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LEARNING:. Learning pervades our lives it is involved not only in mastering a new skill or academic subject but also in emotional development, social interaction and even personality development. We learn what to fear, what to love, how to be polite, how to intimate, and so on.
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LEARNING: • Learning pervades our lives it is involved not only in mastering a new skill or academic subject but also in emotional development, social interaction and even personality development.
We learn what to fear, what to love, how to be polite, how to intimate, and so on. • For example, children learn to perceive the world around them, to identify with their own sex, and to control their behavior according to adult standards . • To start, let’s consider some basic principal of learning and conditioning .
Learning may be define as a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as the result of experience. • There are two basic kinds of learning: NON-ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING and ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING
NON ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING: • Non associative learning involves learning about a stimulus, and it include HABITUATION and SENSITIZATION.
HABITUATION is a type of non associative learning that is characterized by a decreased behavioral response to an innocuous stimulus. • For example, the sound of horn might startle you when you first hear it. But if the horn toots repeatedly in a short time, the amount that you startle to each sound progressively decreases.
In contrast, SENSITIZATIONis a type of non associative where by 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 . For example, the acoustic startle response to a horn is greatly enhanced if you enter a dark alley right before the loud sound.
Both habituation and sensitization are relatively short-lived , lasting for minutes to hours . • However, providing many spaced presentations of stimuli can yield longer-lasting learning.
ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING: • Associative learning is much more complicated learning, because it involves learning relation ship among events. It includes: • CLASSIC CONDITIONING, • INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING, • And COMPLEX LEARNING among others.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING • Also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning is a process of behavior modification in which an inborn response to a potent biological stimulus becomes expressed in response to a previously neutral stimulus. • This is achieved by repeated pairings of the neutral stimulus and the potent biological stimulus that elicits the desired response. • The study of classical conditioning began in the early years of the 20th century, when Ivan Pavlov , a Russian physiologist who had already won Nobel Prize for research on digestion, turned his attention to learning.
While studying digestion, Pavlov noticed that a dog began to salivate at the mere sight of the food dish. Although any dog will salivate when food is placed in its mouth, this dog had learned to associate the sight of the dish with the taste of the food. • Pavlov worked on a case of associate learning, in which relationship between event are learned , he also decided to see whether a dog could be taught to associate food with other thing, such as light or a tone.
He designed an apparatus that could measure the amount of salvia being produced in a dog’s mouth in response to food (unconditioned response). • Pavlov noted that no salvia flowed when he rang a bell. He then trained the dog b y sounding the bell and then shortly afterwards presenting food. • After the sound of bell had been “paired” with food a few times, he tested the effects of training by measuring the amount of saliva. When he rang the bell but did not present the food.
He discovered that some saliva was produced in response to the sound of the bell (conditioned stimulus) alone. • This is conditioned response. • Similarly, people in many parts of the world have learnt to associates the golden letter M of McDonald’s with tasty fast food and developed a conditioned response (of salivation or the smell of the ‘Big Mac’, to the mere sight of the large golden arches.)
Extinction is the process by which conditioned response decreases if the condition stimulus is never again paired with the unconditioned stimulus (if only the bell is rung but not food is presented, the salivation in response to the ringing of the bell will stop- (Extinction has occurred).
CONCEPT REVIEW TABLEStimuli and responses in classical conditioning: Stimulus/ response. Description. • Unconditioned stimulus(UCS). Unconditioned response(UCR). Conditioned stimulus(CS) Conditioned response(CR) • A stimulus that automatically elicits a response, typically via a reflex, without prior conditioning. • This response originally given to the unconditioned stimulus, used as the basis for establishing a conditioned response to a previously neutral stimulus. • A previously neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response through association with an unconditioned stimulus. • The learned or acquired response to a stimulus that did not evoke the response originally (i.e., a conditioned stimulus)
INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING • In classical conditioning, the CR often (but not always) resembles the normal response to the UCS, salivation. For example, is a dog`s normal response to food. • But when you want to teach an organism something novel- such as teaching a dog new trick-you cannot use classical condition.
What UCS would make a dog sit up or rollover? To train the dog, you must first persuade it to do the trick (or an approximately of the trick) and then reward the animal with either approval or food. • If you keep doing this , eventually the dog will learn the trick(in fact, the dog learns that the trick predicts food or approval). • Much real-life learning occurs by this means, which is referred to as operant or instrumental conditioning.
In instrumental conditioning, certain responses are learned because they operate on, or affect, the environment . • An organism does not just react to stimuli, as in classical conditioning, but also behaves in ways designed to produce certain changes in its environment .
OPERANT • This is also known as operant conditioning and was established by work of BF skinner. • Classical conditioning involves innate or instinctual reflexes , operant conditioning explains the learning of voluntary behaviour, such as motor action.
The famous ‘Skinner Box’ demonstrated operant conditioning by placing a rat in a box in which the pressing of a small bar produces food . Skinner showed that the rat eventually learns to press the bar regularly to obtain food. This experiment shows that : • A behaviour will occur more frequently if given positive reinforcements an will decrease in frequency by punishment.
ACQUISTING OF FEAR AND ANXIETY ABOUT HOSPITALS: • Children, as well as many adults have a great dislike of doctors and hospitals. Children, in particular, are known to cry and scream at the sight of the doctor’s white coat and at the smell of the antiseptic, after they have received injections or intravenous dips in the hospital settings.
It is quite likely that they associates (pair)those neutral stimuli such as white coats with nasty, painful events(injection, drips). It is for this reason that many pediatric doctors these days do not wear the traditional uniform associated with the medical profession so that the “paired” response may not take place. • After a few visits to such a doctor the classic conditioning, that occurred between the white coat and injections , will undergo ‘extinction’. The child will discover that the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus are not “paired” anymore.
Chemotherapy For Treating Cancer: • Similarly, chemotherapy for treating cancer is a highly unpleased experience for patients. It usually involves a series of weekly injection of powerful cytotoxic drugs that have marked side effects. • The patient’s hair falls out, they feel nausea and sick, and are unable to eat. It is common observation that conditioned anticipatory nausea and vomiting occurs in these patients simply at the sight of the medical staff and smell of the hospital settings.
Recently attempts to use the principles of classical conditioning have been tried to help children overcome specific dislikes of foods which have been induced by cancer chemotherapy. • Frequently children have been found to associate feelings of being sick with the last food they ate before their treatment and so were refusing it afterwards.
Intervention took the form of giving the children a strong tasting sweet after their last meal but before the chemotherapy. The investigator found that those children given the sweet ate more of proper nutritionally good food after wards than did children given no such intervention.
TREATMENT OF PHOBIAS: • A phobia is defined as an intense, irrational fear of an object , animal, or a situation, leading to its avoidance in future . • It is perfectly reasonable to feel intense fear at the sight of an angry, poisonous snake.
On the contrary it is not reasonable to feel intense fear of elevators , spiders, heights, thunder etc. • A form of therapy known as Systematic Desensitization which is based on classical conditioning can be beneficial in treating patients whose lives have become dysfunctional and miserable because of their phobia.
The method involves firstly getting the patient to relax fully, through the use of specific relaxation techniques. • After that the patient is asked to picture(imagine ) an image only remotely associated with the feared object, or situation. • In the case of someone frightened of dogs, for example, the patient will imagine a simple outline drawing of the dog.
When ever the patient feels any sign of anxiety, he is asked to signal it by raising a little finger. • When that happens, he is instructed again to fully relax . • Eventually, the images he calls of in imagination become closer to the real phobic stimulus and continue into real life so that finally he is able to maintain a relaxed state of mind firstly in imagination and later in the presence of a dog in a real life.
The principal involved is to associate a calm, relaxed stage of mind with some once instilled terror, and irrational fear.
Shaping and modeling are also theories of learning derived from the above principles. Shaping involves rewarding closer and closer approximations of the wanted behavior until the correct behavior is achieved. • For example, A child learning to write, starts with writing on a paper with straight lines and is rewarding with the ‘stars’ for doing so. He then learns to write in straight line on a plain paper, or a medical student who starts to learn stitching of wounds, makes mistakes and then attains perfection by ‘shaping’
Modeling is a type of observational learning (e.g. a student talks, dresses and behaves in a manner similar to that of an inspiring teacher. • A female gets a hair cut to look the same as her favorite actress. • A medical student decides to be a surgeon , after doing a rotation with an excellent surgical specialist.
COMPLEX LEARNING : • According to the cognitive perspective, the crux of learning-and of intelligence in general-lies in an organism’s ability to mentally represent aspects of the world and then operate on these mental representations rather than the world itself.
In many cases, corresponding to classical and instrumental conditioning, what is mentally represented is an association between stimuli or events. • In other cases, what is represented seems more complex. It might be a map of one’s environment or an abstract concept like the notion of cause. Also, the operations performed on mental representations are sometimes more complex than associative processes.
The operations may take the form of a mental trial and error , in which the organism tries out different possibilities in its mind • Or the operation may be strategy in which we take some mental steps only because they make possible subsequent steps.
The idea of a strategy in particular seems to odds with the assumption that complex learning is built out of simple association. • Some of these phenomena involve animals, and other involve human performing task that are similar to conditioning.
Uses Of Learning Theory Against Bad Habits • How can we use learning principles to discontinue bad habits? The following techniques derived from the above mentioned principals of learning theory could offer some helpful possibilities:
Try to discover what is reinforcing a bad habit, and remove , avoid or delay the reinforcement. • Avoid or narrow down cues that elicit the bad habit. • Make an incompatible response in the presence of stimuli that usually precede the bad habit. • Use negative practice to associate a bad habit with discomfort. • Utilization feedbacks is one of the best approaches to changing bad habit.
