1. Learning in Psychology
By
Dr. Soheir H. ElGhonemy
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry- Ain Shams University
MD in Psychiatry and Addiction
Arab Board in Psychiatry
Member of International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM
2. Learning
It is the process by which past experience and practice
result in relatively permanent change in behavior.
Learning is a process that depends on experience and
leads to long-term changes in behavior potential.
Learning is a relatively permanent change in an
organism’s behavior that results from experience
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3. Behaviorist; learning is the modification of behaviour
brought about by experience.
Cognitive psychologists; learning is the study of how
information is sensed, stored, elaborated and retrieved.
Others would stress the importance of meta-cognition
(learning to learn), or reflection on experience as well as
experience per se.
Humanistic psychologists; are more likely to insist that
personal growth and development are at the heart of
learning.
Constructivists; argue that learning is primarily
concerned with how people develop different conceptions
and constructions of reality.
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4. Learning as an increase in knowledge.
Learning is memorizing.
Learning is acquiring facts or procedures
that are to be used.
Learning is making sense.
Learning is understanding reality;
“Personally meaningful learning”
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6. Types of Learning
I. Classical Conditioning:
Classical Conditioning can be defined as a type of learning in which
a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a reflexive response that
was originally evoked by a different stimulus.
Ivan Pavlov - Russian physiologist interested in behavior (research
on digestion).
Pavlov was studying salivation in dogs - he was measuring the
amount of salivation produced by the salivary glands of dogs by
presenting them meat powder through a food dispenser.
Stimulus-Response; S-R Bonds
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7. a) Unconditioned Stimulus (US) - a stimulus that evokes an
unconditioned response without any prior conditioning (no
learning needed for the response to occur).
b) Unconditioned Response (UR) - an unlearned
reaction/response to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs
without prior conditioning.
c) Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - a previously neutral stimulus that
has, through conditioning, acquired the capacity to evoke a
conditioned response.
d) Conditioned Response (CR) - a learned reaction to a
conditioned stimulus that occurs because of prior conditioning.
*These are reflexive behaviors. Not a result from engaging in goal
directed behavior.
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8. Basic Principles:
I- Acquisition:
There are several different ways conditioning can occur -- order that the stimulus-
response can occur:
1. delayed conditioning (forward) - the CS is presented before the US and it (CS)
stays on until the US is presented. This is generally the best, especially when the
delay is short.
example - a bell begins to ring and continues to ring until food is presented.
2. trace conditioning - discrete event is presented, then the US occurs. Shorter
the interval the better, this approach is not very effective.
example - a bell begins ringing and ends just before the food is presented.
3. simultaneous conditioning - CS and US presented together. Not very good.
example - the bell begins to ring at the same time the food is presented. Both
begin, continue, and end at the same time.
4. backward conditioning - US occurs before CS.
example - the food is presented, then the bell rings. This is not really effective.
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9. II-Extinction :
This is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the
CR tendency. Extinction occurs from multiple presentations of CS
without the US.
Essentially, the organism continues to be presented with the
conditioned stimulus but without the unconditioned stimulus the
CS loses its power to evoke the CR.
For example, Pavlov's dogs stopped salivating when the dispenser
sound kept occurring without the meat powder following.
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10. III- Spontaneous Recovery:
Sometimes there will be a reappearance of a response
that had been extinguished. The recovery can occur
after a period of non-exposure to the CS. It is called
spontaneous because the response seems to reappear
out of nowhere.
IV- Stimulus Generalization:
A response to a specific stimulus becomes associated
to other stimuli (similar stimuli) and now occurs to those
other similar stimuli.
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11. John Watson conditioned a baby (Albert) to be afraid of a white
rabbit by showing Albert the rabbit and then slamming two metal
pipes together behind Albert's head (nice!). The pipes produced a
very loud, sudden noise that frightened Albert and made him cry.
Watson did this several times (multiple trials) until Albert was
afraid of the rabbit. Previously he would pet the rabbit and play
with it. After conditioning, the sight of the rabbit made Albert
scream -- then what Watson found was that Albert began to show
similar terrified behaviors to Watson's face (just looking at
Watson's face made Albert cry.). What Watson realized was that
Albert was responding to the white beard Watson had at the time.
So, the fear evoked by the white, furry, rabbit, had generalized to
other white, furry things, like Watson's beard.
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12. V- Stimulus Discrimination :
Learning to respond to one stimulus and not another.
Thus, an organisms becomes conditioned to respond to
a specific stimulus and not to other stimuli.
e.g.: a puppy may initially respond to lots of different
people, but over time it learns to respond to only one or
a few people's commands.
VI- Higher Order Conditioning:
A CS can be used to produce a response from another
neutral stimulus (can evoke CS). There are a couple of
different orders or levels.
light -- US (food)--> UR (salivation) light -- US (food) -> CR (salivation)
tone -- light--> CR (salivation) tone -- light --> CR (salivation )
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13. Classical Conditioning in Everyday Life
*Optimism and pessimism.
*Advertising; modern advertising strategies evolved from
John Watson's use of conditioning. The approach is to
link an attractive US with a CS (the product being sold)
so the consumer will feel positively toward the product
just like they do with the US.
*Conditioned Fear & Anxiety - many phobias that people
experience are the results of conditioning
Partly classical and partly operant conditioning; pairing a
dog (CS) with bite pain (UCS)= sense of fear (UCR)
repeated the site of dog= sense of fear (CR)
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14. II- Operant Conditioning:
A type of learning in which voluntary (controllable; non-
reflexive) behavior is strengthened if it is reinforced and
weakened if it is punished (or not reinforced).
Skinnerian conditioning= Instrumental
Conditioning/Learning
Compared to Classical Conditioning, Operant
Conditioning attempts to predict non-reflexive, more
complex behaviors, and the conditions in which they
will occur. In addition, it deals with behaviors that are
performed so that the organism can obtain
reinforcement.
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15. The organism has a lot of control. Just because a
stimulus is presented, does not necessarily mean that
an organism is going to react in any specific way.
Instead, reinforcement is dependent on the
organism's behavior.
*Skinner Box - a chamber in which Skinner placed
animals; rats and pigeons to study. It contains either a
lever or key that can be pressed in order to receive
reinforcements such as food and water.
*The Skinner Box created Free Operant Procedure.
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16. Shaping - operant conditioning method for creating an
entirely new behavior by using rewards to guide an
organism toward a desired behavior (called
Successive Approximations). In doing so, the
organism is rewarded with each small advancement in
the right direction. Once one appropriate behavior is
made and rewarded, the organism is not reinforced
again until they make a further advancement, then
another and another until the organism is only
rewarded once the entire behavior is performed.
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17. Principles of Reinforcement
Skinner identified two types of reinforcing events - those in which a
reward is given; and those in which something bad is removed. In
either case, the point of reinforcement is to increase the frequency or
probability of a response occurring again.
1) Positive reinforcement - give an organism a pleasant stimulus
when the operant response is made. a rat presses the lever (operant
response) and it receives a treat (positive reinforcement)
2) Negative reinforcement - take away an unpleasant stimulus when
the operant response is made. stop shocking a rat when it presses the
lever .
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18. Two types of reinforcers:
1) Primary reinforcer - stimulus that naturally strengthens any
response that precedes it (e.g., food, water) without the need for
any learning on the part of the organism. These reinforcers are
naturally reinforcing.
2) Secondary/conditioned reinforcer - a previously neutral
stimulus that acquires the ability to strengthen responses because
the stimulus has been paired with a primary reinforcer. Like
Classical Conditioning, with the exception that the behavior is
voluntary and occurs before the presentation of a reinforcer.
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19. Two types of reinforcement schedules either continuous, and
partial/intermittent.
Punishment - Whereas reinforcement increases the probability of a
response occurring again, the premise of punishment is to decrease
the frequency or probability of a response occurring again.
Skinner did not believe that punishment was as powerful a form of
control as reinforcement, even though it is the so commonly used.
Thus, it is not truly the opposite of reinforcement like he originally
thought, and the effects are normally short-lived.
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20. There are two types of punishment:
1) Positive - presentation of an aversive stimulus to
decrease the probability of an operant response occurring
again. e.g.; a child reaches for a cookie before
dinner, and you slap his hand.
2) Negative - the removal of a pleasant stimulus to
decrease the probability of an operant response occurring
again. e.g.; each time a child says a curse word, you
remove one pound from his money.
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21. Token Economy
It is a type of behavioral therapy based on operant conditioning in
which token are used as reinforcers.
Targeting the behavior of different organism by the use of different
proper reinforcement for every subject.
Uses:
1. Chronic schizophrenia.
2. MR for teaching social skills.
3. Children with conduct disturbances.
4. To change any unwanted behavior.
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