Learning (Part 1)
•Can you teach an old dog new tricks?
•Psychologists believe that individuals can be taught new behaviours.
•Most human behaviours can be learned, unlearned, and modified.
–Learning is at the core of psychology. It affects human personality, social behaviour, and human development.
–Much of human learning takes place effortlessly (i.e., as a result of experience).
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Learning: What’s it?
•Psychologists define learning as “a relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs as a result of experiences in the environment” (Lefton & Brannon, 2003, p. 222).
•Keywords in definition:
•Change in behaviour: Psychologists can’t see the internal process of learning so they measure the result or overt changes in behaviour (e.g., solving algebra) and thus, the individual is no longer the same after learning has occurred.
•Relatively permanent: It excludes temporary changes in behaviour like during illness, influence of drugs, and fatigue. This is because the behaviour gets back to its original form after the effects of these phenomena are over.
•Experience: New information, experiences in the external environment affect learning and what is learned may be forgotten. Thus, human behaviour is always being modified.
–Learning is simply more than just the acquisition of new knowledge.
•Domains of learning:
• Learning can take place in any of the following domains of an individual.
– Psychomotor domains include the physical skills like walking, talking, typing, giving injection, etc.
–Cognitive domains include the ability to retain and organise information in memory in order to solve problems.
–Affective domains include the acquisition of attitudes and feelings.
Three (3) learning processes
1.Classical conditioning/learning
2.Operant conditioning/learning
3.Observational learning
Classical conditioning
•Psychologists often use the term “conditioning” to refer to “learning”.
•Conditioning: It refers to a systematic procedure through which associations and responses to specific stimuli are learned.
•Reflex behaviour: It is an automatic behaviour that occurs involuntarily in response to a stimulus and without prior learning, and usually shows little variability from instance to instance.
Classical conditioning 11
•Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), was a Russian physiologist.
•Ivan Pavlov discovered the basic process of learning called “conditioning” in an experiment.
•Pavlov was studying saliva and gastric secretions in the digestive processes of dogs when he accidentally discovered conditioning.
•Pavlov knew it was normal for dogs to salivate when they eat.
–Salivation is a reflexive behaviour that aids digestion.
•However, Pavlov discovered that the dogs were salivating before they tasted their food.
–He reasoned that the dogs had associated the trainers who brought the food with the food itself.
–Out of curiosity he abandoned his earlier research aim and studied salivary reflex of dogs.
•Terms & procedures:
•Classical conditioning/Pavlovian conditioning: It is a conditioning process in which an originally neutral stimulus (NS), through repeated pairing with a stimulus that elicits a response (UCS), comes to elicit a similar or even identical response.
–E.g., when a bell or buzzer, or light (neutral stimulus) is associated with the presentation of food (a stimulus that naturally brings about a response (UCS) e.g., salivating), the neutral stimulus over time comes to elicit the same response as the normal stimulus (UCS).
•Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): It is a stimulus that normally produces a reflexive response (e.g., food).
•Unconditioned response (UCR): It is an unlearned or involuntary response to an unconditioned stimulus.
–UCS = UCR
•Conditioned stimulus (CS): It is a previously neutral stimulus (NS: e.g., bell), that through repeated association with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS: e.g., food), begins to elicit a conditioned response (e.g., salivation).
•Conditioned response (CR): It is the response elicited by a conditioned stimulus.
–CS = CR
•Pavlov’s experiment followed 3 stages:
•Note that for conditioning to occur at Stage 2, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS: e.g., food) and the neutral stimulus (NS: e.g., bell) should be paired closely in time.
Show Pavlov’s work:
Operant conditioning
•B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
•Operant conditioning refers to conditioning in which an increase or decrease in the probability that a behaviour will recur is affected by the delivery of reinforcement or punishment as a consequence of the behaviour.
–Here, the conditioned behaviour is voluntary, not reflexive as in classical conditioning.
–Here, a consequence follows, rather than co-exists with, the behaviour.
•Reinforcement: Any event that increases the probability of a recurrence of the behaviour that preceded it.
•Punishment: It is a process of presenting an undesirable stimulus, or removing a desirable stimulus, to decrease the probability that a preceding response will recur.