CH7 LEARNING Learning the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors to expect and prepare for significant events food pain classical conditioning to repeat acts that bring rewards and avoid acts that bring unwanted results operant conditioning learn new behaviors by observing events and watching others through language we learn things we never experienced or observed cognitive learning Aristotle we learn by association our minds connect events that occur in sequence Learned associations operate subtly Ex giving people a red pen associated with error marking rather than a black pen when correcting essays they will spot more errors and give lower grades Ex when voting people are more likely to support taxes to aid education if their assigned voting place is in a school Learned assocations also feed our habitual behaviors as we repeat behaviors the behaviors become associated with the context ex eating popcorn in a movie theatre forms habitual responses 66days to develop a habit Complex animals can learn to associate their own behavior with its outcomes Ex seal repeating behaviors barking that prompt people to toss it a fish ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING learning that certain events occur together Events may be 2 stimuli classical conditioning or a response and its consequences operant Process of learning associations is conditioning Classical conditioning associating two stimuli and anticipating events Ex 1 lightning thunder started reaction 2 We see lightning anticipation of loud noise wincing Operant conditioning associating a response our behavior and its consequence repeat acts that yield good results avoid acts that yield bad results Cognitive Learning acquisition of mental information whether by observing events watching others or through language that guides behavior Observational learning learning from other s experiences Ex chimps learn from watching others perform the behavior Pavlov CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Pavlov s work laid the foundation for many of Watson s ideas Watson urged colleagues to discard reference to inner thoughts feelings and motives Said that the science of psychology should study how organisms respond to stimuli in their environments introspection forms no essential part of its methods both Pavlov and Watson displayed disdain for mentalistic concepts like consciousness And a belief that the basic laws of learning were same for all animals humans Behaviorism Watson view that psychology should be 1 objective science that studies behavior 2 without reference to mental processes Most research psychologists today agree with 1 but not 2 Neutral stimulis NS in classical conditioning a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning Ex events that the dog could see hear but DIDN T associate with food Unconditioned response UR unlearned naturally occurring response ex salivation to an unconditioned stimulus food in the mouth Unconditioned stimulus US stimulus that unconditionally naturally and automatically triggers a response UR Conditioned response CR learned response to a previously neutral but now conditioned stimulus CS Conditioned stimulus CS an originally irrelevant stimulus that after association with unconditioned stimulus comes to trigger a conditioned response Acquisition initial learning in classical conditioning the initial stage when one links a neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response In operant conditioning the strengthening of a reinforced response Higher order conditioning second order conditioning procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus creating a second often weaker conditioned stimulus Ex animal that learned that tone predicts food might learn that a light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone Extinction diminishing of a conditioned response occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced Spontaneous recovery reappearance after a pause of an extinguished conditioned response Generalization the tendency once a response has been conditioned for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses can be adaptive ex when toddlers taught to fear moving cars also fear moving trucks and motorcycles can linger a writer who underwent torture still feels fear when he sees black shoes his first glimpse of his torturers as they approached his cell Discrimination in classical conditioning the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus Ex Pavlov s dogs learned to respond to the sound of a particular tone and NOT to other tones slightly different stimuli can be followed by vastly different consequences Ex a guard dog makes your heart race but a guide dog doesn t Pavlov s legacy 1 classical conditioning is one way that virtually all organisms learn to adapt to their environment 2 showed us how a process like learning can be studied objectively without including mental processes like what goes on inside the dog s mind Isolating the basic building blocks of complex behaviors and studying them with objective lab procedures 3 Provided basis for Watson s idea humans emotions and behaviors though biologically influenced are mainly a bundle of conditioned responses OPERANT CONDITIONING type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforce or diminished if followed by a punisher organisms associate their own actions with consequences behavior that operates on the environment to produce rewarding or punishing stimuli operant behavior SKINNER S EXPERIMENTS elaborated what Thorndike called the law of effect rewarded behavior is likely to recur developed behavioral technology that revealed principles of behavior control enabling him to teach pigeons unpigeon like behaviors like walking Skinner box operant chamber box has a bar that animal presses to release reward food and a device that records these responses Reinforcement Reinforcement any event that strengthens the behavior it follows Shaping behavior reinforces guide behavior towards closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior Gradually guiding the actions towards the desired behavior first watch how the animal naturally behaves so you can build on existing behaviors