7.

LEARNING AND CONDITIONING

Learning pervades our lives. It is involved not only in mastering a new skill or academic subject
but also in emotional development, social interaction, and even personality development.

We learn what we fear, what to love, how to be polite, how to be intimate, and so on.

Given the pervasiveness of learning in our lives, it is not surprising that we have already
discussed many instances of it - how, for example, children learn to perceive the world around
them, to identify with their own and to control their behavior according to adult standards.

Now, however, we turn to a more systematic analysis of learning.”

Learning

Learning the process of acquiring new & lasting information or behaviors.

There are two important parts to the classification of learning:

 the lasting change (note: a simple reflexive reaction is not learning)

 the mental process involved in obtaining and maintaining information (it is much harder
to observe and study the internal processes).

Our Life without Learning

Learning is more than school, books and tests. Without learning our lives would simply be a
series of reflexes and instincts. We would not be able to communicate; we would have no
memory of our past or goals for the future.

Learning’s Effects on Behavior

 We learn new behaviors by observing events & watching others.

 In humans, learning has a much larger influence on behavior than instincts. Learning
represents an evolutionary advancement over instincts.

But how do we learn?

We learn by association.

Every second/minute/hour of the day that we are awake: our minds are innately searching for
patterns/trends/connections in what we can see & we judge the stimulus of each detail
surrounding us in order to determine our response.

We can also learn indirectly through our common use of language skills in order to learn from
the experience of others, vicariously, based upon the information that they share with us.

Types of Learning

 SIMPLE LEARNING
 COMPLEX LEARNING
 CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
 OPERANT CONDITIONING
Simple Learning

Habituation: an organism’s decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it.

Ex: Car horns or emergency vehicle sirens while you’re driving in the city how often do you pay
attention to the morning announcements?

How often do you look when a car alarm goes off?

Simple Learning

Mere Exposure Effect: A learned preference for stimuli to which we have been previously
exposed.

Ex: a best friend’s voice vs. a random stranger

Ex: in recent studies, 88% of the time, adults will go on to purchase the exact same cleaning
products/hygiene products that their parents purchased while they were children. This is a
gradually developed generational brand loyalty that is very hard to undo.

Which do you prefer?

Which did your parents drink when you were a little kid?

Complex Learning

Behavioral Learning: Forms of learning, such as classical and operant conditioning which can be
described in terms of stimuli and responses.

Stimulus ~ any event or situation that evokes a response

Ivan Pavlov and Classical Conditioning

One of most famous contributors in the study of learning is Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936).

Originally studying salivation and digestion, Pavlov stumbled upon what has become known as
“classical conditioning” while he was experimenting on his dog.

Classical Conditioning: A form of learning that occurs when a previously neutral stimulus is
linked to another neutral stimulus and therefore acquires the power to elicit a consistent and
innate reflex. Upon repetition, the individual will come to expect this response.

Pavlov’s Findings Explained

Pavlov discovered that a neutral stimulus, when paired with a natural reflex-producing
stimulus, will begin to produce a learned response, even when it is presented by itself.

Neutral Stimulus: Any stimulus that produces no conditioned response prior to learning.

Components of Conditioning
There are 5 main components of conditioning.

Classical Conditioning always involves these parts.

 Neutral Stimulus (NS)

 Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
 Unconditioned Response (UR)
 Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
 Conditioned Response (CR)

Ivan Pavlov’s Salivation Experiment

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

US: A stimulus that automatically-without conditioning or learning- provokes a reflexive

response.

In Pavlov’s experiment, food was used as the US because it produced a salivation reflex.

NOTE: Classical conditioning cannot happen without the US. The only behaviors that can be
classically conditioned are those that are produced by unconditioned stimulus.

Unconditioned Response (UR)

UR: A response resulting from an unconditioned stimulus without prior learning.

In Pavlov’s experiment, the UR was the dog salivating when its tongue touched food.

Realize that the US 🡪 UR connection involves no deliberate learning or acquisition.

From Unconditioned to Conditioned

During acquisition, a neutral stimulus (NS) is paired with the unconditioned stimulus (US).

After several trials the neutral stimulus will gradually begin to elicit the same response as the
US.

Acquisition: The learning stage during which a conditioned response (CR) comes to be elicited
by the conditioned stimulus (CS).

Conditioned Stimulus

A CS is the formerly neutral stimulus that gains the power to cause the response.

[In Pavlov’s experiment, the bell/tone began to produce the same response that the food once
did.]

Conditioned Response

A CR is a response elicited by a previously neutral stimulus that has become associated with the
unconditioned stimulus.

Although the response to the CS is essentially the same as the response originally produced by
the US, we now call it a conditioned response because the results can be duplicated.
Extinction

Extinction: The diminishing (or lessening) of a “learned” or “conditioned” response, when an

unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus. [This occurs in Operant
Conditioning when a response is no longer being reinforced.]

To acquire a CR, we repeatedly pair a neutral stimulus with the US. But, if we want to reverse
this learning, we only need to weaken the strength of the connection between the two stimuli.

NOTE: It is important to realize that extinction does not mean complete elimination of a
response.

Reinforcement Procedures

What if we could not distinguish between stimuli that were similar?

 The bell ending class vs. fire alarm

 The door bell vs. our cell phones

Discrimination: The ability to distinguish between two similar signals stimulus.

Examples of Classical Conditioning

“Little Albert” experiment by John B. Watson. Albert was given a toy and white rat to play. One
day, when young Albert reached for the rat, the experimenter deliberately made a sudden
noise that frightened the child and made him cry. After repeated pairing of the noise and the
rat alone, little Albert learned to fear of white rats.

Your alarm clock makes a faint clicking sound a couple of seconds before the alarm goes off. At
first, the click by itself does not awaken you, but the alarm does. After a week or so, you
awaken when you hear the click.

Examples of Classical Conditioning

If a student is bullied at school, they may learn to associate school with fear. This could happen
if a student is repeatedly humiliated or punished in class by a specific teacher. It could also
explain why some students show a particular dislike of certain subjects for their entire
academic career, regardless of its actual difficulty.

7.2

LEARNING AND CONDITIONING

Operant Conditioning

Classical vs. Operant Conditioning

 With classical conditioning you can teach a dog to salivate, but you cannot teach it to sit
up or roll over. Why?

 Salivation is an involuntary reflex, while sitting up and rolling over are far more complex
responses that we think of as voluntary.
Operant Conditioning

 Operant Conditioning: A form of learning in which the probability of a behavioral

response is changed by its consequences…that is, by the stimuli that follows the
response.

 HINT: An operant is an observable behavior that an organism uses to “operate” in its

environment.

Effects of Operant Conditioning

 Behavioral responses are strengthened when followed by a reinforcer:

 And diminished when followed by a punisher.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

 B.F. Skinner became famous for his ideas in behaviorism and his work with rats.

Edward Thornike’s “Law of Effect”

The idea that behaviors followed by favorable consequences are more likely to happen again
while behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.

Operant Chamber: a chamber with a bar or a key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a
food or water reinforce while an attached device records the animal’s rate of bar-pressing or
key turning.

Reinforcement vs. Punishment

 Unlike reinforcement, punishment must be administered consistently. Intermittent

punishment is far less effective than punishment delivered after every undesired
behavior. [In fact, not punishing every misbehavior can have the effect of rewarding the
behavior.]

 It is important to remember that the learner, not the teacher, decides if something is
reinforcing or punishing.
Uses and Abuses of Punishment

 Punishment often produces an immediate change in behavior, which ironically

reinforces the punisher.

 However, punishment rarely works in the long run for four reasons:

1. The power of punishment to suppress behavior usually disappears when the threat of
punishment is gone.

2. Punishment triggers escape or aggression.

3. Punishment makes the learner apprehensive: inhibits learning.

4. Punishment is often applied unequally.

Making Punishment Work

 To make punishment work:

 Punishment should be swift.

 Punishment should be certain-every time.

 Punishment should be limited in time and intensity.

 Punishment should clearly target the behavior, not the person.

 Punishment should not give mixed messages.

 The most effective punishment is often omission training-negative punishment.

A Third Type of Learning

 Sometimes we have “flashes of insight” when dealing with a problem where we have
been experiencing trial and error.

 This type of learning is called cognitive learning, which is explained as changes in

mental processes, rather than as changes in behavior alone.

EXAMPLE: Sultan the Chimp

Wolfgang Kohler and Sultan

 Kohler believed that chimps could solve complex problems by combining simpler
behaviors they had previously learned separately.

 Kohler taught Sultan the chimp how to stack boxes to obtain bananas that were over his
head and how to use a stick to obtain something that was out of his reach. He taught
Sultan these skills in separate situations.

Sultan’s Situation

 When Sultan was put in a situation where the bananas were still out of his reach after
stacking the boxes, Sultan became frustrated. He threw the stick and kicked the wall
before sitting down.
  Suddenly, he jumped up and dragged the boxes and stick under the bananas. He then
climbed up the boxes and whacked the fruit down with the stick.

 This suggested to Kohler that the animals were not mindlessly using conditioned
behavior, but were learning by reorganizing their perceptions of problems.

Cognitive Learning

 Sultan was not the only animal to demonstrate cognitive learning. When rats were put
into a maze with multiple routes to the reinforcer, the rats would repeatedly attempt
the shortest route.

 If their preferred route was blocked, they would chose the next shortest route to the
reward.

 Cognition Map: A mental representation of a place, like your personal “map.”

Latent Learning

 In a similar study, rats were allowed to wander around a maze, without reinforcements,
for several hours. It formerly was thought that reinforcements were essential for
learning.

 However, the rats later were able to negotiate the maze for food more quickly than rats
that had never seen the maze before.

 Latent learning: Learning that occurs but is not apparent until the learner has an
incentive to demonstrate it.

Observational Learning

 You can think of observational learning as an extension of operant conditioning, in

which we observe someone else getting rewarded but act as though we had also
received the reward.

 Observational learning: Learning in which new responses are acquired after other’s
behavior and the consequences of their behavior are observed.

 After observing adults seeming to enjoy punching, hitting and kicking an inflated doll
called Bobo, the children later showed similar aggressive behavior toward the doll.

 Significantly, these children were more aggressive than those in a control condition who
did not witness the adult’s violence.

Media and Violence

 Does violence on TV/movies/video games have an impact on the learning of children?

 Correlation evidence from over 50 studies shows that observing violence is associated
with violent behavior.

 In addition, experiment evidence shows that viewers of media violence show a

reduction in emotional arousal and distress when they subsequently observe violent
acts - a condition known as psychic numbing.
8.1

MEMORY AND FORGETTING

We are told that all learning implies retention, and retention has something to do with the
processes of memory.

If nothing is left from previous experience, nothing is learned.

Memory is defined simply as the totality of past experience that can be remembered.

 According to Dworetzky (1988), you rely on your memory every moment of the day.
Without it, you would have no sense of continuity, no realization of the past, and you
couldn't benefit from learning or experience.

• Without memory, it would be impossible for you to function. All images and
materials not immediately available to your senses must be drawn from your
memory.

• Your very sense of self-awareness requires that you remember you had a “self”
yesterday. Without a memory, you wouldn’t see a human.

TWO CASES OF AMNESIA

• H. M. was operated on by doctors in 1953 in an effort to control his seizures. Portions of

his limbic system closely associated with memory function were destroyed.

• After surgery, H. M. was no longer able to store memories in long-term memory

(LTM).

He had to get by on what he had learned before 1953. All events since that time faded from his
mind moments after they happened. This disorder is called anterograde amnesia.

Limbic system - involved in motivation, emotion, learning, and memory (hippocampus &
amygdala).

LTM - the unlimited capacity memory store that can hold information over lengthy periods of
time

Anterograde amnesia - is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that
caused amnesia

Retrograde amnesia - refers to the loss of information that was acquired before the onset
of amnesia

Although H. M. is unable to place facts into his LTM, his "other" memory seems unaffected.

• For instance, he can learn new motor skills playing, tennis, reading words
backward in a mirror, or solving puzzles.

• And, although he doesn’t remember learning to do puzzles, the more he

practices them, the better he gets.
 • On the other hand, N. A. was a college student who one day entered his dormitory
room just in time to be pierced by a miniature fencing foil with which his roommate was
practicing.

• The roommate accidentally thrust the tip of the fencing foil into N. A.'s right
nostril and upward, piercing the middle of N. A.'s brain.

• Like the precision of a surgeon's knife, the foil cut into the left side of the
thalamus. Since N. A's injury was on the left side of the brain, he lost many
verbal memories, but his memory on images was unharmed - verbal skills are
more often controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, while spatial
representation are more often maintained in the right hemisphere.

PERSPECTIVES OF MEMORY

• It should be noted however, that whatever has been learned cannot be retrieved unless
it is filed or stored in our memory, and the ease of retrieval when we need it will
depend on how the information has been stored.

• Yet memory is not perfect. The mind does not make a record, the way a camera or a
tape recorder does because our memories alter.

• Some memories are forgotten, others are hidden in hard-to-find places

What are memories made of?

Engram: Memory Trace

• Theorists propose that memories are somehow chemically or electrically contained

within brain tissue.

• In 1917, neurophysiologist Karl Lashley began a search for what he called the brain’s
engram – a hypothetical structure that contains memories.

• Removed sections from the brain of trained rats.

• In his book , In Search of the Engram (1950) – engrams did not exist; he
concluded that each was distributed throughout the brain (equipotentiality)

Neural Synapse

• Age-Associated Memory Impairment (AAMI) – A condition connected with memory

and Alzheimer’s disease.

• Experts tell us that the brain has billions of neurons, many with thousands of
connections through which they can send signals to neighbouring neurons.

• Neuron no. 28, for example, fires an electrical signal, and in the synapse where one of
28’s connectors touches a receiver of neuron no. 29, a chemical change triggers an
electrical signal in 29. That signal gets passed on neuron no. 30 and so on and on.

If the connection between 28 and 29 is made often enough, the bond between two neurons
grows stronger – the stuff that is memory made of.
  The function of the synapse is to transfer electric activity (information) from one cell to
another.

The amygdala is involved in fear and fear memories. The hippocampus is associated with
declarative and episodic memory as well as recognition memory. The cerebellum plays a role in
processing procedural memories, such as how to play the piano. The prefrontal cortex appears
to be involved in remembering semantic tasks.

Declarative memory - memory of facts, data, and events

Episodic memory – memory of recent experience

Semantic tasks – meaning, symbols

Kinds of Memories (In order of durability)

1. Semantic

• The memory of what words and symbols mean is highly resilient, about half of
Alzheimers patients retain much of their semantic memory. It's unlikely you'll
forget what "yatch" and "mess hall" mean, even though you haven't used the
words in years.

• Nor do you forget religious symbols and corporate trademarks or what

distinguishes a cat from a dog. You can add words to your semantic
memory until death.

2. Implicit

• Chances are, you will never forget how to ride a bike, swim or drive a car – skills
that depend on automatic recall of a series of motions.

• Conditioned responses, such as reaching for a handkerchief when you

sense a sneeze, also aren't likely to disappear.

• Loss of implicit memory is a sure sign of serious mental deterioration.

3. Remote

• It is data collected over the years from schools, magazines, movies,

conversations, lecture, seminars, and so on.

• Remote memory appears to diminish with age in normal people, though

the decline could be simply a retrieval problem.

• Thus neurologists advise us to keep sorting through the constant

accumulation of information as we age.

4. Working

• Now we enter a territory that wanes for most people. This is extremely short-
term memory, lasting no more than a few seconds. It is the brain's boss, telling it
 what to cling. In conversation, working memory enables you to hang on to the
first part of your classmate's sentence while she gets to the end.

• It also lets you keep several things in mind simultaneously – to riffle through
your mail, talk the phone and catch the attention of a colleague walking by the
door – all without losing your place.

• Working memory in many people starts to slow clown between ages 40

and 50. Thus, tasks that requires fast reactions to a lot of information are
not for those under this age such as airline controllers and jet Fighter
combat.

5. Episodic

• This is the memory of recent experience – everything from the movie you saw
last week to where you put your glasses. It, too, dwindles over time, and its loss
troubles many people. You remember how to drive your car, but you can't recall
where you parked it.

• Episodic memory could begin to dwindle in the late 30s, but the downward glide
is so gentle that you probably won't notice it for a couple of decades. At 50,
however, you are likely to feel a little anxiety as you watch the younger people in
the office learn how to operate the new computer software more quickly than
you do.

Processes of Memory

• Memory is defined as the process by which information is encoded, stored, and

retrieved

• These processes allow us to maintain information over the passage of time –

from a fraction of second to a lifetime.

• Memory is responsible for your recollection of the most immediate to the most
remote experiences.

3 processes of memory

1. Encoding

 The first stage of information processing, or changing information so that we can place
it in memory, is called encoding. Information about the world outside reaches our sense
as physical and chemical stimulation. When we encode this information, we convert it
into psychological formats that can be mentally represented.
 To do so, we commonly use visual, auditory, and semantic codes:
 Visual code is a mental representation of information as a picture. Some artists and art
historians seem to maintain marvelous visual mental representation of works of arts, so
that they recognize at once whether or not photograph of a work is authentic.
 Acoustic is a mental representation of information as sequence of sounds.
 Semantic code is also a kind of mental representation of information according to its
meaning.
2. Storage

 The second process of memory is storage, or the maintenance of information over time.
If you were given the task of storing the list of letter (told to remember it), how would
you attempt to place it in storage?
 One way would be by maintenance rehearsal by mentally repeating the list, or saying it
to yourself. Our awareness of the functioning of our memory, referred to by
psychologists as metamemory, becomes more sophisticated as we develop.
 Metamemory refers to self- awareness of the ways in which memory functions, allowing
the person to encode, store, and retrieve information effectively.
 You could also have condensed the amount of information you were rehearsing by
reading the list of a three-syllable word; that is, you could have rehearsed three syllables
rather than ten letters. In either case, repetition would have been the key to memory.

3. Retrieval

 Refers to the location of stored information and its return to consciousness. With well-
known information, such as our names and occupations, retrieval is effortless and, for
all practical purposes, immediate. But when we are trying to remember massive
quantities of information, or information that is not perfectly understood, retrieval can
be tedious and not always successful.
 To retrieve stored information from computer, we need to know the name of file.
Similarly, retrieval of information from our memories requires knowledge of the proper
cues, which will be discussed in detail later.

8.2

STAGES OF MEMORY

• Memory is the mental function that enables you to acquire, retain, and recall
sensations, impressions, information, and thoughts you have experienced.

• To help understand memory as a whole, you can think of memory in terms of stages.
The different stages describe the length of time that information remains available to
you.

The three stages of memory are :

1. Sensory memory
2. Short-term memory
3. Long-term memory

Overview Three Stages of Memory

 Information processing begins in sensory memory, moves to short-term memory, and

eventually moves into long-term memory.
 Information that you come across on a daily basis may move through the three stages of
memory. However, not all information makes its way through all three stages. Most of it
is forgotten somewhere along the way.
 The determination of what information makes its way through the different stages
depends on what you pay attention to and process.
  Information that you pay attention to and process will move to the next stage of
memory.
 However, any information you to do not pay attention to never makes it way to the next
stage.

 Sensory memory - processes information gathered through your five senses. It holds
information for an extremely brief period of time (less than a second) after the original
stimulus has stopped.

 Short-term memory - holds information you are actively thinking about. It lasts for a
very brief time (less than a minute) and can only hold 7 +/- 2 pieces of information at
once.

 Long-term memory - holds information for long periods even permanently. It seemingly
can hold an unlimited amount of information.

Sensory Memory

• Sensory memory is the first stage of memory. Its purpose is to give your brain time to
process the incoming information.

• Sensory memory is not consciously controlled. You subconsciously and continuously

gather information from the environment through your five senses. Sensory memory
holds impressions of that sensory information that was received by your five senses
after the original stimulus has stopped.

• However it only holds it for a very brief period, generally for no longer than a second. In
order for that information to be retained for longer, it has to continue onto short-term
memory.

• Most of the information that gets into sensory memory is forgotten. It never makes its
way into the second stage of memory because it was never attended To get information
into short-term memory, you need to attend to it meaning consciously paying attention
to it.

• Sensory memory can be observed if you look at an object then close your eyes. As your
eyes close, you can notice how the visual image is maintained for a fraction of a second
before fading. It is your sensory memory that is holding that image.

• Sensory memory also explains why the old 16mm movies shot with 16 separate frames
per second appears as continuous movement rather than a series of single still pictures.

• A visual trace is retained in sensory memory for about a split second. But it holds
it long enough to keep the image in your mind until the next still image replaces
it.

• Basically, sensory memory allows you to see the world as an unbroken chain of
events, rather than as individual pieces. This is an example of iconic memory,
which is your visual sensory memory.

• There are two other types of sensory memory, echoic memory (the auditory
sensory) and haptic memory (the tactile sensory).
Types of Sensory memory

• Iconic memory is the visual sensory memory that holds the mental representation of
your visual stimuli.

• Echoic memory is the auditory sensory memory that hold information that you hear.

• Haptic memory is the tactile sensory memory that holds information from your sense of
feeling.

Short-term Memory

• Short-term memory is also known as working or active memory. It holds the information
you are currently thinking about. This information will quickly be forgotten unless you
make a conscious effort to retain it.

• Like sensory memory, short-term memory holds information temporarily, pending

further processing. However, unlike sensory memory which holds the complete image
received by your senses, short-term memory only stores your interpretation of the
image.

• Temporary Storage

• As indicated above, information in short-term memory is not stored

permanently. Information passes from sensory memory into short-term
memory, where again it is held for only a short period of time. Most of the
information stored in short-term memory will only be kept for approximately 20
to 45 seconds.

• While many of your short-term memories are quickly forgotten, paying

attention to the information and processing (encoding) it allows it to
continue into long-term memory.

• . Just as sensory memory is a necessary step for short-term memory,

short-term memory is a necessary step toward the next stage of
retention, long-term memory

• Processing or encoding includes making judgments and assessments about meaning,

relevance, and significance of that information. It also includes the mental activities
needed to move selected portions of the information into long- term memory. If
encoding never happens, the information never gets into long- term memory.

• The reason a person forgets the name of someone to whom he or she has just
been introduced to is because the name often was never encoded and
transferred from short-term to long-term memory.

• Limited capacity

• Short-term memory not only has a limited time, it also has a limited capacity. It is
believed to only hold a few items.

• Research shows the number is around 7 +/- 2 items. For example, if a

person is asked to listen to a series of 20 names, he or she normally
 retains only about seven names. Typically, it is either the first few or last
few.

• The reason is because if you focuses on the first few items, your STM
becomes saturated, and you cannot concentrate on and recall the last
series of items.

• People are able to retain more information using memory techniques

such as chunking or rehearsal.

Long-term Memory

• Long-term memory refers to the storage of information over an extended period. It is all
the memories you hold for periods longer than a few seconds.

• The information can last in your long-term memory for hours, days, months, or
even years. Although you may forget some information after you learn it, other
things will stay with you forever.

• Some information retained in STM is processed or encoded into long-term

memory. This information is filed away in your mind and must be retrieved
before it can be used. Some of the information in your LTM is easy to recall,
while other memories are much more difficult to retrieve.

• Unlike short-term memory, long-term memory has seemingly unlimited capacity.

You may remember numerous facts and figures, as well as episodes in your life
from years ago.

Types of long-term memory

I. Explicit memory - are those experiences that can be intentionally and consciously
remembered. It is knowledge or experiences that can be consciously remembered such
as facts, episodes, or events. Explicit memory can be further categorized as either
episodic or semantic memories.

• Episodic memory refers to the firsthand experiences that you have had (e.g.
episodes or events in your life). For example, you may remember your 16th
birthday party or your first soccer game.

• Semantic memory refers to knowledge of facts and concepts about the world.
For example, you may remember the names of presidents or how to multiple
two numbers.

II. Implicit memory - refers to knowledge that we cannot consciously access. It is

remembering without awareness. For example, you may remember how to ride a bike
or walk, but it is difficult to explain how you do it.