Conditioning and Learning Exam 1 Info We use animals because they re easy to control and can all be treated the same We can isolate single variables Story about how he went hiking with his son and his dog Dog knew the exact same path from 4 months earlier even though there had been a storm and it looked completely different How did the dog know what to do Smell of himself or the herd trail Memory visual Hearing Conditioning Egocentric Navigation like ants Internal Compass Random What professor thinks the dog has a good understanding of trails from experience Walking on the trail provides the dog w olfactory scent experiences from previous path walkers The dog may or may not have had motivation to reach the end point but is probably just following the smells of other humans and dogs Definitions of Learning from syllabus Which one is more correct 1988 definition what does it mean for an organism to represent its environment Both make the same prediction Hilgard s definition Opinions similar to Hull and Skinner Behaviorists believed we should only study what we observe Behaviorist learning is a hypothetical construct How does your behavior change in response to your experience Reflex modification Behavior is automatic no intervening cognition ex hand on a hot plate Inflexible keeps happening automatically S R process stimulus evokes a response Rescorla s definition Opinions similar to Tolman Cognitive psychologist Relationships Behavior is flexible can navigate S S stimulus evokes a memory of other stimuli Thinking process Decisions made regularly vs following a fixed path Dog Behavior 1 Dog hears sound of food bag food in bowl thousands of times Conditioned response reflex Pavlov Is this an S R or S S relationship 2 Bag Running Hilgard says this occurs automatically Rescorla says the dog thinks about what the bag means before he runs If the dog s full Shake bag Hilgard says the dog will still run to the food bowl Rescorla says the dog won t move because he s full The dog will not move which suggests that the dog was thinking and made an active decision Rescorla s idea However there must be some truth to Hilgard s definition R Descartes 1633 Mind Body Dualism Incorrect thought pineal gland was gateway to mind soul because there is only one between both hemispheres of the brain British Empiricists 1689 1800 Why can t we just draw conclusions based on observations 1 Thomas Hobbes All human behavior is a product of our experiences no native consciousness Tabula rasa All human behavior is regular and a product of physical laws Your experiences and how you act on those experiences make you unique as a human being Chose reading and learning as topics to study Believed all memories are the product of associations Ex learning the alphabet seeing and repeating Primary Laws Contiguity Temporal Spatial Similarity why we associate salt with pepper and not with table Contrast Secondary Laws Repetition Intensity loud grabs your attention Competition with prior learning John Locke David Hume H Ebbinghaus 1850 Known for interest in how we learn and the nature of memory Taught self list of words and tried to remember that list Wanted to start in a blank slate so he tried to learn nonsense syllables Ex DEG GUD MOZ WUM BAX TES VOR KEX GAM PEG His syllables were not phonetic Didn t want to use known words because of association He learned up to 100 accuracy where he reached an asymptote learning curve Principles of Memory and Learning Lists Importance of repetition effect on learning memory More training prolonged the memory Proximity Remember words surrounding others pick one out of a hat and remember the words before and after that word Primary Recency interference Remember the first and last Trial spacing Distributed training Takes longer to memorize with shorter intervals than passive studying throughout the week Savings Memory that appears to be lost is not lost when you train again you learn it faster Pavlov 1895 1930 Classical conditioning Studied digestion and gastric psychology Nobel prize in 1904 Developed procedure to measure gastric responses via tubes implanted in dogs better than cutting dog s stomach open Could study processes over long periods of time Was able to observe adaptations to new foods Put something new meat powder in dog s mouth and saw large salivary increase Noticed the 2nd or 3rd time he placed food in the dog s mouth the dog salivated before the food was put in w no physiological explanation Realized when the experimenter enters the room he became a signal that food was coming and the dig salivates in anticipation of food sight of experimenter associated w food Association as per discussion by British empiricists Psychic Reflex Conditional Reflex not born physiologically but is conditional on prior Conditioned Reflex mistranslation suggests that it is mechanical and not experience mental Tone first w food right after When the tone is presented after a few trials even w o food the dog still salivated because the tone is associated w the food 2 stimuli presented to the animal tone food the animal doesn t need to do anything to get the food No matter what the dog does he will still get the food but every dog chooses to salivate rather than dance or something Thorndike 1902 Instrumental Operant Conditioning Comparative psychologist Compare species interested in differences between species William James was Thorndike s teacher 1st to build a formal psych lab Insight the way humans solve complex problems Are cats capable of insight Cats presented w a problem inside cage hungry w dead fish outside Cat must unlock door and step on pedal to lift the door and get the fish Early experiences take the cat as long as 14 hours to get out of the box 1 Cat begins to pace the box scratch things climb the wall all look like random behavior 2 Trial and error process to get out of the box Does same thing second time cat s behavior tends to be focused on the end of the box w the door so it gets out faster By the end of a few trials the cat can get out in a few seconds 3 Shaping cat s behavior becomes more and more appropriate shaped There is no insight the animal tries random things and is able to get out w trial and error Law of Effect When a behavior is followed by a favorable outcome the behavior increases in frequency When a behavior is followed by a negative outcome it decreases in frequency Instrumental operant an individual must operate on the environment to get what it wants Learning