Learning

Dr. Ayesha Majeed

Assistant Professor
CPU, Department of Psychology
GC University Lahore
 Learning
• A relatively permanent change in behavior
brought by the experience.
– Any new information that changes your behaviour
– E.g. wearing masks in covid, washing hands,
maintaining a distance with others
• Nature VS Nurture Debate
– Some things are innately learned while some are
learned from the environment.
 Classical Conditioning
• Ivan Pavlov accidently discovered the
phenomenon of learning during experiments
on digestion.
• Classical Conditioning is a type of learning in
which neutral stimulus comes to elicit a
response after being paired with a stimulus
that naturally brings that response.
• Neutral Stimulus
– Before conditioning, doesn’t bring about the
response of interest e.g. bell, light etc
• Unconditioned Stimulus
– naturally brings about a certain response, without
learning e.g. food, water etc
• Unconditioned Response
– Natural innate response that occurs automatically
and needs no training e.g. salivation at the sight of
food.
• Conditioned Stimulus
– Neutral stimulus that has been paired with an
unconditioned stimulus to bring about a response
that initially was only caused by unconditioned
stimulus e.g. bell, light
• Conditioned Response
– A response to a conditioned stimulus e.g. bell
causes salivation, sight of a food ad causes hunger.
 Classical Conditioning
Before Learning
• Bell + Food Salivation
• (NS) (UCS) (UCR)

After Learning
• Bell Salivation
• (CS) (CR)
• The sequence and the timing of
unconditioned stimulus and conditioned
stimulus is very important.
• Best if the neutral stimulus precedes the
unconditioned stimulus.
Conditioning and Human Behavior
• You get hungry at the sight of restaurant
boards.
• Little Albert (Fear of Animals)
• Development of phobias
• Traumatic Events
• Pleasant Events
• Drug Addiction
 Extinction
• Occurs when a previously conditioned
response decreases in frequency and
eventually disappears.
• To produce extinction finish the pairing
between unconditioned stimuli and
conditioned stimuli.
• Presenting the bell without food
 Spontaneous Recovery
• This is re-emergence of the conditioned
response after a period of time and with no
further conditioning.
• E.g. drug addiction
Stimulus Discrimination & Generalization

• Discrimination
• If two stimuli are sufficiently distinctive from
each other that one evokes the conditioned
response but other does not.
• Ability to discriminate between the stimuli.
• Generalization
• Occurs when a stimulus similar to the original
conditioned stimulus can also evoke a
conditioned response.
• The greater the similarity the more likely it
gets that the response will be evoked.
 Criticism on CS
• Too mechanical
• Explains only stimulus response connection
• Ignores the individual characteristics
• Biological programming presents a different
perspective that some responses are
programmed by nature and not learned. i.e.
you get sick to bad foods.
 Operant Conditioning
• A voluntary response is strengthened or
weakened depending upon the favorable or
unfavorable consequences.
• The organism operates in the environment to
produce the desirable outcome.
• Thorndike’s law of effect
• Experiments with the hungry cat in the cage
• Law of effect
• Responses that lead to satisfying
consequences are more likely to be repeated.
• Law of effect operates automatically without
the organism understanding the connection
between the stimulus and response.
 Basics of Operant Conditioning
• Operation on the environment to receive the
desired consequences.
• Skinner’s goal was to train the cats obtain the food
by working on the environment of the skinner box
• Skinner Box
– A chamber with highly controlled environment that
was used to study the OP Conditioning with lab
animals.
• Experiments with rats.
 Reinforcement
• Reinforcement
– Is a process by which a stimulus increases the
probability that the preceding behavior will be
repeated.
• Reinforcer
– Is a stimulus that increases the chances that the
behavior will occur again.
• Primary Reinforcers
– Satisfy biological needs and works naturally regardless of
person’s previous experiences. such as food, shelter, relief
from pain.
• Secondary Reinforcers
– Gain the value because of their association with primary
reinforcers.
• Positive reinforcer
– A stimulus added to the environment that brings about an
increase in the preceding response such as , praise,
rewards.
• Negative Reinforcer
– An unpleasant stimulus whose removal leads to an
increase in the probability that a preceding
response will be repeated in the future e.g. taking
medicine to avoid pain.
– Individual takes an action to avoid negative
condition that existed in the environment.
 Punishment
• A stimulus that deceases the probability that a
prior behavior will occur again.
• Positive Punishment
– Weakens a response by applying an unpleasant
stimulus e.g. hitting, electric shock
• Negative Punishment
– Removal of something pleasant e.g. fine, taking a
valuable on showing undesired behavior.
 Limitations of Punishment
• Punishment does not offer alternate behavior.
• If a person can skip the punishment, it is in
effective.
• Physical harm is involved.
 Schedules of Reinforcement
• The Patten of the frequency and timing of
reinforcement that follow the desired
behavior is known as the schedule of
reinforcement.
• Continuous Reinforcement Schedule
– behavior is reinforced every time it occurs
• Partial Reinforcement Schedule
– Behavior is reinforced some but not the all times
• Learning occurs more quickly during
continuous schedule but it is maintained
during the intermittent schedule.
• Fixed Ratio Schedule
– Reinforcement is given only after a fixed number
of responses.
– Food delivered every 10th time a rat pressed the
lever.
– Payment for every stitched shirt
• Variable Ratio Schedule
– Behavior is reinforced after average number of
responses but exact delivery of reinforcement is
not predictable, e.g. sales
• Fixed Interval Schedule
– Provides reinforcement for a response only after a
fixed time interval has passed.
– Involves low rate of response
– Pay at the end of the month
• Variable Interval Schedule
– The time between the reinforcement varies
around some average.
– No fixed time is predictable
– Surprise quiz
 Discrimination in operant conditioning
• The process by which people learn to
discriminate the stimuli is called stimulus
control training.
• A behavior is reinforced in the presence of
specific stimulus but not in its absence.
• A discriminative stimulus signals that a
behavior is more likely to get reinforced.
• Generalization
– An organism learns to respond to a stimulus and
the exhibits the same response to slightly different
stimuli.

•
Concept Classical Conditioning Operant Conditioning

Basic Principal Association between Reinforcement for

stimuli and response increasing the behavior
and punishment for
decreasing the behavior.

Nature of Behavior Involuntary, natural, innate Voluntary, operates in

behavior, behavior is environment, behavior is
produced by ucs or cs mentioned by its
consequences

Order of Events Before conditioning, an Reinforcement for

unconditioned stimulus increasing the behavior
leads to an unconditioned and punishment for
response, after decreasing the behavior.
Cognitive Approaches to Learning
• Latent Learning
– A new behavior is learned but is not displayed until
an incentive is provided for displaying it.
– Latent learning occurs without reinforcement.
– Experiments with rats
– Three group of rats to explore the maze box for 17
days
– Group 1 was not rewarded at the end of the maze
• Group 2 was rewarded every time they
finished the maze.
• Group 3 was not rewarded for first 10 days but
on day 11 they received reward every time
they finished the maze.
• Comparison showed that the group of
unrewarded rats showed dramatic reductions
in number of errors and time span for
completing the maze.
 Cognitive Maps

• According to cognitive theorists, it seemed

clear that the unrewarded rats had learned
the layout of the maze early in their
explorations, they just never displayed their
latent learning until the reinforcement was
offered.
• Cognitive maps are a mental representation of
spatial locations and directions.
 Observational Learning
• Learning by watching the behavior of the
other person or a model.
• Doll Experiment where children observed an
adult hitting a punching doll, later on children
manifested the same behavior during their
play with the doll.
• Both positive and negative behaviors can be
learned through observational learning.
• Important in acquiring skills, such as practical
demonstrations
• Genetic basis
• Media
Thank You