 LEARNING

 1. LEARNING
1.1 Learning: Lasting change in behavior or mental processes driven by experience
1.2 Learning vs. Instincts (species-typical behavior)
 2. Classical conditioning
2.1 Discovery of “psychic secretions” leading to more than 532 experiments
2.2 Some fundamental concepts:
2.2.1 Stimulus and response
2.2.2 Difference between conditioned and unconditioned
2.2.3 Unconditioned stimulus-unconditioned response
2.2.4 Reflex or unconditioned response: an adaptive mechanism such blinking
protects the eye and salivation helps digestion
2.2.5 Association between reflexes and neutral stimulus
“Think about your experience when your mouth waters when you read the menu”
Extinction
Disappearance of conditioned response (salivation) after withholding of UCS (food)
over several trials in which CS (tone) was presented alone.
Spontaneous recovery
CR reappears after extinction and after a period without exposure to the CS.
Generalization
Extension of a learned response to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned
stimulus.

Discrimination learning
Learning to respond to a particular stimulus but not to stimulus that are similar
Paranoid dogs
Circle Food Salivation
Ellipse Electric shock ?
 3. Applications
ONE OF THE CENTURY’S MOST FAMOUS PRONOUNCEMENTS
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them
up in and I will guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of
specialist I might select- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-in-chief, and yes, even beggar-man
and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of
his ancestors.”
By John B. Watson (1878-1958)
3.1 The notorious case of Little Albert: An experiment by Watson and Rayner (1920)
 Operant conditioning
1.1 What is operant?
1.2 Behavioral change (learning), a product of consequences such as money, pain, food, loss
of privileges, low-high grades.
1.3 Only observable behavior, strict no to mind
1.4 Reinforcement: stimulus/event after a behavior occurred that strengthens a response.
1.4.1 Positive reinforcement
1.4.2 Negative reinforcement
Question:
Q 1. Money at the end of the month?
Q 2. Using warm clothes in winter?
 2. Types of reinforcement
2.1 Continuous reinforcement
2.1.1 Useful for shaping complex and desired behavior
Q 3 What could be the possible limitations of continuous reinforcement?
2.2 Intermittent reinforcement
Q. 4 Which reinforcement type would be most effective and why?
 3. Schedules of reinforcement
3.1 Ratio schedule: number of correct responses
3.1.1 Fixed ratio schedule
3.1.2 Variable ratio schedule
3.2 Interval schedule: after a certain time interval
3.2.1 Fixed interval schedule
3.2.2 Variable interval schedule
 4. Punishment
4.1 Punishment: aversive consequence that weakens behavioral occurrence
4.1.1 Positive punishment: adding aversive consequence
4.1.2 Negative Punishment: removing reinforcer
4.2 Is punishment effective?
 Debate:

What can be the effect of rewards on the task that organism (humans) like or do out
of choice?
5. Four BIG Challenges to Behaviorism
5.1 What the mind of the rat speaks: Study by Edward Tolman
5.2 Study by Köhler on Chimpanzees, termed the phenomena insight learning.
5.3 Seligman’s study: Learned Helplessness
Let us again do a conditioning experiment on Dogs!
Dogs received electric shock:
At first, no escape was provided
When escape route provided, then????
 6. From Observational Learning
6.1 Study by Albert Bandura on Children aggression
 7. Limitation of conditioning
7.1 Biological drift: Garcia and Koelling experiment (1966)
Food – nausea or Pain at the feet – nausea?
7.2 Keller and Breland experiment (1961)
 8. The premack principle
8.1 A more preferred activity can be used to reinforce a less-preferred activity.