Learning

Dr Mollika Roy
Associate Professor
University of Dhaka

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• Human are complicated organism.
• They have to deal with the consistently changing
environment.
• Adaptation is a process of changing behavior to fit
changing circumstances.
• All activities require learning.
• Learning is a key concept of to understand different
type of human behavior.

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 What is Learning?
• Relatively permanent change in the immediate
or potential behavior that results from
experience.

• A person keeps on learning across all the

stages of life, by constructing or
reconstructing experiences.

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 Different Types of Learning
• Motor Learning: process of acquiring a skill by
which the learner, learn and make automatic &
desired movement.
• Example: walking, running, driving, etc.
• Broadly, a change in the capability of a person to
perform a skill that must be inferred from a relatively
permanent improvement in performance as a result
of practice or experience

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 Different Types of Learning

• Verbal Learning: Related with the language which

we use to communicate and various other forms of
verbal communication.
• Example: symbols, words, languages
• nonsense syllables, familiar words, unfamiliar
words, sentences, and paragraphs etc.

Verbal learning is the process of actively

memorizing new material using mental pictures,
associations, and other activities.

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 Types of Learning
• Discrimination Learning: Learning which distinguishes
between various stimuli with its appropriate and
different responses is regarded as discrimination
stimuli.

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 Types of Learning
• Attitude Learning:
• the study of how people form evaluations of persons,
places or things.
• Attitude shapes our behavior to a very great extent. Our
positive or negative behavior is based on our attitudinal
predisposition.
• Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a
function of experience.

• How do we have this learning?

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 Learning Theories
• How do we learn ?
• Associating or relating two different stimuli
represent simplest form of learning.

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 Learning Theories
• Classical Conditioning
• Results from the association of two stimuli. Such as…
• Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov began a series of experiment. He is the
pioneer of Classical conditioning.

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Classical Conditioning
• Reflex: is a specific involuntary response to a
stimulus and does not require any learning.
• Unconditioned Stimuli & Unconditioned
response: Dog starts salivation seeing the food.

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Classical Conditioning
• Conditioned stimuli & Conditioned response:
Before condition During condition After condition

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Process in Classical Conditioning
1. Acquisition of Conditioned response: When
condition/ association occurred between two
unconditioned stimuli.
• Gradual process.
• How many trials are necessary?

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 Acquisition Process in C. C
Time relationship between condition & unconditioned stimuli:
• Forward Conditioning: Best way to associate condition &
unconditioned stimuli is presenting CS before US.
– Delay
– Simultaneous
– Trace

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 Forward Condition Process in C. C
Delay conditioning:
The CS continued until US arrived.

Simultaneous conditioning:
US and CS starts exactly at the same time.

Trace conditioning: Time

CS comes and stopped, then after a
fixed time interval (say 2 sec.) US arrives.
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Forward Condition Process in C. C
Which one is best among froward condition?

Delay

Simultaneous
Trace

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 Extinction Process in C. C
• When CR no longer appears in the presence of CS.
• Stimulus is no longer paired with US.

Spontaneous Recovery

• When the CR extinct after a number of

extinction sessions and organism receives a
time interval, the condition might reactivated.

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 Generalization Process in C. C
• Refers to the tendency to respond to stimuli that
resemble the original conditioned stimulus.

Discrimination

• When organism learns to discriminate and

respond in exact CS and not in similar but
slightly different stimuli.

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 Operant Conditioning

• This produces a result that influences whether the subject will operate or
respond in the same way in the future.
• Depending on the effect of the operant behaviors, the learner will repeat or
eliminate these behaviors to get rewards or avoid punishment.

• So this OC indicates learning from the consequences of behavior.

• Operant conditioning is the process of learning through
reinforcement and punishment.
• Operant conditioning occurs when the consequences that follow a
behavior increase or decrease the likelihood of that behavior occurring
again. 18
Operant Conditioning

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 Shaping
• Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner has
been the psychologist most closely
associated with operant conditioning.
• Skinner trained (or shaped) rats to
respond to lights and sounds in a special
enclosure, called a Skinner box.
• To conduct this experiment, a rat is
placed inside the box.
• The rat must learn how to solve the
problem of how to get food to appear in
the cup. (pressing a bar in cage wall).
• The rat first explores the box. When the
rat moves toward the bar, the
experimenter drops food into the cup. 20
 Shaping Process of Operant Conditioning

• After the rat begins to approach the cup for

food consistently, the experimenter begins to
drop food into the cup only if the rat presses
the bar.

• Eventually, when the rat is hungry it will press the bar

to get food.
• The food that appears in the cup is a reinforcer in this
experiment.

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 Process of Operant Conditioning

• Shaping involves reinforcing behaviors that are increasingly

similar to the desired behavior until finally the desired
behavior occurs.
• Shaping is such a common process in human learning.
• Teaching children to dress themselves, to ride a bicycle, or to
read, we begin with simple and easily executed components
and gradually build to the complete response.

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 Process of Operant Conditioning

Extinction
• Extinction will occur when the reinforcement will be withheld for
a long period.
• Or the action does not bring satisfying outcome.
• The behavior will stop gradually to occur.
Spontaneous recovery
• the reappearance of the conditioned response after a rest period or
period of lessened response.

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 Process of Operant Conditioning

• Stimulus discrimination refers to responding only to

the discriminative stimulus and not to similar stimuli.
• Some behavior behaviors that are appropriate in one
situation but not in another.

• Stimulus generalization occurs when an individual

responds to stimuli that are similar to the original
conditioned stimulus.
• In operant conditioning, stimulus generalization
explains how we can learn something in one situation
and apply it to other similar situations.

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 Process of Operant Conditioning

• Consequences of behavior
• What is Reinforcement?
• Reinforcement is a stimulus or event that increases
the likelihood that behavior will be repeated.
• Whether or not a particular stimulus is a reinforcement
depends on the effect the stimulus has on the learner.
• Such as: power, social approval, money etc.
– Positive reinforcement
– Negative reinforcement

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Process of Operant Conditioning

Positive reinforcement: Adding something will increase

the behavior. When subject perform something and stimuli
is added after that performance.
Such as: food, money, etc.

Negative Reinforcement: negative reinforcement occurs

when something unpleasant is taken away if the animal
performs an action.
Such as: medicine, pesticide, etc.

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Process of Operant Conditioning

Primary reinforcer & Secondary reinforcer

• Reinforcers come in many varieties. Some
reinforcers are primary and some are secondary.
• A primary reinforcer is one that satisfies a
biological need such as hunger, thirst, or sleep.
• A secondary reinforcer is one that has been paired
with a primary reinforcer and through classical
conditioning has acquired value and reinforcement.
• With conditioning, almost any stimulus can acquire
value and become a secondary reinforcer.

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 Schedule of reinforcement

• In the laboratory, it is possible to reinforce a behavior

each time it occurs - continuous reinforcement
schedule (CRF).
• When a behavior is reinforced only part of the time, it
is said to be on a partial reinforcement schedule (PRF).

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Schedule of reinforcement

• Ratio schedule: the reinforcer is delivered

after the organism responds a certain number
of times.
• Interval Schedule: The reinforcer is delivered
after passing a certain interval of time.
• One of the most important features of these
different types of partial reinforcement
schedules is that they produce different rates
of responding.

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Schedule of reinforcement

• Fixed Ratio: In a fixed-ratio (FR) schedule, the

response must occur a specific number of
times before the reinforcer is delivered.
• A rat on an FR-5 schedule would have to press
the bar five times before a pellet was
delivered.
• On an FR-50 schedule, the rat would have to
press fifty times for each pellet.

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 Schedule of reinforcement

• Fixed Ratio: In a fixed-ratio (FR) schedule, the response must

occur a specific number of times before the reinforcer is
delivered.
• A rat on an FR-5 schedule would have to press the bar five
times before a pellet was delivered.
Reinforcement on yellow marked
trials

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

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 Schedule of reinforcement

• Variable Ratio: Must give a certain number of response

before a reinforcement will be delivered.
• But in this case number of response required for each
response will vary.
• On an average a rat will receive 1 reinforcement after
pressing bar 5 times (4 reinforcement). But the distance
among the reinforcer will vary.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

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 Schedule of reinforcement

• In Fixed Interval schedules experimenters deliver

reinforcers after a certain period of time has passed.
• 90 sec = 3 reinforcer 30 sec 30 sec 30 sec

• In the variable Interval schedules

reinforcement providing schedule
is much less predictable.

• A rat on a VI-30" schedule will receive a reinforcer for bar pressing

on an average of once every thirty seconds. But the interval
between reinforcement would vary
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Schedule of reinforcement

Graphical presentation of partial reinforcement

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