PSY 300 Week 3 “Psychology of Learning”
- October 26th, 2009
- By Kelly
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Three theories of learning
1. The first is that experience shapes behavior…
2. Second, learning is adaptive…the environment naturally selects those behaviors in an individual that are adaptive and weeds out those that are not (Skinner, 1977).
3. Behaviors useful to the organism (such as avoiding fights with larger members of its species) will be reproduced because of their consequences (safety from bodily harm). A third assumption is that careful experimentation can uncover laws of learning, many of which apply to human and nonhuman animals alike.” (Author: Robin M. Kowalski, Drew Westen copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)
Pavlov’s dog experiments
Associationism in philosophy refers to the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one state with its successor states. The idea is first recorded in Plato and Aristotle, especially with regard to the succession of memories. Members of the principally British “Associationist School”, including John Locke, David Hume, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill, asserted that the principle applied to all or most mental processes. Later members of the school developed very specific principles specifying how associations worked and even a physiological mechanism bearing no resemblance to modern neurophysiology.
Habituation is the psychological process in humans and animals in which there is a decrease in psychological response and behavioral response to a stimulus after repeated exposure to that stimulus over a duration of time.
Classical conditioning (also Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov.[1] The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance. The neutral stimulus could be any event that does not result in an overt behavioral response from the organism under investigation. Pavlov referred to this as a conditioned stimulus (CS). Conversely, presentation of the significant stimulus necessarily evokes an innate, often reflexive, response. Pavlov called these the unconditioned stimulus (US) and unconditioned response (UR), respectively. If the CS and the US are repeatedly paired, eventually the two stimuli become associated and the organism begins to produce a behavioral response to the CS. Pavlov called this the conditioned response (CR).
Stimulus generalization is another learning phenomenon that can be illustrated by CTA. This phenomenon demonstrates that we tend to develop aversions even to types of food that resemble the foods which cause us illness. For example, if one eats an orange and gets sick, one might also avoid eating tangerines and clementines because they look similar to oranges, and might lead one to think that they are also dangerous.
Operant conditioning is the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior. Operant conditioning is distinguished from classical conditioning (also called respondent conditioning, or Pavlovian conditioning) in that operant conditioning deals with the modification of “voluntary behavior” or operant behavior. Operant behavior “operates” on the environment and is maintained by its consequences, while classical conditioning deals with the conditioning of respondent behaviors which are elicited by antecedent conditions. Behaviors conditioned via a classical conditioning procedure are not maintained by consequences.[1]
In operant conditioning, reinforcement occurs when an event following a response causes an increase in the probability of that response occurring in the future. Response strength can be assessed by measures such as the frequency with which the response is made (for example, a pigeon may peck a key more times in the session), or the speed with which it is made (for example, a rat may run a maze faster). The environment change contingent upon the response is called a reinforcer.
Punishment is the practice of imposing something unpleasant or aversive on a person or animal, usually in response to disobedience, defiance, or behavior deemed morally wrong by individual, governmental, or religious principles.