MRCPsyh Learning Theory - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Title: MRCPsyh Learning Theory
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MRCPsyhLearning Theory
- Dr Mark Worthington
- Clinical Psychologist
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Basic Learning Theory
- Association of events
- Allows an understanding of what is likely to
follow in any given situation - Association between response and outcome
- Adaptive, robust, often automatic
- Habituation A constant or repeated stimulus will
result in decreased response
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Classical / Pavlovian Conditioning
- One event/stimulus becomes associated with
another through repeated pairings - No awareness / understanding necessary
- Awareness can facilitate
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Operant / Instrumental Conditioning
- A type of learning in which the future
probability of a behaviour occurring is affected
by its consequences. - Positive reinforcement Behaviours leading to
positive consequences are more likely.
Associations between stimulus and response. - Associations develop from random actions.
- Operant conditioning quicker when reinforcement
is clearly under the control of the organism.
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The Operant Conditioning Chamber/ Skinner Box
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Negative Reinforcement Punishment
- Negative reinforcement Behaviours leading to
avoidance of negative consequences are more
likely. - Escape the aversive event is terminated.
- Avoidance the event is prevented.
- Punishment non-behaviour is reinforced. The
behaviour is associated with aversive (positive)
or omitted -desirable (negative) stimulus.
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Observational / Social Learning
- Learning associations through observation.
- Conditioning can be classical or operant.
- Observational (or vicarious) reinforcement
through passive witnessing of another being
rewarded. - Takes longer than direct learning.
- Depends upon the features of the model and the
mode of observation.
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Observational Learning
- Optimal conditions
- Live modelling is more
- effective than symbolic
- modelling
- (e.g. watching a video)
- Active participation and
- familiarity with the
- model improve learning
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Cognitive Learning
- Involves a degree of awareness.
- Awareness can facilitate but is unnecessary in
operant and classical conditioning. - Awareness is necessary in the following
- Explicit transmission of facts
- Where a situation is mentally structured to find
a solution - Awareness is initially absent but increases in
social learning (Social competence, awareness of
rules).
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Extinction
- A CR can be weakened / eliminated when the CS is
repeatedly presented in absence of US - Decrease is a function of features of the
reinforcement. - The strength of response the number of
responses over time without reinforcement. - Response can spontaneously recover.
- Old CR can be relearned more quickly.
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Formulation of Clinical Problems
- Phobias
- Develop through classical conditioning
- Maintained by operant conditioning
- Avoidance of / escape from anxietyprovoking
stimuli removes unpleasant emotions, thus
reinforcing behaviour of avoidance - More aversive stimuli require fewer pairings.
- Fear Classical conditioning, vicarious,
instruction - Jellyfish look of fear in others ? fear in self
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Example Social Anxiety
- Individual with social anxiety will feel a
significant decrease in anxiety once he/she
decides to avoid attending a large social event. - results in the removal of the unpleasant anxiety
symptoms thereby reinforcing avoidance behavior
thus, it becomes the person's preferred method of
coping with future social events. - If individual attempted to go to the event,
despite their reservations, they might experience
a panic attack while there - person immediately exits the party, panic
subsides, behaviour of escape is rewarded by the
swift reduction in panic symptoms.
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Formulation of Clinical Problems Contd
- Depression Learned helplessness
- Individual has learned to behave helplessly, even
when the opportunity is restored for it to help
itself by avoiding an unpleasant circumstance to
which it has been subjected - Addiction Operant conditioning
- Positive reinforcer elevated mood.
- Negative reinforcer escape of an unpleasant
event(s). - Relapse upon reintroduction to existing
environment. - Extreme inactivity in chronic pain Learned
avoidance.
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Other Processes
- Generalisation
- Similar stimulus elicits the conditioned response
- Fear of a white rat may generalise to fear of
white, furry things - Strength of response depends on the similarities
- Discrimination
- The ability to distinguish between stimuli
- Established more slowly if similarities are
greater - Secondary reinforcement
- Reinforcing properties of a stimulus acquired
through pairing with a primary reinforcer - E.g. clicker training with dogs
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Other Processes (contd)
- Incubation
- Where fear increases over successive
non-reinforced presentations of the CS - Due to the conditioning of an emotional response
- Escape negatively reinforced by escape from
emotion - Stimulus Preparedness
- Biological predispositions to react with fear
- Conditioning quicker, more resistant to
extinction - Enhances two stage model of phobia to account for
the failed equipotentiality assumption
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Behavioural Interventions
- Consent is required.
- Relies on accurate formulation.
- Reciprocal inhibition.
- Rewarding desired behaviours whilst not rewarding
(ignoring) or punishing undesirable behaviours. - Desirable change is enhanced if the two
behaviours are incompatible.
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Behavioural Interventions contd
- Habituation.
- A form of counter-conditioning.
- Successive presentation leads to a decrease in
response. - E.g. systematic desensitisation
- Facilitate with substitution (e.g. relaxation).
- Exposure methods
- Flooding enforced exposure.
- Desensitisation gradual exposure.
- Modelling vicarious exposure.
- Imagery exposure to the imagined stimulus.
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Behavioural Interventions contd
- Chaining.
- Learning complex behaviours through breaking
into steps. - Backward chaining facilitated by the end reward .
- Shaping.
- Successive approximations are rewarded.
- Cueing.
- Cue the stimulus that elicits the behaviour.
- Use the phobic object to cue opposite behaviours.
- Cue desirable behaviours at appropriate times.
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Reinforcement Schedules
- Continuous 11 quick learning, rapid
extinction. - Fixed / Variable, Interval / Ratio
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Beware the Pitfalls of Punishment
- Can elicit aggression and side effects
interferes with subsequent attempt to teach more
appropriate behaviour - People may become conditioned punishers
- Unwanted behaviour suppressed only when CP is
present, or avoidance of CP all together - Punishing may be modelled or imitated
- Becomes relied upon and increases following
spontaneous recovery - Does not establish more appropriate behaviour,
may even result in general suppression of
behaviour - Ideally should only be used with positive
reinforcement of alternative response
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Learning a final note
- Learning should be considered in terms of its
global function to adapt to the environment. - Learning can be conscious or unconscious.
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MRCPsychIntelligence
- Dr Mark Worthington
- Clinical Psychologist
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Assumptions
- Intelligence varies across individuals and can be
measured. - Eysenck intelligence reflected at different
levels - Biological (substrate)
- Behavioural (e.g. exam success)
- Psychometric (as measured by intelligence tests).
- Existence of a general intelligence factor g
- statistic used in psychometrics to quantify the
mental ability underlying results of various
tests of cognitive ability
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Components of Intelligence
- Fluid creativity, novel solutions.
- Crystallised knowledge, application to concrete
problems. - Psychometric tests and factor analysis
Correlate subscales. - The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test Third
edition (WAIS-III) - Full Scale IQ
- Verbal Scale IQ
- Verbal Comprehension Index
- Working Memory Index
- Performance Scale IQ
- Perceptual Organisation Index
- Processing Speed Index
- IQ Generally, ratio between test score and age
norm x 100.
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Psychometrics or Computation- Ability or
Processes
- Computational models - components
- Metacomponents (strategy, higher-order control)
- Performance components (execution)
- Acquisition components (learning processes)
- Retention components (memory, retrieval)
- Transfer components (generalisation of knowledge)
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Some Assessment Issues
- Populations need to have a mean of 100.
- Those developed in other countries to have a mean
of 100 leave western subject performing poorly. - Immigrants increase performance over time due to
crystallised intelligence. - Intelligence/IQ is whatever the tests measure.
- The reverse is a circular argument.
- Several factors influence performance.
- Tests that minimise the influence of the
material.
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MRCPsychThought
- Dr Mark Worthington
- Clinical Psychologist
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Thought and Language
- Initial ideas...
- Thought and language are closely related.
- Thought is evident in imagery but mainly
propositional. - The mind/brain has an ability to reduce
information processing load.
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Important Terms
- Concept Mental representation of a class of
objects - Categorisation The process whereby objects are
assigned to groups - Prototypes An exemplar represents the best
example of the concept - Cores The necessary and sufficient properties
for inclusion in concept
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Deductive Reasoning
- A deductive argument is where the conclusion must
be true if the premises are true. - A gt B B gt C Therefore A gt C
- Adults good at assessing validity in simple cases
- Less good as complexity (No. of premises)
increases.
Inductive Reasoning
- The conclusion does not necessarily follow
- A is usually gt B B is always gt C therefore A gt
C.
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Problem Solving Strategies
- Algorithms A set of rules that guarantee the
solution if applied stepwise. - Heuristics Rule of thumb approach.
- Experienced based techniques for problem solving,
learning and discovery - Reduces the number of possibilities considered
based on likelihood. - Allows an initial solution to be tested rapidly.
- Draws upon prototypes.
- Prototypes may lead to errors in judging
probabilities. - Can also lead to humans outperforming computers.
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