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Unit 4 Overview: Learning
Unit 4 Overview: Learning
Unit 4 Overview: Learning
“Introduction”
● "Some psychologists focus their study on how humans and other animals learn 📚 and
how some experiences can lead to changes in behavior and mental processes. Because
the process of learning requires both physiological and psychological processes to work
together 🧠
○ Observable behaviors and how those behaviors can be changed or reinforced
an environmental stimulus
or taking away something that changes the chance of the behaviors happening
again
“Psychologists to Know”
● Albert Bandura
■ Children watched a film of an adult beating on a bobo doll. Later on, when
put into a room that contains various toys including the bobo doll, children
were more likely to model or imitate the aggressive behaviors they earlier
observed, compared to a control group of children who did not view the
film
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Unit 4: Learning
● Ivan Pavlov
● Robert Rescorla
○ Law of effect
● Edward Tolman
○ Latent learning
● John B Watson
■ Stimulus generalization
● John Garcia
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Unit 4: Learning
■ Internal body processes are more readily conditioned to stimuli that are
stimuli
○ Garcia Effect
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Unit 4: Learning
and leads to the environment reacting in a certain way (provide a consequence, either
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Unit 4: Learning
“Classical Conditioning”
● The environment presenting a stimulus that makes the organism respond in a certain
way
● The Stimulus
■ Examples:
● Breathing / respiration
● Salivation
● Startle Response
● Shivering
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Unit 4: Learning
own environments
learning
response
and unlearned
response
“Conditioning Processes”
● During the acquisition stage, a neutral stimulus (NS), which does not produce a
noticeable response, acquires the ability to affect the same response as the
unconditioned response
○ After numerous pairings of the neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus, the
response
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Unit 4: Learning
● Stimulus generalization (generalization): when stimuli that are similar to the conditioned
● Stimulus discrimination: fails to produce a conditioned response to stimuli that are similar
to the conditioned stimulus, and only produces the conditioned response to actual
conditioned stimulus
pairing
conditioning
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Unit 4: Learning
💨
Key Term Definition Example and Emoji
Representation (pretend
represents a whistle)
Neutral Stimulus Stimulus that elicits no response In the Pavlov's dog example, the
(NS) (before any conditioning happens) whistle is the NS. If it is blown
💨 😑
before conditioning, the dog does
nothing. →
Unconditioned Stimulus that implicitly triggers a The US is the dog's food. When
Stimulus (US) response. (before any conditioning the dog sees food, it already has a
🦴 🤤
happens) reaction and becomes hungry.
→
🦴 🤤
automatically salivates because it's
hungry. →
💨
isn't a natural reaction, so you to associate the whistle with food
🦴 🤤
must classically condition the dog and salivate when hearing it. +
to react like that. →
Conditioned The NS turns into the CS. The CS The whistle is now the CS since
Stimulus (CS) is what one would learn to the dog began to associate food
💨 🤤
respond to. (after conditioning with the sound of a whistle.
occurs) →
💨 🤤
with food, salivating when he
hears it. →
Acquisition When the NS and US are linked Before, the whistle triggered no
together so that the NS triggers response. However, during
the CR. Through acquisition, the conditioning, food and the whistle
🦴 💨
NS becomes the CS. were linked and now the whistle
🤤
causes salivation. → which
→
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Unit 4: Learning
Extinction When the CS no longer causes Overtime, the dog will learn that
the CR to happen. there is no food that comes with
the sound of the whistle and it
stops salivating when a whistle is
💨 😑
blown. This is called extinction.
→
Spontaneous When the CS suddenly begins to When the dog starts to salivate at
Recovery trigger the CR. (randomly after the sound of the whistle after a
💨 🤤
extinction) long time of not doing that.
Randomly . . . →
💨 🤤
isn't conditioned to salivate to the
🔔 🤤
sound of the bell. → and
→
Discrimination When the CR only occurs to a The dog doesn't salivate at the
specific CS. sound of every whistle—it only
🔊💨 🤤
salivates to the sound of a
particular whistle. →
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Unit 4: Learning
● E.L. Thordlike
○ Law of Effect: behaviors that had a favorable outcome were strengthened, while
● B.F. Skinner
○ Described different types of consequences that can occur and the ways in which
they might be presented that could affect the presentation of the behavior
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Unit 4: Learning
Positive Reinforcement Add or increase a Behavior is You get a cookie for an “A.” 🍪
pleasant stimulus strengthened
● Insight learning “a-ha moment”: when one suddenly realizes the solution to a problem
○ Some organisms are capable of discovering the solution to the problem without
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Unit 4: Learning
○ Rats did not show any noticeable improvement in maze in the absence of
○ Rats knew the solution to the maze but did not express behaviorally ⇒ they had
a cognitive map
● Not all types of stimuli will necessarily be conditioned with all types of responses
stimulus, causes the conditioning, then the intended stimulus that was
“Reinforcement Schedules”
● Variable: reinforcement is not predictable and is not known when the next reinforcement
will occur
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Unit 4: Learning
Schedule
Fixed Ratio Rewarded after a specific number of You get paid $100 bucks after
Variable Ratio Rewarded after an average but Put money in a slot machine. It
Fixed Interval Rewarded after a set amount of time has People who earn a monthly
elapsed 📅 salary
Variable Interval Rewarded after an average but Person checks email messages
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Unit 4: Learning
“Modeling”
○ Albert Bandura → children who observed an adult being aggressive with toy were
■ Retention:: must be able to recall the action that was observed in order to
imitate
behavior
● Mirror neurons
○ Mirror neurons in the frontal lobe that some researchers believe are responsible
for observational learning → the brain fires the same way as the person we are
mirroring/watching
● Prosocial Behavior
● Antisocial Modeling
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Unit 4: Learning
“Behavior Modification”
○ Punishments
○ Positive punishments
○ Negative punishments
○ Reinforcement
○ Positive reinforcement
○ Negative reinforcement
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