The document discusses various theories of learning, including: - Non-associative learning (habituation, sensitization) vs. associative learning (classical and instrumental conditioning) - Classical conditioning experiments by Pavlov showing that a neutral stimulus can become associated with an unconditioned stimulus through repeated pairing - Instrumental or operant conditioning experiments by Skinner showing that behaviors are reinforced or weakened by their consequences - Cognitive learning involves understanding cause-and-effect relationships through mental strategies like mapping internal representations Learning theories provide frameworks for understanding how human and animal behavior is acquired and changed through experience.

1. Learning theories
BY-DR.ROBIN VICTOR
PGT
DEPT. OF PSYCHIATRY
SMCH
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2. PLAN OF PRESENTATION
 INTRODUCTION
 NONASSOCIATIVE LEARNING
 ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING
-CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
-INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING
 PREMARCK’S PRINCIPLE
 COGNITIVE LEARNING
 LEARNING & BRAIN-RELATIONSHIP
 APPLICATION OF LEARNING THEORIES
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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3. Introduction
 Learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a
result of experience.
 Learning plays a central role in development of human behavior including
voluntary and involuntary motor behaviour, thinking and emotions.
 The basis of psychological change by means of psychotherapy depends on
learning new and adaptive behavior.
 Two basic kinds of learning:
 non-associative learning
 associative learning.
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4. Non-associative learning
 Non-associative learning involves learning about a single stimulus.
 Includes:
 habituation
 sensitization.
 Habituation is a type of non-associative learning that is characterized by a
decreased behavioral response to an innocuous stimulus.
 Sensitization is a type of nonassociative learning whereby there is an increase in a
behavioral response to an intense stimulus. Sensitization typically occurs when
noxious or fearful stimuli are presented to an organism.
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5. Associative learning
 Associative learning is much more complicated as it involves learning
relationships among events.
 Includes
 classical conditioning- organism learns that one event follows another.
 instrumental conditioning- an organism learns that a response it makes will be
followed by a particular consequence.
 Classical and instrumental conditioning both involve forming associations – that
is, learning that certain events go together
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6. Classical conditioning
 Classical conditioning is a learning process in which a previously neutral stimulus
becomes associated with another stimulus through repeated pairing with that
stimulus.
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Ivan Pavlov with his
research assistants
and one
experimental
subject (the dog).

7. Pavlov’s experiments
 In Pavlov’s basic experiment, a tube is attached to the dog’s salivary gland so that
the flow of salivation can be measured.
 Then the dog is placed in front of a pan into which meat powder can be delivered
automatically. The dog is hungry and when meat powder is delivered, salivation is
registered.
 This salivation is an unconditioned response (UR): an unlearned response elicited
by the taste of the food.
 The food itself is termed the unconditioned stimulus (US): a stimulus that
automatically elicits a response without prior conditioning.
 The researcher can also turn on a light in a window in front of the dog. This event is
called a neutral stimulus (NS) because it does not cause salivation.
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8.  Next, the researcher will repeatedly pair the
presentation of the food with the light:first the light
is turned on, then some meat powder is delivered
and the light is turned off. This is called the
conditioning phase of the experiment.
 After a number of such paired presentations, the dog
will salivate in response to the light even if no meat
powder is delivered.
 This teaches us that the dog has learned that the two
events (food and light) are associated – the light has
become a conditioned stimulus (CS), causing a
conditioned response.
 In variations on this experiment, Pavlov used a tone
(or other stimuli) instead of a light, and found similar
results in each case.
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9. Theories of classical conditiong
Information and expectation theory
 This is a more recent and current theory.
 According to this theory CS becomes a signal for US, thus when the CS is presented the US
is expected and the learner responds in accordance with this expectation.
 The CS is the event consistently found in the memory on each trail before the US.
 An association or link is thus said to be formed between the memory trace of CS and US.
 Now when CS occurs US is expected.
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10.  Acquisition Theory
 Repeated pairings of the CS and the US strengthen the association between the two, as
illustrated by the increase in the magnitude of the CR (the salivation response).
 The largest change in the magnitude of the CR happens in the earliest conditioning trials,
and there is little change in the CR later on.
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This is the acquisition
stage of the experiment,
and the figure
represents the learning
curve.

11. Extinction
 If the US is subsequently omitted, the CR will gradually
diminish, ( as illustrated by figure).
 As after about ten trials or so there is no salivation in response
to the light, if it is not followed by food.
 Extinction represents learning that the CS no longer predicts
the US.
Spontaneous recovery
 When the experimenter allows the dog to rest for a certain
period, and then presents again only the light ie.CS, the
(extinguished) salivation response reappears.
 The recovered CR is weaker than it was after acquisition.
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12. Stimulus generalization
 Pavlov noticed that the dogs that had been trained to have a conditioned response to
a certain tone, would show the same response to a tone that was slightly higher or
lower in pitch. This is called response generalization.
 Stimulus generalization accounts in part for a human or animal’s ability to react to
novel stimuli that are similar to familiar ones.
Stimulus discrimination
 Stimulus discrimination is a reaction to differences ie. Learning to make one response
to one stimulus and different response to another.
 Conditioned discrimination is brought about through differential conditioning and
reinforcement.
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13. Second-order conditioning
 Once the light has taken on the role of a conditioned stimulus, it acquires the
power of an unconditioned stimulus.
 If the dog is now put in a situation in which it is exposed to a tone (CS2)
followed by the light (CS1), the tone alone will eventually elicit the
conditioned response – even though it was never paired with food.
 During this conditioning there must also be trials that reinforce the
association between the light and the food; otherwise, the originally
conditioned association will be extinguished.
 The existence of second-order conditioning greatly increases the scope of
classical conditioning.
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14. Conditioning and fear
 Classical conditioning also plays a role in emotional responses like fear.
 Humans can be conditioned to be fearful -Jacobs & Nadel, 1985; Watson & Rayner,
1920.
 Classical conditioning of fear seems to be at the root of several anxiety disorders,
such as post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder -Bouton, Mineka, &
Barlow, 2001.
 Conditioned stimulus leads to a conditioned response, precisely because it predicts
the occurrence of a certain unconditioned stimulus.
 Predictability is also important for emotional reactions.
 If a particular CS reliably predicts that pain is coming, the absence of that CS
predicts that pain is not coming so that the organism can relax.
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15.  Suppose that a rat in an enclosed compartment is periodically subjected to electric
shock.
 Just before the shock occurs, a tone sounds.
 After repeated pairings of the tone (the CS) and the shock (the US), the tone alone
will produce reactions in the rat that indicate fear, including freezing and
crouching. In addition, its blood pressure increases.
 The rat has been conditioned to be fearful when exposed to what was previously a
neutral stimulus
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16. Instrumental conditioning
 Involves learning the relationship between
responses and their outcomes.
 Also called ‘operant conditioning’.
 The behaviour of learner is instrumental in
producing a certain change in the
environment that makes the action more or
less likely to occur In future.
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B. F. Skinner was a
pioneer in the study
of instrumental
conditioning.

17. Skinner’s experiments
 In a Skinnerian experiment, a hungry animal –
usually a rat or a pigeon – is placed in a box like
which is called an operant chamber (also
referred to as a Skinner box).
 The inside of the box is bare except for a
protruding bar with a food dish beneath it.
 The rat moves about, exploring. Occasionally it
inspects the bar and presses it.
 The rate at which the rat first presses the bar is
the baseline level.
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18. Acquisition and extinction
 After establishing the baseline level, the experimenter activates a food magazine
located outside the box.
 Now, every time the rat presses the bar, a small food pellet is released into the dish.
 The rat eats the food pellet and soon presses the bar again.
 The food reinforces bar pressing, and the rate of pressing increases dramatically.
 If the food magazine is disconnected and pressing the bar no longer delivers food, the
rate of bar pressing diminishes.
 Instrumental conditioning increases the likelihood of a response by following the
behavior with a reinforce.
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19. Thorndike’s Experiment
 E. L. Thorndike was inspired by the writings of Charles Darwin.
 Thorndike concluded that animals, unlike humans, do not learn by
developing some insight rather, they learn through trial-and-error.
 In a typical experiment, a hungry cat is placed in a cage whose
door is held fast by a simple latch, and a piece of fish is placed just
outside the cage.
 Initially, the cat tries to reach the food by extending its paws
through the bars. When this fails, the cat moves about the cage,
engaging in a variety of behaviors.
 At some point it accidentally hits the latch, frees itself, and eats
the fish.
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20.  Over a number of trials, the cat eliminates many of its irrelevant behaviors, and
eventually it opens the latch and frees itself as soon as it is placed in the cage. The
cat has learned to open the latch to obtain food.
 It may sound as if the cat is acting intelligently, but Thorndike argued that there is
little ‘intelligence’ operating here.
 The cat’s performance improves gradually over a series of trials. The cat appears to
be engaging in trial-and-error learning, and when a reward immediately follows one
of those behaviors, the learning of the action is strengthened.
 Thorndike referred to this strengthening as the law of effect.
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21. Reinforcement
 It refers to the process whereby the delivery of an stimulus increases the
probability of a behavior.
 Types:
 positive reinforcement
 negative reinforcement.
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22. Punishment
 Punishment is an aversive stimulus that is presented specifically to weaken or
suppress an undesired response; punishment reduces the probability that a
response will recur.
 Types:
 positive punishment or simply ‘punishment’.
 negative punishment or ‘omission training’.
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23. Factors influencing effectiveness of
punishment
 Intense punishment -more effective
 Consistently administered punishment-Effective .
 Closer to behaviour in time and place-Effective.
 Adaptation to punishment-less effective.
 If coupled with a positive reinforcement simultaneously-more effective.
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24. Positive reinforcement and shaping
behaviour
 “Reinforcing only variations in response that deviate in the direction desired by the
experimenter.”
 Animals can be taught elaborate tricks and routines by means of shaping.
 It is a process to speed up operant conditioning .
 A chain of simple responses are taught that lead to the final response(also called
method of successive approximation).The steps leading to the final response are
reinforced.
 AUTOSHAPING:- It is the classical conditioning method of shaping animals in an
operant chamber.
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25.  Shaping has been used to train
pigeons to locate people lost at sea
and porpoises have been trained to
retrieve underwater equipment.
 But not all behaviors can be shaped.
 The phenomenon of animals
resorting to biologically natural
behaviors is called instinctive drift
25 Shaping methods are used to train the pigeons to
spot the color orange, the color for life jackets.
Three pigeons are strapped into a Plexiglas
chamber attached to the underside of a
helicopter.
The chamber is divided into thirds so that each
bird faces in a different direction.
When a pigeon spots an orange object, or any
other object, it pecks a key that buzzes the pilot.
The pilot then heads in the direction indicated by
the bird that responded.Pigeon is then rewarded
if person is saved.

26. SCHEDULE OF POSITIVE REINFORCER.
1.FIXED RATIO SCHEDULE
2.FIXED INTERVAL SCHEDULE
3.VARIABLE RATIO SCHEDULE
4. VARIABLE INTERVAL SCHEDULE
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28. Escape and avoidance behavior
 Organisms can learn to make a response to terminate an ongoing aversive
event (for example, we may leave a room if there is a painfully loud noise
there): this is called ESCAPE LEARNING.
 AVOIDANCE LEARNING; the organism learns to make a certain response
to prevent an aversive event from even starting (for example, avoiding a
certain room if it was associated with a loud noise in the past).
 To study escape and avoidance learning in animals, psychologists have
used a device called a shuttle box.
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 The shuttle box consists of two compartments
divided by a barrier.
 On each trial, the animal is placed in one of the
compartments. At some point a warning light is
flashed, and five seconds later the floor of that
compartment is electrified.
 To get away from the shock, the animal must jump
over the barrier into the other compartment. Initially,
the rat jumps over the barrier only when the shock
starts – this is escape learning
 With practice, it learns to jump upon seeing the
warning light, thereby avoiding the shock entirely –
this is avoidance learning

30.  FIRST STAGE involves classical conditioning.
 Through repeated pairings of the warning light (the CS) and the shock (the US), the
animal learns that the light predicts the shock, and exhibits a conditioned response of
fear (the CR) in response to the light alone.
 SECOND STAGE involves instrumental conditioning.
 The animal has learned that jumping over the barrier removes an aversive event,
namely the conditioned fear itself.
 Therefore, what first appears to be a nonevent is actually fear, and the avoidance
behavior is reinforced because it reduces this fear.
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31. Observational learning
 Learning things without immediately being reinforced for the behaviour.
 Copying the behavior of others, whose behaviour is observed to be successful.
 The researcher whose name is connected with the study of observational learning
is Albert Bandura
 For observational learning to occur:
(1) Pay attention to the model’s behavior and observe its consequences.
(2) Remember what was observed.
(3) Be able to reproduce the behaviour.
(4) Be motivated to do so.
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32.  Bandura’s early studies concerned the observational
learning of aggressive behavior in young children.
 one group of children was shown adult models
behaving aggressively towards a Bobo doll.
 Another group of children was exposed to adult
models behaving non-aggressively.
 The first group of children was shown to display
more aggressive behavior towards the Bobo doll
than the second group of children.
 Bandura later showed that the effects are very similar
if the children are exposed to aggressive behavior by
models presented in film sequences on a TV screen
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33. Premack's Principle
 A concept developed by David Premack.
 A behavior engaged in with high frequency can be used to reinforce a low-frequency
behaviour.
 In a therapeutic application of this principle, patients with schizophrenia were
observed to spend more time in a rehabilitation center sitting down doing nothing
than they did working at a simple task.
 When 5 minutes of sitting down was made contingent on a certain amount of work,
the work output was considerably increased, as was skill acquisition.
 This principle is also known as GRANDMA'S RULE (If you eat your spinach, you can
have dessert).
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34.  Positive contrast occurs when organisms experiencing small reward are suddenly
reinforced with larger reward.
 Negative contrast occurs when reward is cut down from higher to lower leading to
frustration and emotionality.

35. COGNITIVE LEARNING
 Understanding the connection between cause and effect, between action and the
consequences of the action.
 Cognitive strategies are mental plans that persons use to understand themselves
and the environment.
COGNITIVE PROCESS INVOLVES
1. The selection of information.
2 . Making alteration in the selected information.
3 . Association of items of information with each other.
4 . The elaboration of information in thought.
5 . Storage of information in memory .
6 . Retrieval of information in the memory
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36. TYPES OF COGNITIVE LEARNING
1. COGNITIVE MAPPING : It is an internal representation of the environment.
 Involves forming new associations and perceiving of new relationship among
events.
 Links are made between stimulus-stimulus.
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37. 2. LATENT LEARNING . It is the learning that occurs is not evident in behavior until later when
conditions for its appearance are favorable .
EXAMPLE-rats in an experimental group are given plenty of experience in the maze without
being reinforced for a particular response invoved.
After a time rats are thoroughly experienced in the maze.
 Control rats are put in a box unlike the maze
 Experimental rats make use of what they have learned when reinforcement for maze
learning starts.
 Experimental rats learned the maze faster with making few errors.
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38.  INSIGHT LEARNING
 Problem is posed which is followed by a period in which no progress is made, then the
solution comes suddenly.
 After solving the problem a good feeling occurs known as the ‘aha’ feeling.
 Major characteristics of insight learning:
1. Solution comes suddenly.
2. Involves perceptual rearrangement.
3. Solution can be generalized rather easily to other similar problems.
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39.  WOLFGANG KOHLER carried out a number of experiments on chimpanzees and summarized
them in his book “the mentality of apes”.
long stick
Short stick
 fruit
In addition to perceptual re arrangement of the environment there is often carry over or transfer
of things previously learned to the insight situations.
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40.  IMITATION LEARNING
It can be defined as a response that is like the stimulus triggering the response.
Occurs by imitating the behavior of other organism by watching and hearing and then
responding in the same way
EXAMPLE. 1. Children learn words partly through hearing the words spoken by their parents
and other children .
2 .Some birds can imitate human language .
3 .Some birds learn their calls by imitating older members .
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41. Learner and learning
 Application of laws of learning must take into account characteristics of both the
learner and the response being learned.
 A certain species animal may learn some things more rapidly than the others and
certain other responses are exceedingly difficult.
 Includes:
1. Prepared behavior.
2. Contraprepared behavior.
3. Unprepared behavior .
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42. PREPARED BEHAVIOR
 Due to evolutionary process certain species are ready or predisposed to learn some things
more readily than the others.
 EXAMPLES
1. Learned flavor aversion-if a tainted food makes a person sick then he devolpes aversion for
that food.
2. Language learning in humans
3. Phobias- fear of snakes, small animals, insects , heights common in all people showing that
we may be prepared to learn certain fears more readily.
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43. CONTRAPREAPARED BEHAVIOR
Learned with great difficulty or not at all learned.
UNPREPARED BEHAVIOR
Behavior that can be learned with moderate amount of difficulty.
 High preparedness of some behavior can result in contrapreparedness of others.
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44. LEARNING AND THE BRAIN
 Canadian researcher Donald Hebb contributed much to early theories about
learning and the brain.
 Learning is a process that involves changes in neural activity.
 Hebbian learning rule-Repetition of the same response leads to permanent
changes at the synapses between neuron.
Ideas regarding learning:
1. A change in the synapse is the neural basis of learning.
2. The effect of this change is to make the synapse more (or less) efficient.
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 Learning processes at the neural level, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize winner
ERIC KANDEL has chosen to work with an organism with a very simple nervous system: the
marine slug Aplysia californica.
Habituation in Aplysia californica. (a) Before
mechanical stimulation of the siphon, the gill is
extended.
(b) When water is squirted on the siphon for the
first time during habituation training, the gill
withdraws vigorously. A simple circuit involving
siphon sensory neurons (SN) that form excitatory
synaptic contacts onto motor neurons (MN)
mediates gill withdrawal.
(c) After the 10th siphon stimulus,
the magnitude of gill withdrawal is small. The gill
withdrawal response has habituated. Habituation is
mediated by a decrease in presynaptic
neurotransmitter release at the SN-MN synapse.

46. Cellular basis of learning
 SYNAPTIC PLASTICITY-changes in the morphology and/or physiology of synapses
involved in learning and memory
 Results due to:
 increase or decrease in the amount of neurotransmitter secreted by the sending
neuron, perhaps because of an increase or decrease in the number of axon terminals
that secrete the neurotransmitter.
 Change in the number of postsynaptic receptors.
 Synaptic plasticity is related to two mechanisms:
 Long term potentiation
 Long term depression
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47. LONG-TERM POTENTIATION
 Persistent strengthening of synapses based on recent patterns of activity. These are
patterns of synaptic activity that produce a long-lasting increase in signal
transmission between two neurons.
 LTP was discovered in the rabbit hippocampus by Terje Lømo in 1966.
 This long-term potentiation requires a special type of neurotransmitter receptor,
the NMDA receptor.
 NMDA receptor-two conditions must be satisfied for the receptor to open.
1. Presynaptic glutamate must bind to the NMDA receptor.
2. The postsynaptic membrane in which the receptor resides must be strongly
depolarized
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48.  Once opened, the NMDA receptor allows a very large
number of calcium ions to flow into the neuron.
 That influx of ions appears to cause a long-term change
in the membrane of the neuron, making it more
responsive to the initial signal when it recurs at a later
time
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Long-term Potentiation in the Hippocampus. (a) Before high-
frequency stimulation (HFS), pre-synaptic glutamate
release activates post-synaptic glutamate receptors to produce
an excitatory post-synaptic potential (EPSP).
(b) After high-frequency stimulation of the pre-synaptic neuron,
the post-synaptic EPSP is greatly increased in amplitude. This
increase is due to an enhancement of pre-synaptic
neurotransmitter release and an increase in the number of post-
synaptic glutamate receptors. Long-term potentiation is
indicated by the persistent increase in EPSP amplitude.

49. LONG-TERM DEPRESSION
 It is an activity-dependent reduction in the efficacy of neuronal synapses lasting hours
or longer following a long patterned stimulus.
 LTD occurs in many areas of the CNS with varying mechanisms depending upon brain
region and developmental progress.
 Best characterized in the hippocampus and cerebellum.
 The most common neurotransmitter involved in LTD is L-glutamate which acts on the
NMDA receptors.
 It serves to selectively weaken specific synapses in order to make constructive use of
synaptic strengthening caused by LTP.
 This is necessary because, if allowed to continue increasing in strength, synapses would
ultimately reach a ceiling level of efficiency, which would inhibit the encoding of new
information
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50. APPLICATION OF LEARNING THEORIES
APPLICATION OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
1.SYSTEMATIC DESENSITIZATION : Is a procedure in which relaxation and pleasant
feelings are learned as conditioned response to stimuli that once act a fear producer
It is helpful in people with phobia, like distress in public speaking; fear about spiders or
cockroaches.
 2.FLOODING :A fear producing stimulus presented by itself over and over again . Such
direct presentation of a high strength conditioned stimulus either in reality or in
imagination is called flooding .
eg.A persons having fear of high altitudes is made to view scenes of high altitudes in
still photos or in the movies repeatedly.
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51.  3. AVERSION THERAPY : Here an unpleasant stimulus is
conditioned with undesired behavior .
eg in chronic alcoholics a drug may be given which
produces severe vomiting; feeling of suffocation and
terror before each drink .
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52. APPLICATION OF INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REINFORCER
 In business this principle can be used to increase employee productivity and company
profit .
 Shaping the behaviour of children by contingently reinforcing socially adaptive
behaviour and by extinguishing maladaptive .
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53.  EXTINCTION: Takes place when the reinforcement for
a particular response is withdrawn
Omission training helpful in students for appropriate
behavior in the classroom.
 DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT : After doing
Functional analysis of the behaviour , the positive
and negative reinforcers are identified and decision
made which behaviour to encourage and which to be
extinguished.
It helps in autistic children.
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54.  TOKEN ECONOMY
In token economy people earn objects (tokens) which
they can exchange for desirable items services .
Token are made contingent on appropriate behaviour.
It have been used in institutions ,classrooms ,
sheltered workshops and in other settings where
people are encouraged to behave in more appropriate
ways.
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55.  COVERT SENSITIZATION
 In this technique the unwanted behaviour is imagined together with its
imaginary punishing consequence .
 Eg an alcoholic is trained to imagine drinking and its consequences such as
being fired .
 It is also useful in treating obesity , smoking , excessive gambling and compulsive
behaviour .
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56. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1 . INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY,
MORGAN & KING.7TH EDITION
2 . INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
HILGARD ATKINSON,15TH EDITION
3 .SYNOPSIS OF PSYCHIATRY 10TH EDITION
KAPLAN & SADOCKS
4 COMPREHENSIVE TEXT BOOK OF PSYCHIATRY,
KAPLAN & SADOCKS 9TH EDITION
5 INTERNET SOURCES
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