By Genzeetherapist

E.L. THORNDIKE
✓ According to Thorndike learning takes place by trial and error. Also
known as “Learning by selection of the successful variant”.
✓ Accordingly when no ready-made solution of a problem is available
to the learner, he adopts the method of trial and error. He first, tries
one solution. If it does not help him, he rejects it, then, he tries
another and so on.

✓ In this way he eliminates errors or irrelevant responses which do

not serve the purpose and finally discovers the correct solution.
FUNDAMENTAL THEORIES OF
LEARNING
1. Thorndike’s theory of learning -

Basic way of learning is trial and error.

Described 3 laws of learning which are applicable to all mammals –

LAW OF LAW OF LAW OF

EXERCISE EFFECT READINESS
 REWARD

PUNISHMENT

1930 MODIFICATION
2. Hull-drive reduction theory–
Reinforcement is the primary factor that determines learning.
Drive reduction/need specification plays an important role in shaping behaviour.
Principles –

Drive is essential in order for response to occur

S & R must be detected by organism in order of conditioning to occur

Response must be sequenced

Conditioning only occurs if reinforcement satisfies a need

3. Pavlov’s classical conditioning–
First phase – a dog was placed in a box and harnessed. The dog
was left in the box for some time. This was repeated a number of
times on different days.
Second phase – the dog was kept hungry and placed in harness.

Bell + Food = Salivation

(US) + (US) UR
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bell Salivation

CS CR
 SPONTANEOUS STIMULUS STIMULUS
EXTINCTION RECOVERY/ GENERALIZATION DISCRIMINATION
RECONDITIONING Discrimination is a
Occurs if CS is Tendency to generalize response due to
presented alone for a CS and UCS paired the conditioned difference
number of trials again lead to response to other It depends on the
Strength of CR reconditioning which is stimuli that were similar discrimination capacity
faster than original to original CS
gradually decreases or discrimination
conditioning High similarity, high learning of the
generalization organism
4. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning –
A learning situation that involves behaviour emitted by an organism rather than elicited by a detectable stimulus.
Developed an apparatus called “Operant conditioning chamber” / “Skinner’s box”.

Started pressing lever

Food deprived rat intentionally (Rat’s
in the box behaviour operating
on environment)

After obtaining few

more pallets
Allowed to explore
accidently
(Reinforcer)

Accidently press a
Food pallet released
lever
Reinforcement Punishment
Makes response more likely to occur. Response followed bypunishment tends not to be
repeated.

Types –Positiveand negative reinforcement Types –Positive and negative punishment

Positive reinforcement–Something is added to Positivepunishment –Something is added to decrease

increase the likelihood of behaviour. the likelihood of behaviour.

Negative reinforcement–Something is removed to Negative punishment –Something is removed to

increase the likelihood of behaviour. decrease the likelihood of a behaviour.
 • Shaping is a method of operant conditioning by which
successive approximations of a target behaviour are
reinforced.
• The method requires that the subject perform
SHAPING behaviours that at first merely resemble the target
behaviour; through reinforcement, these behaviours
are gradually changed or “shaped” to encourage the
target behaviour itself.

•Each step, or link in the chain, serves as a cue to do the

next step. By building one step onto another learned
step in the sequence, a strong chain can be created.
CHAINING •A basic example of chaining is saying the letters of the
alphabet. The letter A acts as the discriminitive
stimulus to produce the next response, saying the letter
B, and so on (Milhollan& Forisha, 1972).
SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT
FIXED-INTERVAL VARIABLE-INTERVAL FIXED-RATIOSCHEDULE VARIABLE-RATIO
SCHEDULE SCHEDULE There are a set number of SCHEDULE
Every Nth second, the the subject gets the responses that must The number of responses
response will be reinforcement based on occur before the behavior needed for a reward
reinforced. varying and is rewarded. varies. This is the most
A fixed-interval unpredictable amounts of This can be seen in powerful type of
schedule is when time. intermittent
payment for work such as
behavior is rewarded People who like to fish reinforcement schedule.
fruit picking: pickers are
after a set amount of experience this type of paid a certain amount
time. reinforcement schedule: In humans, this type of
(reinforcement) based on
This type of schedule on average, in the same the amount they pick schedule is used by
exists in payment systems location, you are likely to (behavior), which casinos to attract
catch about the same encourages them to pick gamblers: a slot machine
when someone is paid
number of fish in a given faster in order to make pays out an average win
hourly: no matter how
much work that person time period. more money. ratio—say five to one—
does in one hour but does not guarantee
(behavior), they will be that every fifth bet
paid the same amount (behavior) will be
(reinforcement). rewarded (reinforcement)
with a win.
5. Observational learning–
Observational learning describes the process of learning
through watching others, retaining the information, and then
later replicating the behaviors that were observed.

Bobo doll experiment :

In the famous Bobo doll experiment, Albert Bandura

demonstrated that young children would imitate the violent
and aggressive actions of an adult model. In the experiment,
children observed a film in which an adult repeatedly hit a
large, inflatable balloon doll. After viewing the film clip,
children were allowed to play in a room with a real Bobo doll
just like the one they saw in the film. What Bandura found was
that children were more likely to imitate the adult's violent
actions when the adult either received no consequences or
when the adult was actually rewarded for their violent actions.
Children who saw film clips in which the adult was punished
for this aggressive behaviour were less likely to repeat the
behaviors later on.
6. Cognitive learning -
“Change in way of information processing as a result of experiences of person/animal”
Internal representations of the environment – Cognitive maps
Involves – Forming new associations

Perceiving new relationship among events

Latent learning – Learning occurs but not evident in behaviour until it is necessary.
Insight learning – It is an “aha experience” or “eureka experience”.

Period of no
Problem apparent Suddenly solved
progress/learning

Sudden solution is due to perceptual reorganization of elements in environment.

MEMORY
INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH :
THE STAGE MODEL
Initially, it was thought that memory is a vast storehouse where all information that we knew was kept so that we
could retrieve and use it as and when needed.

Gradually, human memory came to be seen as a system that processes information in the same way as a
computer does.

Depending on
REGISTER STORE MANIPULATE the task

This analogy led to the development of the first model of memory, which was proposed
by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968. It is known as Stage Model.
ATKINSON-SHIFFRIN MODEL
Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a model that conceptualized memory in terms of 3
memory stores –

Sensory store –Capable of storing limited amounts of information for very brief
periods.

Short-term store –Capable of storing information for somewhat longer periods

but relatively limited capacity as well.

Long-term store –Capable of storing largest amounts of information for longest

period of time, perhaps even indefinitely.
 *Sensory Memory
✓ Sensory memory has a large capacity. However, it is of very short duration, i.e. less
than a second.

✓ It is a memory system that registers information from each of the senses with
reasonable accuracy.

✓ Often this system is referred to as sensory memories or sensory registers because

information from all the senses are registered here as exact replica of the stimulus.
 *Short-term Memory (Working Memory)

✓ Information that is attended to, enters the second memory store STM, which
holds small amount of information for a brief period of time (usually for 30
seconds or less).

✓ Atkinson and Shiffrin propose that information in STM is primarily encoded

acoustically, i.e. in terms of sound and unless rehearsed continuously, it may get
lost from the STM in less than 30 seconds.

✓ Note that the STM is fragile but not as fragile as sensory registers where
information decays automatically in less than a second.
 LONG-TERM MEMORY
✓ Materials that survive the capacity and duration limitations of the STM finally
enter the LTM which has a vast capacity.

✓ It is a permanent storehouse of all information that may be as recent as what

you ate for breakfast yesterday to as distant as how you celebrated your sixth
birthday.

✓ It has been shown that once any information enters the LTM store it is never
forgotten because it gets encoded semantically, i.e. in terms of the meaning
that any information carries.

✓ What you experience as forgetting is in fact retrieval failure; for various reasons
you cannot retrieve the stored information.
 WORKING MEMORY
✓ Baddeley (1986) suggested that the STM is not a passive storehouse but rather a work bench that holds a wide variety of memory
materials that are constantly handled, manipulated and transformed as people perform various cognitive tasks.

•holds a limited number of sounds and unless rehearsed they decay within 2 seconds.
Phonological
loop

•Stores visual and spatial information.

Visuospatial •Limited capacity.
sketchpad

•it allocates attentionalresources to be distributed to various informationsneeded to perform a given

cognitive operation and monitors, plans, and controls behaviour.
Central •organises information from phonological loop, visuospatialsketchpad as well as from the LTM.
Executive
 CONTROL PROCESSES
Atkinson and Shiffrin propose the notion of control processes which function to monitor the flow of
information through various memory stores.

Selective Attention – Sense impressions, which do not receive attention, fade away quickly.

Maintenance rehearsal (STM) – they simply maintain information through repetition and when such repetitions
discontinue the information is lost.

Chunking – Through chunking it is possible to expand the capacity of STM which is otherwise 7+2.

Elaborative rehearsal – attempts to connect the ‘to be retained information’ to the already existing
information in long-term memory. The number of associations you can create around the new information
will determine its permanence.
 LEVELS OF PROCESSING MODEL
The levels of processing view, proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972) suggests that the processing of any
new information relates to the manner in which it is perceived, analysed, and understood which in turn
determines the extent to which it will eventually be retained.
The analysis of information can be at three levels:

Analysis in terms of its

STRUCTURAL LEVEL

Consider and attend to the

DEEP LEVEL
physical or structural
INTERMEDIATE
phonetic sounds that are Analysis of information in
features. attached to the letters and terms of its meaning.
For example, one might
LEVEL
therefore the structural
attend only to the shape of features are transformed into For instance, you may think of
letters in a word say cat - at least one meaningful word. cat as an animal that has furs,
inspite of whether the word has four legs, a tail, and is a
is written in capital or small Say, a word cat that has three mammal.
letters specific letters.
 TYPES OF LONG TERM MEMORY
Declarative Procedural
All information pertaining to facts, names, dates, such It refers to memories relating to procedures for
as India became independent on August 15 are part of accomplishing various tasks and skills such as how to
declarative memory. ride a bicycle

Facts retained in the declarative memory are amenable Contents of procedural memory cannot be described
to verbal descriptions easily.

Episodic Semantic
It contains biographical details of our lives. Memories It is the memory of general awareness and
relating to our personal life experiences constitute the knowledge. All concepts, ideas and rules of
episodic memory and hence its contents are generally logic are stored in semantic memory.
emotional in nature.

There are painful and unpleasant Experiences which E.g. it helps us to remember the fact that 2+6=8.
are not remembered in as much detail as pleasant life Semantic memory is affect neutral and not susceptible
experiences. to forgetting.
TYPES OF LONG TERM MEMORY

Flashbulb Memories : These are memories of events that are very arousing or surprising and are very detailed. Flashbulb
memories are like images frozen in memory and tied to particular places, dates, and times. Perhaps, people put in greater
effort in the formation of these memories, and highlighting details might lead to deeper levels of processing as well as offer
more cues for retrieval.

Autobiographical Memory : These are personal memories which are not distributed evenly throughout our lives. Some
periods in our lives produce more memories than others. For instance, no memories are reported pertaining to early
childhood particularly during the first 4 to 5 years. This is called childhood amnesia.

Implicit Memory : Implicit memory is a kind of memory that a person is not consciously aware of. It is a memory that is
retrieved automatically.
 METHODS OF MEMORY MEASUREMENT

FREE RECALL AND SENTENCE PRIMING

RECOGNITION VERIFICATION TASK •for measuring information we cannot
report verbally
-here, participants are presented with •For measuring semantic memory
some words which they are asked to •Participants are shown a list of words,
memorise and after some time they •the participants are asked to such as garden, playground, house, etc.
are asked to recall them in any order. indicate whether the given and then they are shown parts of these
sentences are true or false. Faster words like gar, pla, ho, along with parts of
-In recognition, participants see the other words they had not seen.
the participants respond, better
items that they had memorised along •Participants complete parts of seen
retained is the information needed words more quickly than parts of words
with distracter items (those that they
to verify those sentences . they had not seen.
had not seen) and their task is to
recognise which one of those they
had learnt. •When asked, they are often unaware of
this and report that they have only
guessed.
 NATURE OF FORGETTING
The first systematic attempt to understand the nature of forgetting was made by
Hermann Ebbinghaus, who memorised lists of nonsense syllablesand then measured
the number of trials he took to relearn the same list at varying time intervals. He
observed that the course of forgetting follows a certain pattern:

✓ the rate of forgetting is maximum

in the first nine hours,
particularly during the first hour.
After that the rate slows down
and not much is forgotten even
after many days.

✓ It is now believed that there is

always a sharp drop in memory
and thereafter the decline is very
gradual.
 THEORIES OF FORGETTING

FORGETTING DUE TO TRACE FORGETTING DUE TO FORGETTING DUE TO

DECAY INTERFERENCE RETRIEVAL FAILURE

• Memory leads to • Proactive (forward moving) – • Forgetting can also occur

modification in the CNS which What you have learnt earlier when either the retrieval cues
is similar to changes in the interferes with the recall of are absent or they are
brain called memory traces. your subsequent learning. inappropriate.
• When these memory traces • Retroactive (backward • Tulving and his associates
are not used for a long time, moving) – Difficulty in proved this phenomenon in
they simply fade away and recalling what you have learnt their experiments
become unavailable. earlier because of learning a
new material.
 AMNESIA

CHILDHOOD AMNESIA DREAM AMNESIA DEFENSIVE AMNESIA

TRANSIENT GLOBAL MARIJUANA/ALCOHOL BRAIN-RELATED

AMNESIA AMNESIA DISORDERS
 MEMORY DISTORTIONS
Schacterin 2001 referred to distortions of memory as ‘seven sins of memory’. These 7
sins are –

Misattribution–People often failing to remember what they heard,

Transience –Memory fading quickly i.e., what people where they heard or read what they read.
could say at one time, they no longer remember.
Suggestibility–People are susceptible to suggestion, so if it is suggested
to them that they saw something, they may think they remember seeing
Absent-mindedness–When you do something it.
without actually paying attention to what you are
doing. Bias–Those in pain often tend to remember pain in past , whether or
not they actually experience it.
Blocking–People sometimes have something that
they know they should remember but they simply Persistence–People sometimes remember things as consequential that,
can’t. Its like the information is on tip-of-the-tongue inn a broad content are inconsequential, i.e., someone with many
but they cannot retrieve it. success but one notable failure may remember that single failure only.
 MOTIVATION
Motivation is a need or desire that energizes behavior and directs it toward a goal. It is what either starts or stops
behavior. It is the internal and external forces that drive our thoughts, moods, and behaviors.

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

type of motivation in which a person performs an action because the act itself is rewarding or
satisfying in some internal manner. Example: Creating a web site for fun.

EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION

type of motivation in which a person performs an action because it leads to an outcome that is
separate from or external to the person. Example: Going to work for money.
 THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

DRIVE REDUCTION INCENTIVE

THEORY OPPONENT-
INSTINCT THEORY THEORY (PULL
(PUSH THEORY) PROCESS THEORY
THEORY)
 TYPES OF
MOTIVES

BIOLOGICAL SOCIAL

N- N-
HUNGER THIRST SEX ACHIEVEMENT N-POWER
AFFILIATION
 EMOTIONS
Emotion is defined as a state characterized by physiological arousal, changes in facial expression, gestures,
posture and subjective feelings.

JAMES-LANGE THEORY CANNON-BARD THEORY

SCHACHTER-SINGER
THEORY