Chapter 6 Learning

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Chapter 6Learning
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Learning

• Learning is defined as any relatively permanent
  change in behavior that is based upon experience.
• It is an area of psychology that seems simple to
  evaluate but is in fact quite complex.
• Factors both within and outside of an organism
  can influence and interfere with learning.

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Module 6.1

• Behaviorism

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Behaviorism

• Behaviorists are psychologists who insist that
  psychologists should study only observable,
  measurable behaviors, not mental processes.
• There is however a wide range of views among
  researchers who call themselves behaviorists.

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Behaviorism

• Methodological behaviorism
• Methodological behaviorists study only events
  that they can measure and observe.
• They sometimes do use those observations to make
  inferences about internal events.

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Behaviorism

• Methodological behaviorism
• For example, from observing how an animal behaves
  in the presence of certain stimuli, a
  methodological behaviorist will infer the
  presence of an intervening variable.
• An intervening variable is something that cannot
  be directly observed yet links a variety of
  procedures to a variety of possible responses.

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Behaviorism

• Methodological behaviorism
• If a monkey is more likely to show its teeth or
  make loud noises in response to the placement of
  a stuffed animal or a larger monkey of the same
  species in its cage, and to a recording of
  growling noises of a predatory cat, the
  methodological behaviorist will infer the
  presence of the intervening variable fear.

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Behaviorism

• Methodological behaviorism
• What measurements would you take to infer the
  presence of intervening variables such as
• Hunger
• Affection
• Anger

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Behaviorism

• Radical behaviorism
• Radical behaviorists, internal states are caused
  by events in the environment, or by genetics.
• The ultimate cause of behavior is therefore the
  observable events, not the internal states.
• Most discussions of mental states are sloppy and
  should be rephrased into a description of
  behavior.

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Behaviorism

• The Rise of Behaviorism
• In the early 1900s, the structuralists used
  introspection as a technique to study psychology.
• They asked subjects to describe their own
  experiences in order to study thoughts and ideas.

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Behaviorism

• The Rise of Behaviorism
• Behaviorists believed that it was useless to ask
  people to describe their private experiences.
• There was no way to check the accuracy of these
  reports, and hard to define what private
  experiences mean.
• Behaviorists insisted that psychology deal with
  observable and measurable events only.

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Behaviorism

• The Rise of Behaviorism
• Jacques Loeb argued that all animal behavior, and
  most human behavior, could be explained with
  stimulus-response psychology.
• Stimulus-response psychology attempts to explain
  behavior in terms of how each stimulus triggers a
  response.
• Flinching away from a blow and shading ones eyes
  from a strong light would be examples of
  stimulus-response behaviors.

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Behaviorism

• The Rise of Behaviorism
• More complex patterns of behavior are just the
  result of adding together many changes of speed
  and direction elicited by various stimuli.
• Modern behaviorists do not subscribe to this
  model but now believe that behavior is the
  product of a history of stimuli and responses,
  plus the effects of natural physiological states
  (hunger, tiredness, etc.)

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Behaviorism

• The Rise of Behaviorism
• The behaviorists carried on the tradition of
  asking questions about animal learning that was
  abandoned when it was found to be impossible to
  answer questions about how intelligent different
  animal species are.
• Early behaviorists believed that it might be
  possible to determine the basic laws of learning
  by studying how animals learn.

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Behaviorism

• The Assumptions of Behaviorism
• Behaviorists are deterministic
• They assume that we live in a universe of
  identifiable cause-and-effect. Since our behavior
  is part of that universe, it too must have
  identifiable causes.
• If we know enough about the individuals past
  experiences, current influences, and genetics, we
  can predict that individuals behavior.

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Behaviorism

• The Assumptions of Behaviorism
• Behaviorists believe that mental explanations are
  ineffective.
• Q. Why is she smiling?
• A. She is smiling because she is happy.
• Q How do you know she is happy?
• A. We can tell she is happy because she is
  smiling.

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Behaviorism

• The Assumptions of Behaviorism
• Behaviorists believe that this sort of exchange
  is typical of the circular reasoning that can
  arise when one attempts to infer the presence of
  internal states based on behavior.
• The influence of this perspective can be seen in
  the American legal system, where witnesses are
  not allowed to draw inferences about what they
  saw, but rather are encouraged only to describe
  appearance and behavior.

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Behaviorism

• The Assumptions of Behaviorism
• Behaviorists believe that the environment plays a
  powerful role in molding behavior.
• The most powerful influence on behavior is
  outcome.
• Our environment selects and perpetuates
  successful behaviors, much as evolution selects
  successful animals.
• Behaviorists do not deny the importance of
  heredity, but they do not emphasize it.

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Behaviorism

• People are often quick to dismiss behaviorism,
  because they are disturbed by the notion that
  thoughts, beliefs and emotions are not the cause
  of behavior.
• A behaviorist would argue that past outcomes of
  behaviors have caused the thoughts, beliefs and
  emotions.
• How could you scientifically support the idea
  that the idea that thoughts, beliefs and emotions
  exist independently of your previous experiences?

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Module 6.2

• Classical Conditioning

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Pavlov and Classical Conditioning

• Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist who won a Nobel
  Prize for his research on digestion.
• His original description of classical
  conditioning was a by-product of this research.
  He did not set out to discover classical
  conditioning.

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Classical Conditioning

• Pavlov noticed that the dogs he used to do his
  research salivated upon the sight of the lab
  workers who fed them.
• He concluded that this reflex was psychological
  because it was based on the dogs previous
  experiences.
• Further testing demonstrated that the sight of
  food produced the same effect as giving the same
  amount of food to the dog.

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• Figure 6.2
• Pavlov used dogs for his experiments on classical
  conditioning and salivation. The experimenter can
  ring a buzzer (CS), present food (UCS), and
  measure the responses (CR and UCR). Pavlov
  himself collected saliva with a simple measuring
  pouch attached to the dogs cheek his later
  colleagues used a more complex device.

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Classical Conditioning

• Based upon his tentative acceptance of the
  salivation as a reflex, Pavlov used the term
  conditional reflex to describe this response.
• The term was mistranslated into English as
  conditioned reflex, a mistake that helped create
  the terminology we use to describe classical
  conditioning.

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Classical Conditioning

• Pavlov started with the unconditioned reflex of
  salivation to food. He hypothesized that that
  this was an automatic connection.
• The dogs had an unconditioned reflex between food
  and secretion of digestive juices.

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Classical Conditioning

• A buzzer is called a neutral stimulus because it
  elicits attention to the sound, but no automatic
  connection.
• The dogs would lift their ears and look around
  when the buzzer sounded, but no salivation was
  produced.

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Classical Conditioning

• He conjectured that animals develop new
  connections by transferring a response from one
  stimulus to another.
• He hypothesized that if a buzzer always preceded
  the food, the buzzer would begin to elicit the
  reflex of salivation.

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Classical Conditioning

• After a few pairings of the buzzer with the food,
  the dogs would begin to salivate as soon as the
  buzzer sounded.

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• Figure 6.3
• With classical conditioning a conditioned
  stimulus is followed by an unconditioned
  stimulus. At first the conditioned stimulus
  elicits no response, and the unconditioned
  stimulus elicits the unconditioned response.
  After sufficient pairings the conditioned
  stimulus begins to elicit the conditioned
  response, which can resemble the unconditioned
  response.

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Classical Conditioning

• Terminology
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) ? An event that
  consistently and automatically elicits and
  unconditioned response.
• Unconditioned Response (UCR) ? An action that the
  unconditioned stimulus automatically elicits.

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Classical Conditioning

• Terminology
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS) ? Formerly the neutral
  stimulus, having been paired with the
  unconditioned stimulus, elicits the same
  response. That response depends upon its
  consistent pairing with the UCR.
• Conditioned Response (CR) ? The response elicited
  by the conditioned stimulus due to the training.
  Usually it closely resembles the UCR.

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Classical Conditioning

• Factors that enhance conditioning
• Conditioning occurs more rapidly when the
  conditioned (neutral) stimulus is relatively
  unfamiliar. If you are already habituated to
  (used to) the neutral stimulus, it will take
  longer for its pairing with an unconditioned
  stimulus to form a connection for you.
• Conditioning is facilitated when people are
  already aware of the connection between the CS
  and the UCS. When people are informed of the
  conditioning procedure prior to its beginning,
  they will be conditioned faster.

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Concept Check

• A puff of air is blown into a rabbits eye just
  after a musical tone is played. After several
  repetitions of this procedure, the rabbit closes
  its eye when the musical tone is played.
• What are the
• UCS
• UCR
• Neutral Stimulus/CS
• And CR?

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• UCS Air puff
• UCR Closing eye
• Neutral stimulus/CS Musical tone
• CR Closing eye

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• The television commercial for Mega Burger shows a
  big delicious cheeseburger. A 50s rock-and-roll
  song is played during the commercial. You see
  the commercial several times, and now when the
  song is playing on the radio, you get hungry.
• What are the
• UCS
• UCR
• Neutral Stimulus/CS
• And CR?

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• UCS - Cheeseburger
• UCR - Hunger
• Neutral Stimulus/CS Rock and Roll song
• CR - Hunger

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• When the training starts, the CS elicits ________
  and the UCS elicits ________.

No response The UCR
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• After the training, the CS elicits ________ and
  the UCS elicits ________.

The CR The UCR
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Classical Conditioning

• The Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
• The process that establishes or strengthens a
  conditioned response is called acquisition.
• To extinguish a classically conditioned response,
  the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented
  without the unconditioned stimulus. This decrease
  and elimination is referred to as extinction.

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Classical Conditioning

• The Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
• A rabbit is conditioned to blink its eye through
  repeated presentation of a musical tone followed
  by a puff of air directly blown in its eye.
  After a few repetitions, the rabbit blinks its
  eye when the tone sounds. This is the
  Acquisition.
• The musical tone is then played repeatedly with
  no puff of air. Gradually, the rabbit stops
  blinking its eye. This is the Extinction.

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Classical Conditioning

• The Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
• Extinction does not erase the association between
  the CS and the UCS.
• If the puff of air is suddenly presented again to
  the rabbit without warning, it will blink its eye
  the next time the tone is played.

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Classical Conditioning

• The Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
• The temporary return of an extinguished response
  is called spontaneous recovery.
• The rabbit acquires the response, and then the
  response is extinguished through the repeated
  presentation of the tone with no air puff. Many
  hours after the experiment, the rabbit hears a
  musical tone. It blinks its eye.

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• Figure 6.4
• Phases of classical conditioning Classical
  conditioning proceeds through several phases,
  depending on the time of presentation of the two
  stimuli. If the conditioned stimulus regularly
  precedes the unconditioned stimulus, acquisition
  occurs. If the conditioned stimulus is presented
  by itself, extinction occurs. A pause after
  extinction yields a brief spontaneous recovery.

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• Figure 6.5
• The procedure for classical conditioning of the
  eye-blink response.

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Concept Check

• To deal with your conditioned response to the
  song from the Mega Burger commercial, what steps
  would you take to produce extinction? What steps
  would you take to produce spontaneous recovery?

To produce extinction, play the song repeatedly
with no image of the cheeseburger. To produce
spontaneous recovery, watch the commercial once a
few days after the extinction procedure has been
completed.
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Classical Conditioning

• The Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
• Stimulus generalization is the extension of a
  conditioned response from the training stimulus
  to similar stimuli.
• Through conditioning Baby Hannah smiles and
  laughs at the title screen with dark background
  and white writing that precedes a funny song and
  cartoon on her Merrytubbies video tape. Her
  parents notice that she also smiles and giggles
  at the FBI Warning screen appearing on movie
  videotapes.

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• Figure 6.6
• Stimulus generalization is the process of
  extending a learned response to new stimuli that
  resemble the one used in training. As a rule a
  stimulus similar to the training stimulus elicits
  a strong response a less similar stimulus
  elicits a weaker response.

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Classical Conditioning

• The Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
• Discrimination is the process of learning to
  respond differently to two stimuli because they
  produce two different outcomes.
• Gradually Hannah stops laughing at the FBI
  Warning screen because the song and cartoon do
  not follow it.

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Classical Conditioning

• Explanations of Classical Conditioning
• The process of classical conditioning is more
  complex than it seems at first glance.
• The association is not merely a transfer of
  response from one stimulus to the other. The
  conditioned stimulus appears to act as a signal
  to the organism.

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Classical Conditioning

• Explanations of Classical Conditioning
• Temporal contiguity facilitates the process of
  conditioning. The less time elapses between the
  presentation of the CS and the UCS, the faster
  the CR is acquired.
• The CR will be acquired more quickly when the CS
  precedes the UCS. This is called forward
  conditioning.

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• Figure 6.7
• Pavlov believed that conditioning depended on
  temporal contiguity (a) At the start of
  conditioning, activity in the UCS center
  automatically causes activation of the UCR
  center. At this time activity of the CS center
  does not affect the UCS center. (b) After
  sufficient pairings of the CS and UCS, their
  simultaneous activity causes the growth of a
  connection between the CS and UCS centers.
  Afterward, activity in the CS center will flow to
  the UCS center and therefore excite the UCR
  center.

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Classical Conditioning

• Explanations of Classical Conditioning
• In trace conditioning, the CS stops well before
  the UCS is presented. This is a slow and
  relatively ineffective way to condition a
  response.
• Backward conditioning (UCS follows by the CS)
  rarely produces any response.
• The discovery of blocking effects suggests that
  it is difficult to condition the same response in
  an animal to more than one stimulus.

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Classical Conditioning

• Explanations of Classical Conditioning
• When rats experience an electric shock (a UCS)
  they jump and shriek.
• After being conditioned to a buzzer preceding the
  shock (a CS) they freeze in place at the sound of
  the buzzer. This is known to be a typical rat
  response to imminent danger.
• These findings suggest that an animal uses a CS
  as a way to prepare for a UCS. The animal is not
  treating the CS as the actual UCS.

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Classical Conditioning

• Conditioning, Contiguity and Contingency
• A conditioned response develops only if there is
  predictability or contingency.
• The UCS is more likely after the CS than without
  it.
• The learner discovers the event that predicts the
  outcome. However, it is unclear whether or not
  any actual complex thinking is occurring as a
  result of this process.

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Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning is thought by those
  unfamiliar with psychology to be the learning of
  simple, mechanical behavior.
• In reality it is a complex form of learning that
  requires some processing of information on the
  part of the learner.

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Module 6.3

• Operant Conditioning

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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning

• In 1911, Harvard graduate student Edward
  Thorndike developed a simple, behaviorist
  explanation of learning.
• He used a learning curve, a graph of the changes
  in behavior that occur over successive trials of
  a learning experiment, to record how quickly cats
  learned to escape from a puzzle box (a type of
  maze.)

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• Figure 6.10
• Each of Thorndikes puzzle boxes had a device
  that could open it. Here tilting the pole will
  open the door. (Based on Thorndike, 1911/1970)

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• Figure 6.11
• Trial and error or insight? As the data from one
  of Thorndikes experiments show, the time that a
  cat needs to escape from a puzzle box gradually
  grows shorter, but in an irregular manner.
  Thorndike concluded that the cat did not at any
  point suddenly get the idea. Instead,
  reinforcement gradually increased the probability
  of the successful behavior.

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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning

• The curve of learning for the cats indicated a
  slow, gradual and consistent progress towards the
  solution.
• He noted that cats would learn to escape from
  puzzle boxes more quickly if the response
  selected produced an immediate escape.
• The cats would try a repertoire of behaviors to
  open the box, and gradually learn to more quickly
  select the one that produced escape.

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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning

• But overall, it appeared to Thorndike that the
  cats were not understanding the connections
  between the solution and the escape. There was no
  sudden increase in the learning curve to support
  that assumption.

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• Figure 6.12
• According to Thorndike, a cat starts with a large
  set of potential behaviors in a given situation.
  When one of these, such as pushing at a pole,
  leads to reinforcement, the future probability of
  that behavior increases. We do not need to assume
  that the cat understands what it is doing or why.

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Thorndike and Operant Conditioning

• Thorndike observed that the escape from the box
  acted as a reinforcement for the behavior that
  led to the escape.
• A reinforcement is an event that increases the
  future probability of the most recent response.

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Thorndikes Law of Effect

• Of several responses made to the same situation,
  those which are accompanied or closely followed
  by satisfaction to the animal will, other things
  being equal, be more firmly connected to the
  situation, so that, when it (the situation)
  recurs, they will be more likely to recur.

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Operant Conditioning

• The type of learning that Thorndike studies has
  come to be known as operant or instrumental
  conditioning.
• Operant conditioning is the process of changing
  behavior by following a response with a
  reinforcement.
• In operant conditioning, the subjects behavior
  determines an outcome and is affected by that
  outcome.

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Operant Conditioning

• Classical conditioning is distinguished from
  operant conditioning in that the subjects
  behavior has no effect on the outcome.
• Classical conditioning usually influences
  visceral, reflexive, and involuntary responses,
  while operant conditioning applies to skeletal,
  somatic, and voluntary responses.

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• Table 6.1
• Comparison of Classical Conditioning and Operant
  Conditioning

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• In operant conditioning, extinction occurs if
  responses stop producing reinforcements.
• A child for whom you are babysitting whines until
  you give him a cookie. If you stop giving the
  child cookies, he will eventually stop whining.

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• Stimulus generalization occurs when a new
  stimulus is similar to the original reinforced
  stimulus. The more similar the new stimulus is
  to the old, the more strongly the subject is
  likely to respond.
• The child for whom you are babysitting falls and
  scrapes his knee. He is crying inconsolably. You
  give him a cookie. He continues to whine and cry
  on and off all afternoon, stopping for brief
  periods after you give him a cookie. The
  stimulus of his whining has generalized to crying
  and whining. You are responding to both.

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• Discrimination occurs when someone is reinforced
  for responding to one stimulus but not another.
  The individual will respond more vigorously to
  one than to the other.
• If you stop giving the child cookies when he
  cries but continue when he whines, he will whine
  much more often than he will cry.

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• A stimulus that indicates which response is
  appropriate or inappropriate is called a
  discriminative stimulus.
• The child for whom you baby-sit does not whine
  for cookies when his mother is present, because
  she never gives in to his whining. As soon as she
  leaves, he is at your knee whining for a cookie.
  The presence of his mother has become a
  discriminative stimulus.

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• The ability of a stimulus to encourage some
  responses and discourage others is known as
  stimulus control.
• When his mother is present, the child for whom
  you baby-sit asks her politely for some juice and
  bread. When his mother is absent, he whines for
  cookies. The presence or absence of one stimulus
  after another signals to him which behaviors will
  or will not be reinforced.

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• Thorndike noted that some responses are more
  easily learned than others. The cats learned to
  escape from the mazes relatively quickly, but
  learned to scratch themselves on cue slowly and
  inconsistently.

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• Figure 6.13
• According to Thorndikes principle of
  belongingness, some items are easy to associate
  with each other because they belong together
  others do not. For example, dogs easily learn to
  use the direction of a sound as a signal for
  which leg to raise, but they have trouble using
  the type of sound as a signal for which leg to
  raise.

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Phenomena of Operant Conditioning

• One possible explanation for this is
  belongingness.
• Belongingness is the concept that certain stimuli
  are classified together or more readily
  associated with certain outcomes more so than
  with others. Some psychologists also refer this
  to as preparedness.

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B.F. Skinner and the Shaping of Behavior

• B.F. Skinner is considered to be the most
  influential of all radical behaviorists.
• He demonstrated many potential applications of
  operant conditioning.
• He was a firm believer in parsimony, seeking
  simple explanations in terms of reinforcement
  histories, and avoiding the inference of complex
  mental processes.

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Shaping Behavior

• Shaping establishes new responses by reinforcing
  successive approximations to it.
• He used an operant chamber (referred to as a
  Skinner box by others) into which he put the
  animal he wished to train by shaping.
• Gradually the animal was reinforced for behaviors
  that approached the desired activity until it
  actually performed the behavior in full.

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Shaping Behavior

• For example, to make a pigeon turn in a complete
  clockwise circle, Skinner would first reinforce
  the pigeon with food for just turning a few
  degrees to the right. After the pigeon began
  turning to the right regularly, he would cease
  reinforcing until the pigeon turned a few more
  degrees in that direction, and when that behavior
  was established, wait until the pigeon turned
  more pronouncedly to the right, and reinforce
  that movement, until finally the pigeon turned
  completely around in a circle.

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Chaining Behavior

• Chaining is an operant conditioning method where
  behaviors are reinforced by opportunities to
  engage in the next behavior
• The animal learns the final behavior, and then
  the next to last, and so on, until the beginning
  of the sequence is reached.
• Eating is an example of a chained behavior in
  humans. Most of us first learn to eat with
  utensils, and gradually acquire the preceding
  activities of getting and preparing food.

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Increasing and Decreasing the Frequency of
Responses

• A reinforcement is an event that increases the
  probability that a response will be repeated.
• A punishment is an event that decreases the
  probability of a response.

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Reinforcement and Punishment

• A reinforcement can be either the presentation of
  a desirable item such as money or food, or the
  removal of an unpleasant stimulus, such as verbal
  nagging or physical pain.
• A punishment can be the removal of a desirable
  condition such as driving privileges or the
  presentation of an unpleasant condition such as
  physical pain.

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Reinforcement and Punishment

• All things being equal, most people will respond
  better to both immediate reinforcement and
  immediate punishment.
• Most punishments in American society are given
  for behaviors that are immediately reinforcing,
  while the threat of the punishments for these
  deeds is delayed and uncertain.

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Reinforcement and Punishment

• Punishment tends to be ineffective except for
  temporarily suppressing undesirable behavior.
• Mild, logical and consistent punishment can be
  informative and helpful.

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• Table 6.2
• Four Categories of Operant Conditioning

85
Concept Check

• Most people who speed are not put off this
  infraction by the threat of a speeding ticket and
  fine. Based on what you have learned about the
  efficacy of punishment as a training method, why
  do you think this is?

Because the threat of the punishment is highly
uncertain very few people get pulled over
relative to the number who speed and the
behavior is very immediately gratifying.
86
Reinforcements and Punishments

• The presentation of an event that strengthens or
  increases the likelihood of an event is called
  positive reinforcement.
• A parent praises a child for excellent
  performance on a test.
• A waiter receives an extra large tip for good
  service.

87
Reinforcements and Punishments

• Punishment is referred to as passive avoidance
  learning because in response to punishment an
  individual learns to avoid the outcome by being
  passive.
• A child learns to avoid the punishment of being
  sent to his room for the evening by not teasing
  his little sister.
• A woman avoids distress by not calling her sister
  who always says cruel things whenever they talk.

88
Reinforcements and Punishments

• Omission training occurs when the omission of the
  response produces reinforcement. Producing the
  response also leads to a lack of reinforcement.
• This is sometimes referred to as negative
  punishment.
• Parents tell a teenager that if she breaks curfew
  again, she will lose her driving privileges for a
  month.

89
Reinforcements and Punishments

• Escape learning or active avoidance learning
  occurs if the responses lead to an escape from or
  an avoidance of something painful.
• This is sometimes referred to as negative
  reinforcement.
• A teenager cleans his room to avoid listening to
  any more of his dads nagging.
• A babysitter gives a cookie to a child to stop
  his whining.

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Concept Check

• What type of learning has occurred?
• You dont go into your friends greenhouse
  because you get a headache and sore throat
  whenever you go in with him.

Passive avoidance learning
91

• What type of learning has occurred?
• Your little brother locks you in his room and
  plays the Barney theme song at full volume until
  you tell him what Mom and Dad are giving him for
  his birthday.

Active avoidance learning (negative reinforcement)
92

• What type of learning has occurred?
• You win a 1,000.00 scholarship for your high
  GPA.

Positive reinforcement
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• What type of learning has occurred?
• You put on your sunglasses because the bright sun
  is making your eyes hurt.

Active avoidance learning
94

• What type of learning has occurred?
• You are not late for psychology class because
  your professor will deduct points from your final
  grade if you are.

Omission training negative punishment
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• What type of learning has occurred?
• You send flowers to your sweetheart because you
  always get extra affection and compliments after
  you do so.

Positive reinforcement
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• What type of learning has occurred?
• You really want to pass this class so you never
  have to sit through it again.

Active avoidance learning negative reinforcement
97
What Constitutes Reinforcement?

• A reinforcer is something that increases the
  likelihood of the preceding response.
• This can be confusing because it leads to a
  circular explanation.
• It can also be confusing because although
  generally a reinforcer is a pleasant event, it
  doesnt have to be.
• What constitutes a pleasant event can be hard
  to define or vary from person to person.

98
What Constitutes Reinforcement?

• Many reinforcers satisfy biological needs, such
  as hunger.
• Addictive behaviors dont seem to give much
  pleasure to the addict (although they may be
  negatively reinforcing - done to avoid the
  unpleasant condition of not having access to the
  drug.)
• Some reinforcers dont satisfy any immediate
  need, but may represent a future opportunity to
  have greater access to resources (such as a good
  grade you cant eat it, but getting many of
  them may raise your chances of having more to eat
  later in your life.)

99
What Constitutes Reinforcement?

• The Premack Principle
• The Premack Principle states that the opportunity
  to engage in frequent behavior will be a
  reinforcer for any less-frequent behavior.
• A person who prefers going to the movies to going
  to museums can be reinforced for extra trips to
  the museum with free movie passes.

100
What Constitutes Reinforcement?

• The Disequilibrium Principle
• The disequilibrium principle states that each
  person has a preferred pattern of dividing time
  between various activities and if the person is
  removed from that pattern a return to it will be
  reinforcing.
• A person who must work overtime for the next
  three weekends makes an extra effort to finish up
  the assigned work to return to his preferred
  activity of playing golf.

101
Concept Check

• Using the disequilibrium principle and positive
  reinforcement, how would you encourage more
  studying in a child who is getting poor grades
  due to insufficient studying?

Determine the childs preferred after school
activity and tie set amounts of time spent doing
that activity to the completion of a minimum
number of minutes or hours studying.
102
What Constitutes Reinforcement?

• Unconditioned reinforcers meet primary,
  biological needs and are found to be reinforcing
  for almost everyone. Food and drink are
  unconditioned reinforcers.
• Conditioned reinforcers are effective because
  they have become associated with unconditioned
  reinforcers. Money and grades are conditioned
  reinforcers.

103
Learning what leads to what

• Thorndike had a strictly mechanical view of
  reinforcement. An animal that receives
  reinforcement for a behavior will perform that
  behavior more frequently. No learning will take
  place without reinforcement, and no understanding
  of the reason for the behaviors is necessary.
• A rat learns to run a maze because food is
  present at the end of the alleys that lead to the
  exit from the maze.

104
Learning what leads to what

• The idea of latent learning, on the other hand,
  suggests that learning may occur in animals
  without being demonstrated until the reward is
  presented.
• A rat is left to explore and sniff around in a
  maze. When presented with the possibility of a
  reward of food, he runs the maze as fast as the
  rat that was painstakingly trained with rewards
  to run the same maze.

105
Schedules of Reinforcement

• A schedule of reinforcement is a set of rules of
  procedures for delivery of reinforcement
• It is used to maintain a learned behavior that
  might be extinguished if reinforcement ceased.
• A continuous reinforcement schedule provides
  reinforcement every time a response occurs.
• However, outside of the laboratory, reinforcement
  rarely follows every occurrence of a desired
  behavior.

106
Schedules of Reinforcement

• Most schedules of reinforcement are intermittent.
  In other words, some responses are reinforced and
  others are not.
• One of the two major categories of intermittent
  reinforcement is ratio, in which the delivery of
  reinforcement depends on the number of responses
  given by the individual.
• The second category of intermittent reinforcement
  is interval, in which delivery of reinforcement
  depends on the amount of time that has passed
  since the last reinforcement.

107
Schedules of Reinforcement

• A fixed-ratio schedule provides reinforcement
  only after a certain (fixed) number of correct
  responses have been made. For example, a
  laboratory rat being reinforced for hitting a
  lever after every 5 hits is being reinforced on
  an FR-5 schedule.
• The local gourmet coffee shop gives you a card
  that says if you buy 9 coffee drinks you will get
  the 10th beverage for free.

108
Schedules of Reinforcement

• A variable-ratio schedule provides reinforcement
  after a variable number of correct responses,
  usually working out to an average in the long
  run. For example, a baseball player who has a
  .333 batting average is reinforcing fans with
  hits on a VR-3 schedule.
• Slot machines, like all gambling, provide a
  particularly compelling form of variable ratio
  reinforcement to the player.

109
Schedules of Reinforcement

• A fixed-interval schedule provides reinforcement
  for the first response made after a specific time
  interval. A person who is paid every two weeks is
  reinforced for work on a fixed interval schedule.
• You receive your local newspaper at the same time
  every day. You probably have a good idea of when
  to start checking for it. This is a fixed
  interval schedule.

110
Schedules of Reinforcement

• A variable-interval schedule provides
  reinforcement after a variable amount of time has
  elapsed.
• If your newspaper delivery person is very
  inconsistent about delivery times, showing up one
  day at 500AM, the next day at 730AM, etc., your
  paper is delivered on a variable interval
  schedule.

111

• Table 6.3
• Some Schedules of Reinforcement

112
Schedules of Reinforcement

• All things being equal, extinction of responses
  tends to take longer when an individual has been
  on an intermittent schedule rather than a
  continuous schedule.
• One explanation for this difference is that the
  lack of reinforcement does not signify the
  completion cessation of reinforcements to the
  individual who has been on an intermittent
  schedule.

113
Concept Check

• Name the reinforcement of schedule
• You are paid 10.00 for every 100 envelopes that
  you stuff.

Fixed ratio
114

• Name the reinforcement of schedule
• You receive e-mail from your friend who is
  studying in France this semester at about an
  average of 1 note every 4 days.

Variable interval
115

• Name the reinforcement of schedule
• Your very reliable oven bakes a batch of cookies
  in 10 minutes.

Fixed interval
116
Applications of Operant Conditioning

• There are a wide variety of applications for the
  techniques of operant conditioning including, but
  not limited to
• Animal training for performance, military, and
  helper animals.
• Persuasion in political and commercial
  enterprises.
• Psychological treatment, through the use of
  applied behavior analysis or behavior
  modification.

117
Applications of Operant Conditioning

• In behavior modification, the clinician
  determines which reinforcers sustain an
  undesirable or unwanted behavior.
• The clinician then tries to change the behavior
  by reducing the opportunities for reinforcement
  of the unwanted behavior and providing
  reinforcers for a more acceptable behavior.

118
Operant Conditioning

• People are sometimes offended by the idea that
  the possibility of positive reinforcement might
  influence behavior.
• You wouldnt work hard in a course or a job if
  your performance didnt matter and all the grades
  or bonuses were given with no regard to quality.
• Operant conditioning provides one enormously
  useful and powerful way to change and improve
  behavior.

119
Module 6.4

• Other Kinds of Learning

120
Conditioned Taste Aversions

• If learning occurs reliably after just one trial,
  it is hard to know if the learning was a result
  of classical conditioning or operant conditioning
• One kind of learning that occurs after a single
  trial is an association between eating something
  and getting sick.
• This is referred to as a conditioned taste
  aversion.
• Many species appear to have a built in
  predisposition to associate illness with what
  they have consumed, even if some time has elapsed
  between the consumption of the substance and the
  onset of the illness.

121
Birdsong Learning

• The beautiful songs of male birds may be
  delightful to our ears, but they are serious
  business for the bird
• The songs are crucial for soliciting the
  attentions of a suitable mate.
• They are also a warning to potential interlopers
  in the singers territory.

122
Birdsong Learning

• Some species of songbird are especially dependent
  on the process of hearing live songs of older
  males of the same species in order to develop a
  normal song.
• There is a sensitive period early in the birds
  life during which he will learn the song most
  readily.
• The young bird will also learn better from a live
  male than from a tape recording, and will not
  learn the songs of other species.

123
Birdsong Learning

• Birdsong learning resembles human language
  learning in some ways.
• It requires a social context, has an optimal
  period for learning early in life, starts with a
  kind of babbling, and tends to deteriorate if the
  individual becomes deaf later in life.
• It differs from classical conditioning in that
  the song the baby male bird learns from is not an
  unconditioned stimulus it elicits no response.
• It differs from operant conditioning in that
  during the sensitive period there is no apparent
  reinforcement of the learning.

124
Social Learning

• The social-learning approach, defined first by
  Albert Bandura, states that we learn about many
  behaviors before we attempt them for the first
  time.
• Much learning, especially in humans, results from
  observing the behaviors of others and from
  imagining the consequences of our own.
• Two of the chief components of social learning
  are modeling and imitation.

125
Social Learning

• Bandura and his assistants did experiments in
  which children watched films of real people and
  cartoon characters either attacked an inflated
  Bobo doll or did not.
• Children who saw the versions of the films with
  aggressive behavior were more likely to repeat
  those actions when left alone with a similar toy.
• The implication was that the children were
  imitating the aggressive behavior they had just
  witnessed in the film.

126
Social Learning

• There has been great interest in the work of
  Bandura and those who have done further research
  along these lines because of the controversy over
  violence in TV programs and movies.
• It is unclear if there is a direct relationship
  televised or cinematic violence and violent
  behavior. People vary widely in the degree to
  which they are open to the influence of violent
  imagery.

127
Vicarious Reinforcement and Punishment

• Another aspect of the social learning approach is
  the idea that we are more likely to imitate
  behaviors that have been rewarding for other
  people, and we are less likely to imitate
  behaviors that create unpleasant results for
  others.
• This substitution of someone elses experiences
  for ones own is referred to as vicarious
  reinforcement or punishment.

128
Vicarious Reinforcement and Punishment

• The effectiveness of vicarious reinforcement and
  punishment parallels that of direct reinforcement
  and punishment.
• Vicarious reinforcement appears to be more
  effective in creating behavioral change than
  vicarious punishment is.
• It may be that people are more able to use
  cognition to avoid identifying with others whose
  behaviors brought about serious or fatal
  consequences.

129
Self-Efficacy in Social Learning

• We tend to imitate people we admire.
• Advertisers are keenly aware of this tendency and
  routinely use endorsements from celebrities and
  sports figures, and images of the happy, healthy,
  affluent people that most of us would like to be.
• We do not however model ourselves after every
  admirable figure that we encounter. We imitate
  others only when we have a sense of
  self-efficacy, when we perceive ourselves as also
  being able to perform the task successfully.

130
Learning

• Classical conditioning, operant conditioning,
  conditioned taste aversions, and social learning
  represent a diverse set of influences on human
  behavior.
• Your everyday behavior is in large part a product
  of the combined effects of these processes.