Introduction to Approaches in Psychology Learning & Conditioning

1. Introduction to Approaches in PsychologyLearning & Conditioning Keith Clements

2. Aims • To introduce students to the key features of operant and classical conditioning. • To consider what is learnt during each type of conditioning. • To consider the relevance of conditioning to human behaviour.

3. Habituation • The simplest form of learning is habituation. • The response to a repeated stimulus will decline across repetitions. • We know this is learning, rather than fatigue for example, because the response will reoccur if the stimulus is changed. • Habituation is a form of non-associative learning, it involves only one stimulus. • We will be concentrating on associative learning, involving two stimuli (one is associated with the other).

4. Behaviourism Founded by John Watson in 1913 • Psychology as the study of behaviour • Learning as the centerpiece of Psychology • Focused on the relationship between behaviour and stimuli and events in the environment.

5. The legacy of behaviourism Common Misconceptions: • Learning is of little relevance to human behaviour • Learning results in Stimulus-Response links What actually happens: • Individuals learn about the association between two events. • If A happens then B will follow To study this in non-human species the association needs to lead to a change in behaviour.

6. Bell Neutral Stimulus No response Salivation Unconditioned Response Food Unconditioned Stimulus Reflex Classical conditioning Involves stimuli which produce reflexive responses

7. Salivation Bell Food Bell Conditioned Stimulus Salivation Conditioned Response Classical Conditioning 2 During conditioning (Acquisition) Test for conditioning

8. Operant Conditioning Involves stimuli which have motivational significance. The consequences which follow behaviours influence the likelihood of their being repeated

9. Operant Conditioning

10. Evidence against S-R explanationsSensory preconditioning Rescorla & Durlach (1981) 1 Rats drank water flavoured with saccharin & Quinine 2 They drank saccharin water and were made ill This produced a learned taste aversion, rats avoid drinking saccharin water. They also avoided quinnine-flavoured water

11. Evidence against S-R explanationsReinforcer devaluation Colwill & Rescorla (1985) Rats learned • To press a lever to obtain food • To pull a chain to obtain sugar water One group was made ill after eating the food pellets. When both responses were available this group made fewer presses but continued to pull the chain Illness after drinking sugar water had the opposite effect.

12. Revision questions 1 1) Your flatmate refuses to do the washing-up. Armed with the knowledge that they hate pop music but love classical music, how would you change their behaviour using the following? • Positive reinforcement • Negative reinforcement

13. Human learning Several recent studies apply procedures from the study of learning in animals to human learning about contingencies. These principles apply to situations where learning occurs as a result of experience of the relevant contingencies. Human behaviour often obeys the same rules as that of other species. Human behaviour can also be influenced by other processes, including verbal rules. Such rule-governed behaviour may be insensitive to its consequences.

14. Shanks et al (1989) Animal learning is sensitive to the delay between stimuli. Pavlov found little evidence of learning with more than a few seconds delay between CS & US. Operant reinforcers should be administered soon after the reinforced behaviour. Subjects could press a key which was followed 75% of the time by a stimulus. The delay between press and stimulus was 0, 2, 4 or 8 seconds. Subjects judged how likely the stimulus was to follow the key press. With delays of 4 seconds subject's judgements did not differ from control groups, for whom the stimulus was independent of the key press

15. Practical applications Classical conditioning and emotional responses. Phobias may be viewed as learned fear responses. Such learning may be particularly common in relation to biologically significant stimuli. Seligman (1972) suggests that such stimuli may be evolutionarily prepared to take part in fear conditioning. • Positive responses may also be conditioned. Stimuli associated with food or drugs may acquire conditioned responses which encourage consumption. • Exposure-based therapies (such as systematic desensitization) aim to extinguish such maladaptive conditioned responses.

16. Practical applications 2 Behaviour Modification Uses operant principles to modify human behaviour. Includes • Shaping • Conditioned Reinforcers

17. References Essential Reading Chapter 7 in Carlson, Martin & Buskist (2004) covers learning, applications are covered in more detail on pages 747-749. Further reading. Those who want to go into the topic in more depth could look at the following Schwartz, B & Robbins, S.J. (1995). Psychology of learning and behaviour. London : Norton.

18. Revision questions 2 A child is startled and falls off his chair while watching pigeons through a window. He subsequently becomes distressed when birds fly near him. A psychologist sees the child for a number of sessions. In each, a caged bird is gradually moved nearer to the child, until the child begins to feel uncomfortable. After several sessions the child can watch the bird flying out of it’s cage without fear. Describe the acquisition of the child’s fear in terms of classical conditioning, identifying the different stimuli and responses.