LEARNING Chapter 6

LEARNING
Learning may be defined as "Any relatively permanent change in
behaviour or behavioural potential produced by experience".
Changes due to practice and experience, which are relatively
permanent, are
illustrative of learning.
.
FEATURES OF LEARNING
1. The first feature is that learning always involves some kinds of
experience.
2. Behavioural changes that occur due to learning are relatively
permanent.
3. Learning involves a sequence of psychological events.
4. Learning is an inferred process and is different from
performance.
PARADIGMS OF LEARNING
Paradigms of learning
● Learning takes place in many ways. Some are used for
acquisition of simple responses and some for complex responses.
• Simplest form of learning is conditioning.

Classic Instrumental Observational

Conditioning Learning learning
Cognitive learning Verbal learning Skill Learning
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
• Investigated by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
Relationship of Stages of Conditioning and Operations
Stages of Conditioning Nature of Stimulus Nature of Response
Before Sound of the Bell + Food Salivation (UR)
(US)
During Sound of the Bell (CS) + Salivation (UR)
Food (US)
After Sound of the Bell (CS) Salivation (CR)
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
•It is obvious that the learning situation in classical conditioning is one
of S-S learning in which one stimulus(e.g., sound of bell) becomes a
signal for another stimulus (e.g., food).
•Here one stimulus signifies the possible occurrence of another
stimulus.
•Examples of classical conditioning abound in everyday life.
•Imagine you have just finished your lunch and you are feeling
satisfied.
•Then you see some sweet dish served on the adjoining table.
•This signals its taste in your mouth, and triggers the secretion of
saliva.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
•You feel like eating it.
•This is a conditioned response (CR).
•Let us take another example.
•In the early stages of childhood, one is naturally afraid of any loud noise.
•Suppose a small child catches an inflated balloon which bursts in her/his
hands making a loud noise.
•The child becomes afraid.
•Now the next time s/he is made to hold a balloon, it becomes a signal or cue
for noise and elicits fear response.
•This happens because of contiguous presentation of balloon as a conditioned
stimulus (CS) and loud noise as an unconditioned stimulus (US).
DETERMINANTS OF
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
1. Time relations between stimuli

Simultaneous conditioning Delayed conditioning

(forward C) (forward C)
Trace conditioning (forward Backward conditioning
2.C)Type of unconditioned stimuli: Appetitive and Aversive
3. Intensity of conditioned stimuli
DETERMINANTS OF
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
a) When the CS and US are presented together, it is called
simultaneous conditioning.
b) In delayed conditioning, the onset of CS precedes the onset of
US. The CS ends before the end of the US.
c) In trace conditioning, the onset and end of the CS precedes the
onset of US with some time gap between the two.
d) In backward conditioning, the US precedes the onset of CS.
DETERMINANTS OF
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
•It is now well established that delayed conditioning procedure is the
most effective way of acquiring a CR.
•Simultaneous and trace conditioning procedures do lead to
acquisition of a CR, but they require greater number of acquisition
trials in comparison to the delayed conditioning procedure.
•It may be noted that the acquisition of response under backward
conditioning procedure is very rare.
OPERANT/
INSTRUMENTAL
CONDITIONING
• Investigated by Burrhus Frederic
Skinner.
Operants are those behaviours or
responses, which are emitted by animals
and human beings voluntarily and are
under their control and conditioning of
these behaviours is called operant
conditioning
DETERMINANTS OF
OPERANT CONDITIONING
1. It is a form of learning in which behaviour is learned, changed or
maintained through its consequences. Such consequences are
known as reinforcers.
2. Reinforcers (any stimulus or event, which increases the
probability of the occurrence
of a desired response)
Types of reinforcements-
3. There are some features ofPositive and negative
reinforcers. They include:
Number of reinforcements & Number of trials, intensity in
other features- each trial, quality of
reinforcement
Schedules of reinforcements Continuous & partial/intermittent
(arrangement of the delivery of reinforcement
reinforcement during conditioned
trials)
Delayed reinforcement Delayed delivery of
Reinforcement=poorer level of
performance
KEY LEARNING PROCESSES
Reinforcement (Primary and secondary reinforcers)
• Extinction Disappearance of a learned response due to removal of
reinforcement
from the situation in which the response used to occur. Resistance to
extinction also
occurs.
Generalisation- Responding similarly to similar stimuli
• Discrimination- Learned response occurs or is elicited by a new
stimulus.
• Spontaneous recovery- Occurs after a learned response is extinguished.
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
• Earlier it was called imitation.
Albert Bandura and colleagues investigated observational learning
It is sometimes also called social learning, modelling
• They conducted some studies specifically "Bobo doll" experiment