Learning

LEARNING Any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience or practice. Without the ability to remember what happens, people cannot learn anything. Not all change is accompanied through learning (changes brought about by maturation) Any kind of change in the way an organism BEHAVES is learning.

Principles of Classical Conditioning 1. NS must come BEFORE UCS 2. NS and UCS must come very close together in time 3. NS must be paired with UCS several times before conditioning can take place 4. NS is usually some stimulus that is distinctive Other concepts: STIMULUS GENERALIZATION The tendency for a stimulus similar to the original conditioned stimulus to elicit a response similar to the conditioned response STIMULUS DISCRIMINATION The tendency for some stimuli but not others to elicit a conditioned response EXTINCTION The disappearance or weakening of a learned response when the CS is no longer followed by the US SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY The temporary occurrence of the conditioned response to the presence of the CS EDWARD THORNDIKE American psychologist (1874-1949) Thorndike placed a hungry cat inside a puzzle box from which the only escape was to press a lever located on the floor of the box. He observed that the cat would move around the box, pushing and rubbing up against the walls in an effort to escape and eventually coming across the lever that would open the door. Stimulus: lever Response: pushing of the lever Consequence: freedom and food LAW OF EFFECT If an action is followed by a pleasurable consequence, it will tend to be repeated, and if followed by an unpleasant consequence, it will tend not to be repeated. OPERANT CONDITIONING The learning of voluntary behavior through the effects of pleasant and unpleasant consequences to responses OPERANT: how humans and animals operate in the world BF SKINNER American behaviourist (1904-1990) Skinner was greatly influenced by Thorndikes study. He made his own version of the box and called the Skinner box. His early research involved placing a rat into one of its chambers and training it to push down on a bar to get food. SHAPING : a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and finally the desired behavior itself Reinforcing successive approximations, the experimenter or the environment gradually shapes the final complex set of behaviors REINFORCEMENT: Any event or stimulus that when following a response, increases the probability that the response will occur again In Operant Conditioning, REINFORCEMENT is the key to LEARNING. POSITIVE reinforcement Reinforcement of a response by the addition or experiencing of a pleasurable stimulus NEGATIVE reinforcement Reinforcement of a response by the removal, escape from or avoidance of an unpleasant stimulus
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CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Learning to make an involuntary response (reflex) to a stimulus other than the original, natural stimulus that produces the reflex IVAN PAVLOV Russian physiologist (1849-1936) Pavlov built a device that accurately measures the amount of saliva produced by dogs when he was studying their digestive system. Normally, the dog salivates when presented with food (reflex). What intrigued Pavlov was that his dogs began salivating when they werent supposed to be salivating (seeing the lab assistant bringing their food, sound of clatter of the food bowl from the kitchen, meal time).

Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) FOOD A naturally occurring stimulus that leads to an involuntary response Unconditioned response (UCR) SALIVATION An involuntary response to a naturally occurring unconditioned stimulus Neutral stimulus (NS) BELL Stimulus that has no effect on the desired response Conditioned stimulus (CS) BELL Stimulus that becomes able to produce a learned reflex response by being paired with the original UCS Conditioned response (CR) SALIVATION Learned reflex response to a conditioned stimulus or

PUNISHMENT: An event or object that when following a response, makes that response less likely to happen again POSITIVE punishment PUNISHMENT APPLICATION BY NEGATIVE punishment PUNISHMENT BY REMOVAL The punishment of a response by the removal of a pleasurable stimulus

The punishment of a response by the addition or experiencing of an unpleasant stimulus

Severe punishment stops the behavior immediately. It may not stop it permanently, but it does stop it. What are problems with using punishment? Severe punishment 1. May cause the child to avoid the punisher instead of the behavior being punished (the child learns the wrong response) 2. May encourage lying to avoid punishment 3. Creates fear and anxiety, emotional responses that do not promote teaching 4. Especially hitting, provides a successful model for aggression Are there ways to make punishments effective? 1. 2. 3. Punishment should immediately follow the behavior it is meant to punish Punishment should be consistent Punishment of the wrong behavior should be paired, whenever possible with reinforcement of the right behavior Aversive Control 1. Escape conditioning: occurs when the animal learns to perform an operant to terminate an ongoing, aversive stimulus (e.g. inside mall, a mother feeds a crying infant to escape a seemingly embarrassing situation) 2. Avoidance conditioning: giving a signal before the aversive stimulus starts. This kind of learning occurs quickly and is persistent. (e.g. inside a mall, a mother feeds an infant who just woke up to avoid expected crying and a seemingly embarrassing situation) The Premack Principle High-probability behaviors (those performed frequently under conditions of free choice) can be used to reinforce lowprobability behaviors (e.g. a mother tells her son to eat the vegetables first before eating the dessert) Other concepts: STIMULUS GENERALIZATION The tendency of an animal or person to emit the same response to similar stimuli STIMULUS DISCRIMINATION A response is emitted in the presence of a stimulus that is reinforced and not in the presence of unreinforced stimuli EXTINCTION The disappearance or weakening of a learned response when operant response is no longer followed by the reinforcer SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY The temporary recovery in the rate of responding COGNITIVE LEARNING Thoughts, feelings and expectations seemed to influence observable behavior EDWARD TOLMAN American Gestalt Psychologist (18861959) Tolman made use of 3 groups of rats in his experiment. First group: each rat was placed in the maze and reinforced with food for making its way out on the other side. Second group: treated like the first but they never received reinforcement until the 10th day of the experiment. Third group: control group was not reinforced for the entire duration of the experiment. After receiving reinforcements, the second group of rats began to solve the maze almost immediately. Tolman concluded that the rats in the second group, while wandering around in the first 9 days had learned where all the wrong turns and correct paths were and stored this knowledge away as a cognitive map of the physical layout of the maze.
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Schedule of reinforcement Refers to a program that determines HOW and WHEN the occurrence of a response will be followed by a reinforcer. 1. 2. Continuous Reinforcement: Every occurrence of the operant results in delivery of the reinforcer Partial Reinforcement: A situation in which responding is reinforced only some of the time a. Fixed-Ratio Schedule: A reinforcer occurs only after a fixed number of responses by the subject (e.g. a student gets a star after three correct answers during recitation) b. Variable-Ratio Schedule: A subject must make a variable or different number of responses for delivery of each reinforcer (e.g. a person does not know how many times to play before the slot machines hit jackpot) c. Fixed-Interval Schedule: A reinforcer occurs following the first response that occurs after a fixed interval of time (e.g. salary every 15th and 30th. There is an observed rapid responding near time of reinforcement) d. Variable-Interval Schedule: A reinforcer occurs following the first response after a variable amount of time has gone by. (e.g. a person does not know when to get through when calling a busy number, reinforcer does not depend on the number of responses)

LATENT LEARNING Learning could happen without reinforcement and it that remains hidden until its application becomes useful OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING Learning new behavior by watching a model perform that behavior ALBERT BANDURA Canadian social cognitivist (1925present) Banduras study involved having a preschool child in a room in which the experimenter and a model interacted with toys in the room in front of the child. In one condition, the model ignored the presence of the Bobo doll. In the other condition, the model became very aggressive with the doll. When the child had the chance to interact with the Bobo doll, the children who saw the model ignore the doll did not act aggressively toward the toy. The aggressive children learned their aggressive actions from merely watching the model 4 ELEMENTS of OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING 1. ATTENTION: the learner must first pay attention to the model 2. MEMORY: the learner must be able to retain the memory of what was done 3. IMITATION: the learner must be capable of reproducing, or imitating, the actions of the model 4. MOTIVATION: the learner must have the desire to perform the action

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Memory
MEMORY An active system that receives information from the senses, puts that information into a usable form, organizes it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage Mental capacity to encode, store and retrieve information Representations of the world that vary in accuracy and are subject to error and bias

Three Processes of Memory Encoding Putting something into a form that the memory systems can handle, example: From sound waves to neural messages Maybe coded visually (images/pictures), acoustically (sequences of sounds), or semantically (units of meanings) Happens even without the a person being aware of it Some principles in encoding: o Primacy effect: enhanced memory performance on items at the beginning of the presentation sequence; subjects are able to rehearse the items at the beginning of the sequence more often than they are able to rehearse the later items; the earliest items are now in the long term memory o Recency effect: enhanced memory performance on items at the end of the presentation sequence; most recent items are still in the short-term memory making it easier to recall Storage Maintaining the coded information within the memory systems Process of placing encoded information into relatively permanent mental storage for later recall Natural limit of the memory capacity:72 Retrieval Finding the information in storage and bringing it to awareness or consciousness RECALL: deliberate search through memory RECOGNITION: information is actually presented to the person, after which the person reports whether he remembers it or not Models of Memory Information-processing model Assumes that the processing of information for memory storage is similar to the way a computer processes memory in a series of three stages

All information lost within a second or so

Unrehearsed information is lost in about 15-30 seconds

Information is retained indefinitely

Systems of Memory [Atkinson and Shiffrin] Sensory Register The very first stage of memory, the point at which information enters the nervous system through the sensory systems Receives all stimuli in the environment Holds information in its raw form for a brief period of time, from an instant to several seconds Large amount of information can be stored in the sensory register where they remain briefly ICONIC MEMORY: Visual sensory memory lasting only a fraction of a second ECHOIC MEMORY: Brief memory of something a person just heard

Short-term memory Memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used What you attend to is processed in short-term memory, what you do not attend to is lost SELECTIVE ATTENTION: the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input Very limited storage capacity, can retain information only for as long as the person continues to attend to and process the information, for only a short period of time: 2 to 30 seconds, After that, the memory seems to rapidly disappear However, the relatively short duration can be lengthened by repeating or rehearsing the information Digit-span test: 72 Chunking: combining separate items of information into a larger units, or chunk, an then remembering chunks of information rather than individual items Chances are that anyone who can easily remember more than eight or nine digits in the digit-span test is probably recoding the number into chunks. Maintenance rehearsal Practice of saying some information to be remembered over and over in ones head in order to maintain it in short-term memory
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Long-term memory System of memory into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently Made up of large amounts of semantic information accumulated over the years Seems to have no limitations in holding information Memories may be AVAILABLE but NOT ACCESSIBLE

Hippocampus appears to be responsible for the storage of new long-term memories. If it is removed, the ability to store anything new is completely lost

AMNESIA: may be caused by concussions, brain injuries brought about by trauma, alcoholism, or disorders of the aging brain can cause: Anterograde amnesia: no problems recalling events prior to the damage but has difficulty forming new memories, : loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma forward Retrograde amnesia: memory loss for events prior to the event that caused the amnesia, loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards Infantile amnesia: the inability to retrieve memories from much before age 3

Different types of long-term memory Procedural memory: memory of skills, habits and things learned through conditioning; we are not aware of these memories and cannot retrieve them (if you have not played tennis for a long time, you can pick up a racket and still remember how to serve but you cannot describe the sequence of detailed movements needed) Declarative memory: various sorts of knowledge; we are aware of and can recall or retrieve these kinds of information o Semantic memory: memory of facts, concepts, words, definitions, and language rules o Episodic memory: knowledge of specific events, personal experiences or activities

STEPS IN THE MEMORY PROCESS: 1. 2. sensory memory: incoming information is held for seconds or less in sensory memory attention: if you pay no attention to the information, it will disappear forever; if you pay attention, information will automatically be transferred into short-term memory for further processing short-term memory: you have a short time for further processing (2-30sec) if you lose interest or are distracted, it will likely disappear and be forgotten; however, if you rehearse, it will likely be transferred to and encoded in the long-term memory encoding: you may form new associations and encode almost automatically; or you will have to make deliberate effort to encode it to long-term memory long-term memory: encoded information has the potential to remain in the LTM for your lifetime retrieving: encoded information with formed associations is easier to retrieve

FORGETTING Inability to retrieve, recall or recognise information that was stored or still stored in long-term memory Encoding failure: Failure to process information into memory, information is not attended to and fails to be encoded Decay: with the passage of time, the memory trace gradually fades until it disappears completely Interference: recall of some particular memory is blocked or prevented by other related memories, memory trace does not decay but because of interference from other information stored in memory that may accumulate as time passes; new information overwrites or pushes out information that is already there o Proactive Interference: Older information already in memory interferes with the retrieval of newer information old information displaces new o Retroactive Interference: Newer information interferes with the retrieval of older information new information displaces old

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References: Ciccarelli, S. & White, J. (2009). Psychology. NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Plotnik, R. (2005). Introduction to Psychology. (7th ed.). Ca: Wadsworth Publishing Company Teh, L. & Macapagal, E. (Eds.) (2007). General Psychology. Quezon City: The Ateneo De Manila University Press Images: http://www.northern.ac.uk/learning/NCMaterial/Psychology/lifespan%20folder/Lea rningtheories.htm http://www.rhsmpsychology.com/Handouts/schedules_of_reinforcement.htm http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/william.gaeddert/classes/101Ovds/M7-1.htm

Physical aspects of memory Researches suggest that procedural memories are stored in the cerebellum, whereas short-term memories are stored in the prefrontal and temporal lobes of the cortex Semantic and episodic memories may be stored in the frontal and temporal lobes as well but in different locations than short-term memory, whereas memory for fear of objects is most likely stored in the amygdala

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