Transcript Learning - Blue Valley Schools

• Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant,
who had 8 kids already, three who were
deaf, two who were blind, one mentally
retarded, and she had syphilis, would you
recommend that she have an abortion?
It is time to elect a new world leader, and
only your vote counts.
Candidate A
Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two
Mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
Candidate B
He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and
drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.
Candidate C
He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional
beer and never cheated on his wife.
Question #2: Which of these candidates would be your choice?
• Candidate A: FDR
 Candidate C:
Adolf Hitler
• Candidate B:
Winston Churchill
Question #1
• If you said yes, you just killed Beethoven.
Makes a person think before
judging someone.
What is Learning
• The cessation of thumb sucking by an infant.
• A worm is placed in a T maze. The left arm of the maze is brightly lit
and dry; the right arm is dim and moist. On the first 10 trials, the
worm turn right 7 times. On the next 10 trials, the worm turns right
all 10 times.
• A lanky zinnia plant is pinched back and begins to grow denser
foliage and flowers.
• Josh stays up late the night before the October GRE test and gets
wasted. His combined score (verbal + quantitative) is 410. The
night before the December GRE he goes to bed early and drinks a
glass of milk. His scores changes to 1210. Is the change in scores
due to learning? Is the change in pretest regimen due to learning?
• After 30 years of smoking 2 packs a day, Mackenzie throws away
her cigarettes and never smokes again.
Expanding what learning means:
• Learning refers to the relatively
permanent change in a subject’s
behavior to a given situation brought
about by his (or her) repeated experiences
in that situation, provided that the behavior
change cannot be explained on the basis
of native response tendencies, maturation,
or temporary states of the subject (e.g.,
fatigue, drugs, etc.).
How Does Learning Occur?
• Fundamental topic in psychology
– How do we learn that people who look small from a distance are far
away and not simply tiny?
– How do babies learn to distinguish their mothers from other people?
– Why do some people learn to be afraid when they see a spider?
• A relatively permanent change in behavior
that results from experience.
– Adaptive – allows organisms to adapt their
behavior to the demands of the environment.
Stimulus-Stimulus Learning
Learning to associate one stimulus
with another.
lemmesleep.wmv
Response-Consequence Learning
Learning to associate a response
with a consequence.
Response-Consequence Learning
Learning to associate a response
with a consequence.
Classical Conditioning
Sovfoto
Ideas of classical conditioning originate from old
philosophical theories. However, it was the
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov who elucidated
classical conditioning. His work provided a basis
for later behaviorists like John Watson and B. F.
Skinner.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Classical or Pavlovian
Conditioning
• Ivan Pavlov
– 1849-1936
– Russian physician/ neurophysiologist
– Nobel Prize in 1904
– studied digestive secretions
Pavlov's Discovery of Classical
Conditioning: Introduction
• Ivan Pavlov was a pioneer of research on learning. His early research
focused on digestive processes in dogs, but upon discovering that the
dogs began to salivate in response to stimuli associated with
receiving food, he shifted his research to a study of the mechanisms
by which seemingly arbitrary stimuli become associated with
biological reflexes.
• The learning exhibited by Pavlov's dogs is a type of associative
learning called classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning.
• Pavlov was the first person to apply scientific method to the study of
learning by association.
A reenactment shows Ivan Pavlov's experiments on the salivation reflex
in dogs. Pavlov found that dogs can be conditioned to salivate in response
to a signal associated with the arrival of food, then to the signal alone.
Pavlov's Discovery of Classical
Conditioning: Questions
1.
What did Pavlov mean by a "conditioned reflex"?
2. Distinguish between a stimulus and a response; between an
unconditioned and conditioned stimulus.
3. In the experiments shown here, identify the unconditioned
stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and
conditioned response.
4. Discuss some examples of classical conditioning in humans.
Pavlov’s Classic Experiment
Before Conditioning
UCS (food
in mouth)
UCR
(salivation)
During Conditioning
Neutral
stimulus
(tone)
No
salivation
After Conditioning
UCS (food
in mouth)
Neutral
stimulus
(tone)
UCR
(salivation)
CS
(tone)
CR (salivation)
Classical or Pavlovian
Conditioning
• Pavlov’s device
for recording
salivation
Classical or Pavlovian
Conditioning
• Classical Conditioning
– organism comes to associate two stimuli
• lightning and thunder
• tone and food
– begins with a reflex
– a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus
that evokes the reflex
– neutral stimulus eventually comes to evoke
the reflex
Classical or Pavlovian
Conditioning
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)
– effective stimulus that unconditionallyautomatically and naturally- triggers a
response
• Unconditioned Response (UCR)
– unlearned, naturally occurring automatic
response to the unconditioned stimulus
• salivation when food is in the mouth
Classical or Pavlovian
Conditioning
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
– previously neutral stimulus that, after
association with an unconditioned stimulus,
comes to trigger a conditioned response
• Conditioned Response (CR)
– learned response to a previously neutral
conditioned stimulus
Acquisition
Acquisition is the initial stage in classical
conditioning in which an association between a
neutral stimulus and an unconditioned
stimulus takes place.
1. In most cases, for conditioning to occur, the
neutral stimulus needs to come before the
unconditioned stimulus.
2. The time in between the two stimuli should
be about half a second.
Conditioning
• Extinction
– diminishing of a CR
– in classical conditioning, when a UCS
does not follow a CS
– in operant conditioning, when a
response is no longer reinforced
• Spontaneous Recovery
– reappearance, after a rest period, of an
extinguished CR
Acquisition
The CS needs to come half a second before the US
for acquisition to occur.
Stimulus Generalization
Tendency to respond to
stimuli similar to the CS is
called generalization. Pavlov
conditioned the dog’s
salivation (CR) by using
miniature vibrators (CS) on
the thigh. When he
subsequently stimulated
other parts of the dog’s
body, salivation dropped.
Stimulus Discrimination
Discrimination is the learned ability to distinguish
between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that
do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.
Condition a Dog
• http://www.uwm.edu/~johnchay/cc.htm
Watson’s Little Albert: Introduction
• John B. Watson was one of the first psychologists to argue that
human behavior is a collection of conditioned responses. He
described human learning terms in Pavlovian terms.
• Watson demonstrated that fear can be conditioned in infants. He
found that a loud sound is a potent unconditioned stimuli for fear in
infants. In this clip, he successfully conditions an 11-month-old
baby named Albert to fear laboratory rats by making a loud sound
when Albert was paying attention to the rat.
• Albert is first shown playing happily with the rat, then he is exposed
to 6 stimulations with a loud sound. After Albert is conditioned to
fear the rat, he exhibits generalization by crying at the sight of other
furry creatures including a rabbit.
a. This original footage from Watson’s laboratory (1920) shows 11month-old Albert being conditioned to fear laboratory rats.
b. The pairing of a rat with a very loud noise gave little Albert a
conditioned fear (the CR) of rats (the CS).
c. Even the pairing of similar furry things like rabbits with a very loud
noise gave little Albert a conditioned fear (generalization).
Import video number 7c here.
Instructions for importing these
files can be found in the 'Readme' on this CD-ROM.
Watson’s Little Albert: Questions
•
In Watson’s experiment, what was the UCS? The UCR? The CS?
The CR?
2.
Would it be ethically permissible to repeat Watson’s experiment
today?
3.
How have your emotions been classically conditioned?
Extending Pavlov’s Understanding
Pavlov and Watson considered consciousness,
or mind, unfit for the scientific study of
psychology. However, they underestimated
the importance of cognitive processes and
biological constraints.
Cognitive Processes
Early behaviorists believed that learned
behaviors of various animals could be reduced
to mindless mechanisms.
However, later behaviorists suggested that
animals learn the predictability of a stimulus,
meaning they learn expectancy or awareness of a
stimulus (Rescorla, 1988).
Biological Predispositions
Pavlov and Watson believed that laws of
learning were similar for all animals.
Therefore, a pigeon and a person do not differ
in their learning.
However, behaviorists later suggested that
learning is constrained by an animal’s biology.
Biological Predispositions
Courtesy of John Garcia
Garcia showed that the duration
between the CS and the US may be
long (hours), but yet result in
conditioning. A biologically adaptive
CS (taste) led to conditioning and not
to others (light or sound).
John Garcia
Biological Predispositions
Even humans can develop classically to
conditioned nausea.
Pavlov’s Legacy
Pavlov’s greatest contribution
to psychology is isolating
elementary behaviors from
more complex ones through
objective scientific
procedures.
Ivan Pavlov
(1849-1936)
Applications of Classical
Conditioning
Brown Brothers
Watson used classical
conditioning procedures to
develop advertising
campaigns for a number of
organizations, including
Maxwell House, making the
“coffee break” an American
custom.
John B. Watson
Applications of Classical
Conditioning
1. Alcoholics may be conditioned (aversively)
by reversing their positive-associations with
alcohol.
2. Through classical conditioning, a drug (plus
its taste) that affects the immune response
may cause the taste of the drug to invoke the
immune response.
• To ensure Jackson & Kaden make good
decisions as teenagers regarding drugs
and alcohol I will classically condition them
to stay away from them. I will sit them
down (when Sara is gone ) and force
them to drink and drink and drink; to the
point where they throw up and throw up
and throw up. We will drink until they have
been conditioned to stay away from alcohol
and say “NO!” to their friends when offered
it later in life. Describe the process in
Pavlov's terms, identifying the UCS, UCR,
CS, and CR.
UCS, UCR, CS, CR?
• UCS – beer, liquor
and smokes
• UCR – puking all over
• CS – the opportunity
to drink & smoke later
on in life or smell of
liquor
• CR – Feeling
nauseas
• Powerful advertising agencies make use
of psychological research on learning
and routinely employ psychologists in
their research division because they
want to devise advertisements that sell
products. Explain in Pavlov's terms how
attitudes toward certain products (for
example, beer) are created through
advertising campaigns (for example,
bikini-clad women), identifying the UCS,
UCR, CS, and CR.
• UCS – sex (beautiful
women)
• UCR -- mildly aroused
feeling
• CS – product (Coors Light)
• CR – by pairing the CS
with the UCS consumers
will experience a mildly
aroused feeling
Critical Thinking – Work in small
groups to come up with answers
• Most pets become classically conditioned
to a variety of stimuli associated with their
feeding. If you have a pet now, see if you
can identify examples of its conditioned
responding to food and other Pavlovian
stimuli. Be specific in using the
terminology of conditioning (conditioned
stimuli, unconditioned and conditioned
responses, et cetera).
EVERYDAY CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
• If you have pets and you feed them with
canned food, what happens when you hit
the can opener? Sure, the animals come
running even if you are opening a can of
green beans. They have associated the
sound of the opener with their food.
EVERYDAY CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
• Classical conditioning works with people,
too. Go to K-Mart and watch what
happens when the blue light turns on. Cost
conscious shoppers will make a beeline to
that table because they associate a good
sale with the blue light. (And, the research
proves that people are more likely to buy
the sale item under the blue light even if
the item isn't a good value.)
EVERYDAY CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
• And classical conditioning works with
advertising. For example, many beer ads
prominently feature attractive young women
wearing bikinis. The young women
(Unconditioned Stimulus) naturally elicit a
favorable, mildly aroused feeling (Unconditioned
Response) in most men. The beer is simply
associated with this effect. The same thing
applies with the jingles and music that
accompany many advertisements.
EVERYDAY CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
• Perhaps the strongest application of
classical conditioning involves emotion.
Common experience and careful research
both confirm that human emotion
conditions very rapidly and easily.
Particularly when the emotion is intensely
felt or negative in direction, it will condition
quickly.