Lecture Outline #9--Learning

I. What is Learning?

A. Hilgard and Bower definition: "Learning [is] the 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 [by] native response tendencies, maturation, or temporary states of the subject (e.g., fatigue, drugs, etc.)"

B. Examples of animal behavior that may look like intelligent/learned behaviors, but are not

-- Tick, frog, bird

A. Description of Pavlov's experiment

B. Definitions of UCS, UCR, CS, CR

C. Phases of classical conditioning: acquisition, extinction, pause, spontaneous recovery

D. Behavior is determined by the precedes it (the pairing of the UCS with CS)

E. Behavior is an involuntary response to the stimulus

A. Comparison/contrast between classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning
1. Same phases

2. Skinner: in instrumental (operant) conditioning, organism is much less at the mercy of the external situation because it controls the reward through its internal behaviors

3. Behavior is determined by what follows it (e.g., reward)

B. Shaping
1. Build up complex behaviors by rewarding successive approximations

2. Example of pigeon--pressing lever

3. Animal learning--can train up complex behaviors (e.g., Priscilla, the Fastidious Pig)

C. Schedules of reinforcement
1. Fixed-ratio (FR)

2. Variable-ratio (VR)

D. Superstitious behavior in pigeons (and in people)

A. Watson--any association can be learned vs. Garcia--some associations are much easier to learn (food aversion in rats)

B. Does punishment work? Freedman (1965)--the forbidden toy experiment

C. The hidden costs of reward--overjustification effect (e.g., Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973)