Psychology writing Assignment ( operant learning)
Takemymoney
Book.pptx6
Learning
Revised by Pauline Davey Zeece, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Learning
Acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors through experience
Associative learning: Learning that certain events occur together
Events may be two stimuli or a response and its consequences.
Cognitive learning: Acquisition of mental information by observing events, watching others, or through language
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Forms of Conditioning
Classical conditioning
One learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events
Produces respondent behavior
Operant conditioning
One learns to associate an action and its consequence.
Produces operant behavior
Conditioning - A process of learning associations.
Stimulus: Any event or situation that evokes a response.
Respondent behavior: Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.
Operant behavior: Behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.
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Figure 6.1 - Classical Conditioning
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Figure 6.2 - Operant Conditioning
Retrieve and Remember 1
Why are habits, such as having something sweet with that cup of coffee, so hard to break?
ANSWER: Habits form when we repeat behaviors in a given context and, as a result, learn associations—often without our awareness. For example, we may have eaten a sweet pastry with a cup of coffee often enough to associate the flavor of the coffee with the treat, so that the cup of coffee alone just doesn’t seem right anymore!
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Classical Conditioning
Pavlov’s experiments
Pavlov’s legacy
Figure 6.3 - Pavlov’s Classic Experiment
Pavlov presented a neutral stimulus (a tone) just before an unconditioned stimulus (food in mouth). The neutral stimulus then became a conditioned stimulus, producing a conditioned response.
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Classical Conditioning: Terms
Neutral stimulus (NS): Evokes no response before conditioning
Unconditioned stimulus (US): Unconditionally, naturally and automatically, triggers a response
Unconditioned response (UR): Unlearned and naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus (US)
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Conditioned Response and Conditioned Stimulus
Conditioned response (CR)
Learned response to a previously neutral but now conditioned stimulus
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
Irrelevant stimulus that triggers a conditioned response (CR) after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US)
Pavlov’s Experiments
Explored conditioning processes
Acquisition
Extinction
Spontaneous recovery
Generalization
Discrimination
Ivan Pavlov: “Experimental investigation…
should lay a solid foundation for a future true
science of psychology” (1927).
Retrieve and Remember 2
An experimenter sounds a tone just before delivering an air puff that causes your eye to blink.
After several repetitions, you blink to the tone alone.
What is the NS? The US? The UR? The CS? The CR?
ANSWERS: NS = tone before conditioning; US = air puff; UR = blink to air puff; CS = tone after conditioning; CR = blink to tone
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Acquisition
Initial stage where one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus
A neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.
Quail tale
Recent research on Japanese quail shows that their capacity for classical conditioning gives them a reproductive edge.
In operant conditioning, acquisition is the strengthening of a reinforced response.
Conditioning helps an animal survive and reproduce—by responding to cues that help it gain food, avoid dangers, locate mates, and produce offspring (Hollis, 1997).
How did researchers develop the quail’s preference for their cage’s red-light district? - Just before presenting a sexually approachable female quail, the researchers turned on a red light. Over time, as the red light continued to announce the female’s arrival, the light caused the male quail to become excited. They developed a preference for their cage’s red-light district. When a female appeared, they mated with her more quickly and released more semen and sperm (Matthews et al., 2007).
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Figure 6.4 - An Unexpected CS
Psychologist Michael Tirrell (1990) recalled: “My first girlfriend loved onions, so I came to associate onion breath with kissing. Before long, onion breath sent tingles up and down my spine. Oh what a feeling!”
Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
Extinction
Weakening of a conditioned response when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus
Spontaneous recovery
Reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response
In operant conditioning, extinction is the weakening of a response when it is no longer reinforced.
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Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous Recovery
The rising curve (simplified here) shows that the CR rapidly grows stronger as the NS becomes a CS due to repeated pairing with the US (acquisition)
The CS weakens when it is presented alone (extinction).
After a pause, the CR reappears (spontaneous recovery).
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Generalization and Discrimination
Generalization
The tendency to respond similarly to stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus after conditioning
Discrimination
The learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other irrelevant stimuli
In operant conditioning, generalization occurs when our responses to similar stimuli are also reinforced.
In operant conditioning, discrimination is the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from those that are not.
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Retrieve and Remember 5
What conditioning principle is affecting the snail’s affections?
ANSWER: generalization
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Pavlov’s Legacy
Pavlov showed how learning can be studied objectively.
Many responses to many stimuli can be classically conditioned in many other species.
Classical Conditioning in Everyday Life
Pavlov’s principles influence human health and well-being.
Examples:
Patients can develop classically conditioned side effects to drugs given as cancer treatments.
Former drug users often feel a craving when they are again in the drug-using context.
Retrieve and Remember 7
In Watson and Rayner’s experiments, “Little Albert” learned to fear a white rat after repeatedly experiencing a loud noise as the rat was presented.
In these experiments, what was the US? The UR? The NS? The CS? The CR?
ANSWERS: The US was the loud noise; the UR was the fear response to the noise; the NS was the rat before it was paired with the noise; the CS was the rat after pairing; the CR was fear of the rat.
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Operant Conditioning
Skinner’s experiments
Skinner’s legacy
Contrasting classical and operant conditioning
Differences Between Classical and Operant Conditioning
Classical conditioning
Learning associations between events are not controlled by the learner.
Involves respondent behavior
Operant conditioning
The learner associates his/her own actions with consequences.
Involves operant behavior
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Skinner’s Experiments
Built on Thorndike’s law of effect
Law of effect: Rewarded behavior is likely to be repeated.
Developed to reveal principles of behavior control
Bird brains spot tumors
Reinforcement: Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.
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Cat in a Puzzle Box
Thorndike used a fish reward to entice cats to find their way out of a puzzle box through a series of maneuvers.
The cats’ performance tended to improve with successive trials, illustrating Thorndike’s law of effect (data from Thorndike, 1898).
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Operant Chamber (Skinner Box)
The box contains a bar or button that an animal can use to obtain a food or water reinforcer.
Attached devices record the animal’s rate of pressing or pecking.
Inside the box, the rat presses a bar for a food reward. Outside, measuring devices (not shown here) record the animal’s accumulated responses.
Shaping Behavior
Shaping: A procedure in which reinforcers guide actions closer and closer toward a desired behavior
Helps understand what nonverbal organisms perceive
Researchers and animal trainers gradually shape complex behaviors by rewarding desired behaviors and ignoring all other responses.
Shaping behavior is used as people continually reinforce others’ behavior.
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TABLE 6.1 Ways to Increase Behavior
| Operant Conditioning Term | Description | Examples |
| Positive reinforcement | Add a desirable stimulus | Pet a dog that comes when you call it; pay the person who paints your house. |
| Negative reinforcement | Remove an aversive stimulus | Take painkillers to end pain; fasten seat belt to end loud beeping. |
Retrieve and Remember 9
How is operant conditioning at work in this cartoon?
ANSWER: The baby negatively reinforces her parents’ behavior when she stops crying once they grant her wish. Her parents positively reinforce her cries by letting her sleep with them.
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Types of Reinforcers
| Types of reinforcers | Description |
| Primary reinforcers | Unlearned and innate Often satisfy a biological need |
| Conditioned reinforcers (secondary reinforcers) | Gain reinforcing power through their link with primary reinforcers |
| Immediate reinforcers | Immediate rewards |
| Delayed reinforcers | Delayed rewards |
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Reinforcement Schedules
A pattern that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced
Learning occurs rapidly with continuous reinforcement.
Can cause rapid extinction
Partial (intermittent) reinforcement results in slower acquisition and greater resistance to extinction.
Continuous reinforcement: Reinforcing a desired response every time it occurs.
Partial (intermittent) reinforcement: Reinforcing a response only part of the time.
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TABLE 6.2 Schedules of Partial Reinforcement
| Fixed | Variable | |
| Ratio | Every so many: reinforcement after every nth behavior, such as buy 10 coffees, get 1 free, or pay workers per product unit Produced | After an unpredictable number: reinforcement after a random number of behaviors, as when playing slot machines or fly fishing |
| Interval | Every so often: reinforcement for behavior after a fixed time, such as Tuesday discount prices | Unpredictably often: reinforcement for behavior after a random amount of time, as when checking our phone for a message |
Drawbacks of Physical Punishment
Punished behavior is suppressed
May reinforce parents’ punishing behavior
Teaches the child to fear and to discriminate among situations
May increase aggression by modeling violence as a way to cope with problems
Children See, Children Do? Children who often experience physical punishment tend to display more aggression.
Punishment: Event that decreases the behavior it follows.
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Retrieve and Remember 11
Fill in the blanks below with one of the following terms: negative reinforcement (NR), positive punishment (PP), and negative punishment (NP). The first answer, positive reinforcement (PR), is provided for you.
| Type of Stimulus | Give It | Take It Away |
| Desired (for example, a teen’s use of the car): | 1. PR | 2. |
| Undesired/aversive (for example, an insult): | 3. | 4. |
ANSWERS: 1. PR (positive reinforcement); 2. NP (negative punishment); 3. PP (positive punishment); 4. NR (negative reinforcement)
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Skinner’s Legacy
Urged people to use operant principles to influence the behavior of others
Criticized for neglecting people’s personal freedom and advocating external control of others
B. F. Skinner
B.F Skinner: “I am sometimes asked, ‘Do you think of yourself as you think of the organisms you study?’ The answer is yes. So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting” (1983).
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Applications of Operant Conditioning
At school
Many of Skinner’s ideals for education have been made possible with the help of digital learning.
At work
Reinforcers are used to influence productivity.
In parenting
Desired behavior is increased by giving children attention and other reinforcers when they are behaving well.
Using Operant Conditioning to Build One’s Own Strengths
Setting and announcing realistic goals in measurable terms
Deciding how, when, and where one will work toward their goal
Monitoring how often one engages in desired behavior
Reinforcing the desired behavior
Reducing the rewards gradually
TABLE 6.4 Comparison of Classical and Operant Conditioning
| Classical Conditioning | Operant Conditioning | |
| Basic idea | Learning associations between events we don’t control | Learning associations between our own behavior and its consequences |
| Response | Involuntary, automatic | Voluntary, operates on environment |
| Acquisition | Associating events; NS is paired with US and becomes CS | Associating response with a consequence (reinforcer or punisher) |
| Extinction | CR decreases when CS is repeatedly presented alone | Responding decreases when reinforcement stops |
| Spontaneous recovery | The reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished CR | The reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished response |
| Generalization | Responding to stimuli similar to the CS | Responding to similar stimuli to achieve or prevent a consequence |
| Discrimination | Learning to distinguish between a CS and other stimuli that do not signal a US | Learning that some responses, but not others, will be reinforced |
Biology, Cognition, and Learning
Biological limits on conditioning
Cognitive influences on conditioning
Biological Limits on Conditioning
Natural selection favors traits that aid survival.
Biological constraints: Evolved biological tendencies that predispose animals’ behavior and learning
Limits on classical conditioning
Humans are biologically prepared to learn some things, rather than others.
Cognition and Classical Conditioning
Shared beliefs of Pavlov and Watson
Avoided mentalistic concepts
Maintained that the basic laws of learning are the same for all animals
Watson supported behaviorism.
John B. Watson
Watson’s view of learning underestimated the following influences:
The way that biological predispositions limit learning
Effect of cognitive processes on learning
Behaviorism: View that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).
Watson (1924) admitted to “going beyond my facts” when offering his famous boast: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
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Latent Learning
Skinner rejected the premise that cognitive processes are integral to learning.
Animals, like people, can learn from experience, with or without reinforcement.
In a classic experiment, rats in one group repeatedly explored a maze, always with a food reward at the end. Rats in another group explored the maze with no food reward. But once given a food reward at the end, rats in the second group thereafter ran the maze as quickly as (and even faster than) the always-rewarded rats (Tolman & Honzik, 1930).
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Observational Learning
Learning by observing others
Modeling: Observing and imitating a specific behavior
Vicarious reinforcement or punishment
Helps one anticipate a behavior’s consequences in observed situations
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura: “The Bobo doll follows me wherever I go. The photographs are published in every introductory psychology text and virtually every undergraduate takes introductory psychology. I recently checked into a Washington hotel. The clerk at the desk asked, ‘Aren’t you the psychologist who did the Bobo doll experiment?’ I answered, ‘I am afraid that will be my legacy.’ He replied, ‘That deserves an upgrade. I will put you in a suite in the quiet part of the hotel’” (2005). A recent analysis of citations, awards, and textbook coverage identified Bandura as the world’s most eminent psychologist (Diener et al., 2014).
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Figure 6.9 - The Famous Bobo Doll Experiment
Mirrors and Imitation in the Brain
Brain activity underlies intense social nature.
Mirror neuron: Fires when one performs certain actions and when one observes others performing those actions
Neural basis for imitation and observational learning
Experienced and Imagined Pain in the Brain
Brain activity related to actual pain is mirrored in the brain of an observing loved one.
Empathy in the brain shows up in areas that process emotions, but not in the areas that register physical pain.
Applications of Observational Learning
Prosocial effects
Prosocial behavior models have prosocial effects.
Effectiveness is related to consistency in actions and words.
Antisocial effects
Observational learning may have adverse effects.
TV shows, movies, and online videos are sources of observational learning.
Aggressiveness could be genetic.
Prosocial behavior: Positive, constructive, and helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior.
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Think Critically
Effects of viewing media violence:
Increased homicidal rates
Increased violent behavior among teens
Experimental studies have found that violence-viewing participants react more cruelly when provoked.
Prompted by imitation and desensitization
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