforcement • Strengthens response by removing or reducing an aversive, (undesirable),stimulus. • Taking aspirin to relieve pain, pushing the snooze button, smoking a cigarette for an addict, studying to reduce test anxiety, etc)

9. Primary and secondary reinforcers • Food when hungry, being relieved of pain, for example = primary • Conditioned reinforcers - secondary (ie: learned through association with primary reinfocers) = money, prestige, • acknolwlegement

10. Reinforcement schedules • Continuous - learning occurs rapidly but so does extinction • Partial (intermittent) - sometimes reinforced, sometimes not • Fixed-ratio = behavior reinforced after a set number of times. Ex = give pigeon food ever 3 times it pecks dot

11. Con’t • Variable-ratio = reinforcers after unpredictable number of responses • Ex = give pigeon food after 2 pecks, then 1 peck, then 4 pecks, then 3 pecks, etc • gambling

12. fixed-interval • Reinforce after a set amount of time • Ex = check mail as delivery time approaches • Does not produce steady rate of response (choppy, start-stop)

13. Variable-interval • Reinforces first response after varying time • Produces slow, steady responding • See chart 8.10 on page 331

14. punishment • Opposite of reinforcement • Punishment DECREASES behavior • Issues with human punishment • Spanked children are at increased risk for aggression and depression. • Or - are kids who are aggressive and depressed get spanked more?

15. Punishment implications • Child may avoid behavior only when threat of punishment is near (temporary repression of behavior) • Physical punishment may increase that behavior by observing that type of modeling of coping skill. • Does not guide one to desirable behavior

16. Skinner • “what punishment teaches is how to avoid it) • Now and then punishment is necessary. Minimal use is best

17. Cognition and operant conditioning • Cognitive maps • Latent learning • Can you recall all of the stores in Rancho strip? • Knowing more than you thought you knew is latent learning…learning is apparent only when there is some incentive to demonstrate it

18. motivation • Intrinsic = desire to perform a behavior effectively for it’s own sake • Extrinsic = desire to behave in certain ways to gain external rewards • Tiger woods example (not most recent - yikes!)

19. Biological predispositions • Animals and humans can be trained more easily and retain behavior if it is biologically instinctive. • Answer “ask yourself” on page 340

20. Learning by observation • Learning by viewing others • Animals do it too • Modeling = observing and imitating specific behaviors • Mirror neurons - empathy, brain scan

21. Albert Bandura • Bobo doll experiment/aggression • Prosocial models also work • TV and observational learning • Page 345 bullets