Learning

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Learning
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Thoughts on Learning

• Learning is not compulsory. Neither is
  survival.
• W. Edwards Demming
• Education is what survives when what has been
  learned has been forgotten.
• B.F. Skinner
• I am always doing that which I cannot do, in
  order that I may learn how to do it.
• Pablo Picasso

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What is Learning?

• A relatively permanent change in behavior that
  results from experience

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Types of Learning

• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
• Cognitive and social learning

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Classical Conditioning Examples

• Sound of a dentists drill sweaty palms
• Smell of moms perfume smiling
• Sight of certain restaurant nausea
• Noise of a can opener cat comes running
• Smell of a hospital weakened immunity

How does this happen?
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Classical Conditioning

• Discovered (accidentally) by Ivan Pavlov

• Components
• Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
• Unconditioned Response (UR)
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
• Conditioned Response (CR)

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Pavlovs Observation

• Studied digestion in dogs

• Presented meat powder and measured salivation
• Dogs started salivating before food was presented
• Why?

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Pavlovs Experiment Phase 1

• Food (US) salivation (UR)
• Reflexive response
• Tone (CS) nothing (CR)

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Pavlovs Experiment Phase 2

• CS is repeatedly paired with the US
• A tone is sounded before the food is presented

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Pavlovs Experiment Phase 3

• Eventually, the CS elicits a new CR
• Hearing the tone by itself causes salivation

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Classical ConditioningConditioned Emotional
Response

• Avoidance learning
• Conditioned phobias
• Little Albert

• Biological preparedness
• Contrapreparedness
• Easy to develop a snake phobia
• Hard to develop a car door phobia

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Classical Conditioning

• Extinction
• Spontaneous recovery

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Classical Conditioning

• Stimulus generalization
• Stimulus discrimination

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Classical Conditioning

• Stimulus generalization is the extension of a
  conditioned response from the training stimulus
  to similar stimuli.
• Through conditioning Baby Hannah smiles and
  laughs at the title screen with dark background
  and white writing that precedes a funny song and
  cartoon on her Merrytubbies video tape. Her
  parents notice that she also smiles and giggles
  at the FBI Warning screen appearing on movie
  videotapes.

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• Stimulus generalization is the process of
  extending a learned response to new stimuli that
  resemble the one used in training. Similar
  stimuli similar elicit a stronger response.

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Classical Conditioning

• Discrimination is the process of learning to
  respond differently to two stimuli because they
  produce two different outcomes.
• Gradually Hannah stops laughing at the FBI
  Warning screen because the song and cartoon do
  not follow it.

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Higher Order Conditioning

• Pair CS1 with a new CS2
• CS2 CR
• But, CR will be weaker

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The General Rule of Conditioning

• Previously neutral stimulus will lead to a
  conditioned response (CR) whenever it provides
  the organism with information about the upcoming
  occurrence of the unconditioned stimulus (UCS).
  (Rescorla, 1992 Rescorla Wagner, 1972).
• As with Pavlovs dogs, the sound of the metronome
  just before presentation of food (UCS) became a
  conditioned stimulus (CS) because the dogs began
  salivating (CR) when the metronome ticked.
• Conditioning occurs because the sound of the
  metronome provides the dog with information that
  food will soon be delivered.

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Classical Conditioning Applied

• Drug overdoses
• Smoking environmental cues
• Systematic desensitization
• Advertising sex appeal
• Taste aversion
• Conditioning and the immune system

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Types of Learning

• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Cognitive and Social Learning

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Operant Conditioning

• Classical conditioning teaches about future
  events, but it seldom allows one to change those
  events.
• Thorndike proposed that behavior became more or
  less likely based on whether it produced a
  desired or undesired consequence, something he
  called the law of effect.
• B.F. Skinner later called this idea operant
  conditioning because an organisms behavior is
  operating on the environment to achieve some
  desired goal.
• This is a more active form of learning than that
  of classical conditioning.

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Operant Conditioning Examples

• Tantrums are punished fewer tantrums
• Tantrums bring attention more tantrums
• Slot machine pays out gamble more
• Reward dog for sitting dog is likely to sit

How does this happen? Fuzzy Knows!!
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Operant Conditioning

• Thorndikes puzzle box
• Law of Effect actions that have positive
  outcomes are likely repeated
• Skinner box

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ThorndikeThe Law of Effect
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Skinner and Operant Learning
Skinner defined operant learning as

• Voluntary and goal directed
• Controlled by its consequences
• Strengthened if rewarded or weakened if punished

The mouse is operating on its environment by
pressing the food lever in the Skinner box and
receiving a food reward.
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Operant Conditioning Principles

• Stimulus-Response
• Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement

• Punishment
• Positive punishment
• Negative punishment

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Principles of operant conditioning

• Relies on principle of reinforcement, in which
  the consequences of a behavior lead to a higher
  frequency of the behavior occurring later on.
• Reinforcement works best when it involves a
  response contingency.
• There are different types of reinforcers
• Positive reinforcement is when a desired
  reinforcer is presented after the occurrence of
  the desired behavior.
• Negative reinforcement is when an unpleasant
  event or circumstance is removed after the
  occurrence of the desired behavior.

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Principles of operant conditioning

• Punishment is typically the occurrence of an
  unpleasant event as a consequence of a response,
  always decreasing the likelihood of the
  recurrence of that response.
• Punishment is most effective if it has three
  characteristics
• It should occur immediately after the undesired
  behavior.
• It must be consistent.
• It must be aversive without being abusive

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Effective Punishment

• Should be
• Swift
• Consistent
• Appropriately aversive
• Challenges
• Physical punishment may be imitated
• May fear the person who punishes
• Most effective when paired with reinforcers

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Principles of operant conditioning

• Dangers of using punishment
• It does not eliminate the capacity to engage in
  the problem behavior.
• Physical punishment may elicit increased
  aggressive behavior in the person being punished.
• Through classical conditioning, the person being
  punished may learn to fear the punisher.
• Typically requires continuous observation.

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Shaping Behavior
Shaping, or the method of successive
approximations, is the process of teaching a new
behavior by reinforcing closer and closer
approximations to the desired behavior. Behavior
is shaped by breaking down a desired behavior
into smaller substeps (or approximations) then
successively reinforcing each substep until the
desired behavior is reached.
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Building Complex Behaviors

• Shaping
• Gradual reinforcement of successive
  approximations of target behavior
• Used to train animals to do complex tricks

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Reinforcement

• Reinforcement increases the probability of the
  behavior it follows.
• Continuous reinforcement (rewarding every correct
  response) results in fast learning, but can be
  quickly extinguished.
• Partial reinforcement keeps us responding
  vigorously for longer.
• Variable ratio reinforcement leads to the highest
  rates of responding greatest resistance to
  extinction.

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Reinforcement Schedules

• Contiuous reinforcement
• Partial reinforcement
• Fixed interval
• Variable interval
• Fixed ratio
• Variable ratio

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Reinforcement Schedules
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Reinforcement

• Primary reinforcers
• Secondary reinforcers
• Behavior modification
• Immediate versus delayed reinforcement

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Beyond Basic Reinforcement

• Generalization
• Discrimination
• Discriminative stimulus
• Extinction
• Spontaneous recovery

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Classical versus Operant Conditioning

• Classical conditioning
• Learned association between US and CS
• Organism is passive
• Responses elicited

• Operant conditioning
• Associate response and reinforcement
• Organism is active
• Responses emitted

• Shared features
• Avoidance learning
• Extinction and spontaneous recovery
• Generalization and discrimination

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Types of Learning

• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
• Cognitive and social learning

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Cognitive Learning

• Latent learning
• Tolmans rats cognitive maps

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Cognitive Learning

• Insight learning
• Aha experience

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Observational Learning

• Imitation or Modeling

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Observational Learning
Observational learning is learning a behavior by
observing or imitating the behavior of others
(models). Behavior that has been rewarded is
most likely to be imitated. During observational
learning, one learns by watching how others
behavior is reinforced or punished, not ones own
behavior. Operant learning, on the other hand,
is learning directly from ones own experience.
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Banduras Social Learning Theory
People learn social behaviors mainly through
observation and cognitive processing of
information, rather than through direct
experience. Observational learning is the
central tenet to this theory. For observational
learning to occur, one must

• Pay attention to a models behavior
• Remember what has been observed
• Be able to perform the observed behavior
• Be motivated to perform the observed behavior

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Aggressive Behavior

• Studies suggest that children learn aggressive
  behaviors through observation.
• Punishment does not seem to prevent the learning
  of aggression, but it does seem to inhibit its
  expression.
• Nonaggressive responding can also be learned
  through positive social modeling.

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Observational Learning

• Banduras Bobo doll study