Which Of The Following Is An Enduring Change Of Behavior That Results From Experience?

Learning, Language, and Thought: Lecture ane
PSYC 1301

Learning, Language, and Idea: Lecture i

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A child goes to the doctor for shots - she doesn't cry the showtime fourth dimension until she gets the shots. The second time she starts to cry when she sees the doctor. Later on, she begins to cry when she sees anyone wearing a white lab coat. Finally, she begins crying when she hears the word "doctor." And then, what has happened? The child has learned to acquaintance white lab coats with doctors and doctors with shots, which crusade pain.

What is Learning?

Learning is simply the process by which feel or practise results in a relatively indelible change in behavior or potential beliefs. In other words, learning means a reorganization of behavior. Learning involves making associations, formation of concepts, theories, ideas, and other mental abstractions.

The automated shift of attention to something new is known every bit an orienting response. One time a person orients himself/herself to this new stimulus, habituation occurs. Habituation is generally regarded as the simplest form of learning.

Association occurs when i flake of data from the environment becomes linked repeatedly with another, and the organism begins to connect the two sources of information.

Conditioning is a course of associative learning in which behaviors are triggered by clan with events in the environment. Someone sneezes and nosotros respond with "God bless y'all." Someone says "how are yous" and you lot answer with "fine, give thanks you, and you?" even if you are really feeling pretty lousy.

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is just the type of learning in which reflexive behaviors that would automatically follow ane type of stimulus are brought on past a different, previously neutral stimulus.

Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov is most closely associated with classical conditioning. He hit upon classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning near past blow when studying digestive processes. He trained dogs to salivate at the audio of a bong by presenting the audio but before food was brought into the room. Eventually, the dog would salivate at the sound of the bell even though no meat was present. The unconditional stimulus causes a reflex activeness, which is the unconditional response. The conditional response is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus until, eventually, the conditional response occurs.

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Pavlov chosen this type of learning the workout of reflexes. Today, we refer to this type of conditioning equally classical workout. The unconditioned response (UCR) is the natural automatic, inborn response to a stimulus. In this case, unconditioned simply means unlearned. The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is the ecology input that causes the unlearned, reflexive response. The conditioned stimulus (CS) is the previously neutral stimulus that the organism learns to acquaintance with the UCS. Thus, the conditioned response (CR) is the behavior that the organism learns to perform when presented with the conditioned stimulus alone.

When the neutral stimulus is presented simply before the UCS, or the neutral stimulus and the UCS are presented at the same time, forward conditioning occurs. Backward workout occurs when the neutral stimulus follows the UCS. Classical conditioning is more likely to succeed when the UCS and the CS are paired close together in time.

Stimulus generalization develops by extending the association betwixt UCS and CS to include a broad array of stimuli. For instance, a person may develop a fearfulness of all animals after he/she is bitten by a dog.

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Extinction and Recovery

Extinction is a decrease in forcefulness, frequency, or stopping of a learned response because of failure to proceed pairing US and CS or withholding reinforcement.

For instance, your dog would come running into the kitchen expecting to be fed when he/she heard the electrical can opener. The can opener breaks and you lot resort to a manual can opener. Months later y'all buy a new electric can opener. The canis familiaris does not come running when he/she hears the sound of the new can opener since the connectedness between the audio of the can opener and the food has get extinct.

Difficulty of extinguishing a conditioned response depends on the post-obit:

Strength of the original learning
Design of reinforcement
Variety of setting in which the original learning took place
Complexity of behaviors
Punishment vs. reinforcement

Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of an extinguished response after the passage of fourth dimension without training.

Classical Conditioning in Humans

One of the best illustrations of stimulus generalization in humans comes from the research of John Watson and Rosalie Rayner in the conditioning of Fiddling Albert. Little Albert was a nine-calendar month-erstwhile babe who was conditioned to fear a white rat. Initially, he was curious about the rat, but he was non agape of it. Then they would brand a very loud noise past striking a steel bar with a hammer behind Niggling Albert at the same fourth dimension that he was presented with the rat. Naturally, Petty Albert was startled by the noise and upset past the rat. Rayner and Watson so generalized the fearfulness to other stimuli including a rabbit, dog, white fur glaze, and a Santa Claus mask.

Click here for a clip of the Niggling Albert experiment.

Watson and Rayner'southward experiment showed that fears tin can be conditioned, fears can be generalized, only such experiments may non be ethical by today's standards.

Humans as well learn to associate certain sights or sounds with other stimuli. Using much the same principle, Mary Encompass Jones developed a method for unlearning fears: she paired the sight of a caged rat, at gradually decreasing distances, with a kid'southward pleasant experience of eating candy. This method evolved into desensitization therapy - a conditioning technique designed to gradually reduce anxiety about a particular object or situation. Recently, scientists have discovered that the immune system may respond to classical workout techniques, thus allowing doctors to employ fewer drugs in treating sure disorders.

Desensitization Therapy

John Wolpe ended that since much of our behavior is learned, there was no reason why it could non be unlearned. He first experimented with cats by giving them mild electrical shocks accompanied by specific sounds and visual stimuli. Somewhen the pairing created a feeling of fright. Past gradually exposing the cats to the same sounds with food, the cats gradually unlearned their fear. Wolpe went on to bear witness that therapy could be combined with other empirical methods.

Modern desensitization techniques include relaxation techniques in stressful situations until the patient/client is able to handle the fear underlying the stressful object or situation. If a person is afraid of dogs, he may be asked to look at a movie of a domestic dog, pet a puppy, and eventually pet a big domestic dog. Virtual reality has been used to give a person the feeling of actually existence in the situation that causes the stress such equally fear of flying.

Operant Conditioning

Classical conditioning focuses on a behavior that invariably follows a particular upshot, whereas operant workout concerns the learning of beliefs that operates on the environment: the person or animal learns from the consequences of its behavior. He/she behaves in a particular way to gain something desired or avoid something unpleasant.

Thorndike's Puzzle Box

Psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike was the starting time researcher to study operant behavior systematically. He used a puzzle box to determine how cats larn. A cat enclosed in a box struggled to escape and somewhen moved the latch which opened the door. Each fourth dimension the cat was placed in the box, it ceased to exercise those things that had proven ineffective ("errors") and soon fabricated the successful response (motility the latch) after being placed in the box. Thorndike summarized the influence of consequences in his law of effect: The consequences of a behavior will affect the likelihood of that beliefs's being repeated. Behavior that brings about a satisfying effect is probable to exist performed once again. Moreover, the behavior would occur more than quickly over time. Behavior that results in punishment is decreased.

B.F. Skinner and the Skinner Box

Although Thorndike was a pioneer of operant conditioning, B.F. Skinner is probably the almost well known, not simply for his work with operant workout, merely the development of operant conditioning into behavior therapy. He coined the term operant to refer to behavior that operates or acts on the environment to produce specific consequences. Skinner built a small cage with solid walls with a lever mounted on the wall. This box came to exist known as the Skinner Box. He would place a bird or rodent in the box. Eventually the bird or rodent would learn to press a lever to receive food pellets. For a brief survey of operant behavior in Skinner'due south ain words, get to http://bfskinner.org/

Although all reinforcers (both positive and negative) increment the likelihood that a behavior will occur over again, penalisation is any consequence whose presence decreases the likelihood that ongoing behavior will recur. Reinforcement always strengthens behavior; penalty weakens information technology. Main reinforcers are innate and satisfy biological needs such as nutrient for hunger, h2o for thirst. Secondary or conditioned reinforcers are learned past association. For example, if I earn all A's, my parents will give me money.

Positive reinforcement focuses on the presenation of something, someone, or a state of affairs every bit a reward for behavior. Negative reinforcement is the removal of an unpleasant stimulus that increases the probability of a behavior. Penalisation, on the other hand, decreases the likelihood that the behavior will occur. This may occur through positive punishment or the add-on of a stimulus that may increase behavior such as spanking to stop an undesirable behavior. Negative penalisation, on the other paw, is the removal of a stimulus in order to subtract the behavior. An example of negative punishment would be taking a teenager'due south cell phone away for breaking a curfew.

Another way to speed upwardly operant workout is through shaping, or reinforcement of successive approximations of the desired behavior. Abstention training involves learning a desirable beliefs that prevents an unpleasant status, such as punishment, from occurring.

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Reinforcement Schedule

Continuous reinforcement - reinforcement every time the response is fabricated
Stock-still ratio schedule - reinforcement after a fixed number of responses
Variable ratio schedule - reinforcement after a varying number of responses
Stock-still interval schedule - reinforcement of the first response later on a fixed time has passed
Variable interval schedule - reinforcement of the first response after varying amounts of time have passed

Despite their differences, classical and operant conditioning share many similarities. Both involve associations between stimuli and responses; both are bailiwick to extinction and spontaneous recovery as well as generalization and bigotry. In fact, many psychologists at present question whether classical and operant conditioning are not simply two means of bringing virtually the same kind of learning. Biofeedback is an operant conditioning technique in which instruments are used to give learners data nigh the forcefulness of a biological response over which they seek to gain control.

Social Learning Theory - Learning by Observing

Social learning theory argues that we larn not only from firsthand experience, simply also from watching others or by hearing about something. Enactive learning is learning by doing, whereas observational learning involves learning past watching others. Albert Bandura, the father of Social Learning, contends that observational (vicarious) learning accounts for many aspects of human learning. The primary method for this vicarious learning is known as modeling, or the process of observing and imitating behaviors performed by others. Such observational learning stresses the importance of models in our lives. To imitate a model's behavior, we must (one) pay attention to what the model does; (2) call up what the model did; and (3) convert what we learned from the model into activity. The extent to which nosotros display behaviors that take been learned through ascertainment can exist affected by vicarious reinforcement and vicarious punishment. Reinforcement experienced by a person that affects the willingness of others to perform the behavior they learned by watching the person is called vicarious reinforcement, whereas punishment experienced past someone that affects the willingness of others to perform the behavior learned by watching the get-go person is chosen vicarious punishment. Social cognitive theory emphasizes that learning a behavior from observing others does not necessarily lead to performing that behavior. We are more likely to imitate behaviors nosotros accept seen rewarded.

In the 1960s, Bandura did a series of studies incorporating a Bobo doll in which he demonstrated that children who viewed aggression were more ambitious with the doll than those who did not see assailment. For Bandura'southward description of this experiment, click here.

Biological Constraints on Conditioning

In 1961, Breland and Breland, two of Skinner's students, conditioned 38 different species and more than than six,000 animals. They coined the term instinctive drift which means that an organism will revert back to inborn behavioral tendencies if it learns a new beliefs.

The biological constraint model of learning suggests that some behaviors found to be useful for survival are more likely to be learned than others.

Interaction of Nature and Nurture in Learning

Imprinting, imitation, synaptic modify, and brain growth through enrichment all illustrate the importance of coaction between nature and nurture. Imprinting is divers as the rapid and innate learning of the characteristics of the caregiver within a brusk time later nativity. Ethology is the scientific written report of this type of animal beliefs. Korand Lorenz is probably the best known researcher in this area through his piece of work with ducklings and goslings. For a video clip showing Lorenz with the goslings in his experiment, click here.

Through studies on imprinting, we encounter the importance of sensitivity periods of learning in which animals exposed to a detail stimulus or state of affairs will learn information technology very chop-chop. Once the animal has moved beyond that period, information technology becomes harder. These sensitivity periods illustrate that the heed is not a blank slate but is structured so that certain experiences are more easily learned at certain stages. This allows toddlers and young children to acquire language with a vocabulary of upwards to 10,000 words past the time they enter kindergarten. Perhaps this likewise illustrates why information technology is and so much easier for a small-scale child to learn a second language than an adult.

As we grow, the synaptic connections between neurons grow and alter every bit we acquire. So, non only does "practice make perfect", merely "if you don't use it, you will lose information technology."

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