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Classical conditioning

Forging connections between formerly unrelated events

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definitions

Classical conditioning (CC) – process by which an organism learns a new association between two paired stimuli; one of which was initially neutral the other producing an unconditional reflex

Unconditioned stimuli (UCS) – an event that constantly and automatically elicits an unconditioned response (UCR)

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More definitions

Unconditioned response (UCR) – an action that an UCS elicits

Conditioned response (CR) – action that Conditioned Stimulus elicits; it does not have to be identical to the UCR

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Other aspects

The process that establishes or strengthens a CR is called acquisition

A CR can even be a thought

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Unraveling the connection

Extinction – the decrease or extinguishment of the conditioned response

In CC, extinction takes place when we repeatedly present the CS without the UCS following it

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The return of the� cs>CR connection

Extinction doesn’t erase the CS>CR connection, it inhibits it

Spontaneous recovery – the temporary return of the extinguished response after a delay

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All together now

First we build the CS>CR connection through acquisition,
Then we unravel it through extinction,
If we then stop presenting the CS for a while, once we resume its use,
The CR will return, but not for long, unless it is again paired with the UCS

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Extending the connection

The CR can occur even without presentation of the exact CS which formed it, if the new CS is similar enough
Stimulus generalization – the extension or broadening of a CR from the original CS to another, similar stimulus
The more similar the entire setting is, the more likely the new connection will form

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Narrowing connections

If differing stimuli, although quite similar to the CS, are never, or rarely, followed by the UCS, then the CR will not emerge

Stimulus generalization – differing responses to differing stimuli that have been followed by differing events

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The big picture

CC involves visceral reactions involving the sympathetic nervous system – you feel it in your gut.
It prepares us for important challenges and threats.
But it does not tell us what to do.
For how we learn voluntary, planned behaviors we turn to operant conditioning.

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OPERANT/INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING

This type of conditioning was first investigated by B.F. Skinner.
Skinner studied occurrence of voluntary responses when an organism operates on the environment. He called them operants.
Operants are those behaviours or responses, which are emitted by animals and human beings voluntarily and are under their control.
The term operant is used because the organism operates on the environment.
Conditioning of operant behaviour is called operant conditioning.

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Determinants of Operant Conditioning

Operant or instrumental conditioning is a form of learning in which behaviour is learned, maintained or changed through its consequences.

A reinforcer is defined as any stimulus or event, which increases the probability of the occurrence of a (desired) response.

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Types of Reinforcement

Positive Reinforcement involves stimuli that have pleasant consequences.
The strengthen and maintain the responses that have caused them to occur.
Positive reinforcers satisfy needs, which include food, water, medals, praise, money, status, information, etc.

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Types of Reinforcement

Negative Reinforcement leads to learning of avoidance and escape responses.
For instance, one learns to put on woolen clothes, burn firewood or use electric heaters to avoid the unpleasant cold weather.
One learns to move away from dangerous stimuli because they provide negative reinforcement.

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Punishment and Negative Reinforcer

Use of punishment reduces or suppresses the response while a negative reinforcer increases the probability of avoidance or escape response.

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PUNISHMENT

No punishment suppresses a response permanently.
Mild and delayed punishment has no effect. The stronger the punishment, the more lasting is the suppression effect but it is not permanent.
Sometimes punishment has no effect irrespective of its intensity.
On the contrary, the punished person may develop dislike and hatred for the punishing agent or the person who administers the punishment.

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Number of Reinforcement and other Features

Number of trials on which an organism has been reinforced or rewarded.
Amount of reinforcement means how much of reinforcing stimulus (food or water or intensity of pain causing agent) one receives on each trial.
Quality of reinforcement refers to the kind of reinforcer. Eg: Chocolate and cake.

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Schedules of Reinforcement

A reinforcement schedule is the arrangement of the delivery of reinforcement during conditioning trials.
When a desired response is reinforced every time it occurs we call it continuous reinforcement.
In contrast, in intermittent schedules responses are sometimes reinforced, sometimes not.
It is known as partial reinforcement and has been found to produce greater resistance to extinction – than is found with continuous reinforcement.

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Delayed Reinforcement

The effectiveness of reinforcement is dramatically altered by delay in the occurrence of reinforcement.
It is found that delay in the delivery of reinforcement leads to poorer level of performance.

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Key Learning Processes

Reinforcement is the operation of administering a reinforcer by the experimenter.
Extinction means disappearance of a learned response due to removal of reinforcement from the situation in which the response used to occur.
Responding similarly to similar stimuli is known as generalisation.
Discriminative response depends on the discrimination capacity or discrimination learning of the organism.

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OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

Human beings learn social behaviours, therefore, it is sometimes called social learning.
They observe others and emulate their behaviour. This form of learning is called modeling.
In observational learning observers acquire knowledge by observing the model’s behaviour, but performance is influenced by model’s behaviour being rewarded or punished.

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COGNITIVE LEARNING

In cognitive learning, there is a change in what the learner knows rather than what s/he does.
This form of learning shows up in insight learning and latent learning.

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Insight Learning

The process by which the solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear.
Kohler- Chimpanzees….
Once the solution has appeared, it can be repeated immediately the next time the problem is confronted.
Thus, it is clear that what is learned is not a specific set of conditioned associations between stimuli and responses but a cognitive relationship between a means and an end.

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Latent Learning

In latent learning, a new behaviour is learned but not demonstrated until reinforcement is provided for displaying it.
Tolman- Rats and maze…..

Cognitive Map- a mental representation of the spatial locations and directions, which they needed to reach their goal.

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VERBAL LEARNING

1. Paired-Associates Learning : This method is similar to S-S conditioning and S-R learning. It is used in learning some foreign language equivalents of mother tongue words.

2. Serial Learning : This method of verbal learning is used to find out how participants learn the lists of verbal items, and what processes are involved in it. Serial anticipation method.

3. Free Recall : In this method, participants are presented a list of words, which the read and speak out. Each word is shown at a fixed rate of exposure duration. Immediately after the presentation of the list, the participants are required to recall the words in any order they can.

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Determinants of Verbal Learning

Length of the list to be learned
Meaningfulness of the material.

Categorization and Clustering- Bousfield first demonstrated this experimentally. He made a list of 60 words that consisted of 15 words drawn from each of the four semantic categories, i.e. names, animals, professions, and vegetables. These words were presented to participants one by one in random order.

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CONCEPT LEARNING

A concept is a category that is used to refer to a number of objects and events.
Defined as ‘a set of features or attributes connected by some rule’.

A feature is any characteristic or aspect of an object or event or living organism that is observed in them, and can be considered equivalent to some features observed or discriminated in other objects.
A rule is an instruction to do something.

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TYPES OF CONCEPTS

ARTIFICIAL CONCEPTS

Are those that are well-defined and rules connecting the features are precise and rigid. In a well-defined concept the features that represent the concept are both singly necessary and jointly sufficient.

NATURAL CONCEPTS

Are usually ill-defined. Numerous features are found in the instances of a natural category.

Such concepts include biological objects, real world products, and human artefacts such as tools, clothes, houses, etc.

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SKILL LEARNING

A skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor responses or as a sequence of S-R associations.

Skill learning passes through three phases:

Cognitive (understand and memorise the instructions)
Associative (different sensory inputs or stimuli are linked with appropriate responses)
Autonomous (attentional demands of the associative phase decrease, and interference created by external factors reduces).

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TRANSFER OF LEARNING

The term transfer of learning is often called transfer of training or transfer effect.
It refers to the effects of prior learning on new learning.
Transfer is considered to be positive if the earlier learning facilitates current learning.
It is considered to be negative transfer if new learning is retarded.
Absence of facilitative or retarding effect means zero transfer.

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FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING

Continuous vs Partial Reinforcement

In continuous reinforcement the participant is given reinforcement after each target response. This kind of schedule of reinforcement produces a high rate of responding.

The fact that the responses acquired under partial reinforcement are highly resistant to extinction is called partial reinforcement effect.

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FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING

Motivation

The more motivated you are, the more hard work you do for learning. Your motivation for learning something arises from two sources. You learn many things because you enjoy them (intrinsic motivation) or they provide you the means for attaining some other goal (extrinsic motivation).

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FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING

Preparedness for Learning

It implies that one can learn only those associations for which one is genetically prepared.

A particular kind of associative learning is easy for apes or human beings but may be extremely difficult and sometimes impossible for cats and rats.

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THE LEARNER : LEARNING STYLES

‘A learner’s consistent way of responding to and using stimuli in the context of learning’.

In other words, it is ‘the way in which each learner begins to concentrate, processes, and retains new and complex information’.

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LEARNING STYLES

Perceptual Modality are biologically-based reactions to the physical environment, such as auditory, visual, smell, kinesthetic, and tactile.

Information Processing distinguishes between the way we are structured to think, solve problems, and remember information, active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, sequential/global, serial/simultaneous, etc.

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LEARNING STYLES

Personality Patterns are the way we interact with our surroundings. Each one of us has a preferred, consistent, and distinct way of perceiving, organising, and retaining information. This approach focuses on understanding how personality affects the way people interact with the environment, and how this affects the way individuals respond to each other within the learning environment.

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LEARNING STYLES

Anderson differentiated between analytic and relational styles of learning.

People with a Relational Style learn material best through exposure to a full unit or phenomenon. They comprehend parts of the unit only by understanding their relationship to the whole.

People with an Analytical Learning Style learn more easily when information is presented step by step in a cumulative sequential pattern that builds towards a conceptual understanding.

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LEARNING DISABILITIES

Learning disability is a general term. It refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested in terms of difficulty in the acquisition of learning, reading, writing, speaking, reasoning, and mathematical activities.

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