Limits of learning Flashcards
LIMITS OF LEARNING
Every individual is limited in what behaviours it can perform
based on the physiology its species.
Learned behavior is not passed on to future generations.
Individual differences in learning
Heredity plays a role in learning ability- but is controversial:
* genes contribute to differences within & between
species; but
* environment also plays a role (e.g. enriched early
learning environments)
Critical periods of learning
Stages of development for optimal learning:
* imprinting in birds,
* maternal behavior in primates)
Do they occur in humans?
* first 12 years may be critical for learning language
Neurological damage on limits of learning
- Prenatal exposure to alcohol & other drugs can interfere
with neurological development - Exposure to neurotoxins (substances that damage nerve
tissues) in infancy/early childhood are a threat to
learning ability:
– lead in old paint & drinking water
– Pesticides, herbicides, solvents, medications,
recreational drugs, some foods & food supplements - Head injury (blows to head, shaking child, car accidents,
sports injury) - Malnutrition during fetal development/early childhood
CHANGING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR: CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT
Behaviour modification refers to all types of behavioural treatment. Contingency management refers to
behavioural therapy or procedures based on principles of operant conditioning that use reinforcement (to
increase frequency of appropriate behaviours) and nonreinforcement (to reduce inappropriate behaviours)
to alter operant behaviour.
3 phases of treatment:
Assessment
Contracting
Implementation
Assessment phase
This phase involves determining baseline levels of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour:
* determine situations in which these behaviours occur
* identify potential reinforcers of appropriate operant/instrumental response
* identify reinforcers that are maintaining inappropriate responses
Direct observation is used to establish baseline levels of target behaviours
Contracting phase
This phase involves defining the exact relationship between the target or operant/instrumental
response and reinforcement, i.e., work out when and how reinforcement will be delivered:
* decide on schedule of reinforcement to be used
* decide who will provide the reinforcer (e.g., nurse, teacher, parent)
* train person who provides reinforcement how to identify and reinforce appropriate
behaviour.
Self-reinforcement can be used if a person wants to change his/her own behaviour, for example, to
modify ‘undesirable’ behaviours
Implementation phase
The third stage involves providing reinforcement contingent upon:
* performance of the appropriate responses OR
* absence of the inappropriate response
Then it is important to determine if the desired change in behaviour occurred during treatment and
continued after treatment
Negative reinforcement
The response is strengthened, because it is followed by removal of an aversive/unpleasant
stimulus.
Negative reinforcement may lead to escape or avoidance learning— a lot of people tend to avoid
awkward or unpleasant situations or difficult problems.
Escape learning
learn/acquire a response that decreases or ends aversive stimulation (e.g., dogs
learn to escape shock by jumping to another compartment in a shuttle box). Escape learning often
leads to avoidance learning.
Avoidance learning
learn/acquire a response that prevents aversive stimulation (e.g., if a light
goes on before shock, a rat will run to another compartment as soon as the light comes on, to avoid
shock.
Mowrer’s Two-Process Theory of Avoidance
This theory integrates principles of classical and operant conditioning.
According to the Two-Process Theory, if you have a phobia of lifts, you acquired the phobia
through classical conditioning:
* in the past— lifts became paired with a frightening stimulus event
* now— if you need to get into a lift, you experience conditioned fear.
If the phobia is severe enough, you take the stairs instead. Taking the stairs is an avoidance
response— this leads to consistent negative reinforcement, by relieving your conditioned fear.
Avoidance is maintained by operant conditioning.
Why are phobias resistant to extinction
- a phobia usually leads to avoidance of the feared object/situation (earns negative
reinforcement for every avoidance response) - avoidance behaviour stops any chance of facing the conditioned stimulus, and thus
extinguishing the phobic conditioned response
‘Positive’ punishment
presentation of an aversive stimulus
‘negative’ punishment
removal of a pleasant stimulus
Side effects of punishment:
- it can suppress other behaviours— not just the one being punished, e.g., children can become
withdrawn, inhibited or less active - it can trigger strong emotional responses— fear, anger, resentment; temporarily disrupts
normal functioning; generates hostility towards the source of punishment (e.g., parent) - physical punishment can lead to increased aggressive behaviour
More effective discipline
if you reinforce desirable behaviour rather than punish undesirable behaviour.
primary punishers (innate)
cold, heat, hunger, thirst, loud noises, environmental stimuli that cause pain, nausea and illness (e.g., pain produced by spanking a child)
secondary punishers (learned or acquired)
through conditioning, neutral stimuli can acquire
secondary punishing properties by association with primary aversive stimuli (e.g., social
disapproval, nasty glances, ridicule, being told off).
3 factors influence effectiveness of punishment:
- severity of punishment— must be severe to produce complete suppression of punished
behaviour - consistency of punishment— must be consistent, i.e., every time inappropriate behaviour
occurs it must be punishment - delay of punishment— punishment must be immediate
INSTINCTIVE DRIFT AND ANIMAL ‘MISBEHAVIOUR’
In the 1960s, Breland and Breland used operant conditioning procedures to train 38 species of animals
(& over 6000 animals) to perform various behaviours for commercial or entertainment purposes. They discovered a number of ‘failures’ to control behaviour, despite repeated food reinforcements due to:
Instinctive drift - occurs when an animal’s innate response tendencies interfere with
conditioning processes.
CONDITIONED TASTE AVERSION
Aversions to food can develop, if eating a particular type of food is followed by nausea (brought about
by food poisoning, illness, or alcohol intoxication). John
Garcia and his colleagues, in a series of rat studies, discovered that taste aversion could only be conditioned: “through the pairing of taste stimuli
and stimuli inducing nausea”
SELIGMAN’S ‘SAUCE BEARNAISE SYNDROME’
Martin Seligman and his wife went out one night, and he ate a steak with Bearnaise Sauce:
* 6 hours later he developed a bad stomach flu and severe nausea
* after that the smell of bearnaise sauce made him feel like vomiting
Seligman realised his taste aversion could have developed by classical conditioning:
* the neutral stimulus (sauce) had been paired with an unconditioned stimulus (the flu), which
caused an unconditioned response (nausea);
* the sauce became a conditioned stimulus eliciting nausea
How Seligman’s Bearnaise Syndrome violated some basic principles of conditioning
- there was a long delay of 6 hours between the sauce (CS) and the flu (UCS) BUT the delay
should be very short, <30 secs, for conditioning to occur - there was only one pairing BUT it usually takes many pairings
- only the sauce became a CS, NOT any other stimuli in the restaurant (plates, knives,
tablecloths, wife)
PREPAREDNESS AND PHOBIAS
Martin Seligman suggests that ‘preparedness’ is a biologically programmed phenomenon. That is, evolution has resulted in instinctive drift, conditioned taste aversion and even a predisposition to
develop phobias towards certain things such as spiders, snakes, heights, and darkness.
“Preparedness involves a species-specific predisposition to be conditioned in certain ways and not others”
Ecological learning theory
Also incorporates principles of learning, but it takes the ecological niche and
lifestyle of the organism into account. It recognises that an organism’s: “behavior cannot be described in isolation from its environment and the biological function served by the learning”
Traditional learning theory
Focuses on basic laws of learning that are fundamental to all species, and
has typically ignored the biological issues:
- What is the function of learning?
- How is it linked to survival?
- How did learning processes evolve, and did they evolve separately in different species?
BEHAVIOR SYSTEMS APPROACH
William Timberlake (from Indiana University) developed a behavior systems approach that integrates
innate and learned behaviour and takes the environment and adaptive functions into account. He suggests that learning evolved as a modifier of behaviour systems that already exist
SCHEDULE-INDUCED OR ADJUNCTIVE BEHAVIOURS IN ANIMALS
A variety of excessive (aberrant or ‘abnormal’) behaviours have been found to occur during fixed interval schedules. Typically, they occur just after reinforcement (during the
post-reinforcement pause)
SCHEDULE-INDUCED OR ADJUNCTIVE BEHAVIOURS IN HUMANS
Excessive levels of ‘instinctive’ appetitive behaviours (eating, drinking) occur in humans. In our societies, reinforcement often occurs on fixed-interval schedules, e.g., eat at certain times, get paid on
certain days, relax on specific days, etc. Interval schedules may contribute to excessive drinking or alcoholism.
APPLICATION OF LEARNING THEORY
UNDERSTANDING HOW PROBLEMS ARISE
People get too close to wildlife &
feed animals:
Habituation- animals lose fear of humans
Operant Conditioning- animals
associate people with food
USE OF DISRUPTIVE OR AVERSIVE STIMULI
- animals become habituated to aversive
stimuli - stimuli may be discriminative stimuli for
reinforcement - e.g. if siren goes off when predator
enters farmyard, then other predators
know where food is
HeroRATs
Principles of learning have been applied to help save human lives in countries like Mozambique and Cambodia. For over 20 years, the APOPO scent detection African pouched rats, nicknamed ‘HeroRATs’, have been ‘sniffing-out’ landmines and tuberculosis. The rats are trained using operant conditioning techniques, and knowledge about the behavioural ecology of the species means that the welfare of the rats is not compromised.
THEORY OF MIND
The ability to attribute mental
states to others, such as
knowledge, intentions and
beliefs.
Sharing or concealing
information from others
requires an animal to
understand that it is:
* Separate from other
individuals (self-awareness)
* Content of its mind is
different from others
ANIMAL COGNITION
PROFESSOR FRANS DE WAAL:
We tend to think animals live in the present, that they
don’t have a future and don’t have a past. But we know
that’s not true. They can use tools to fix something for the
future.
EXAMPLE:
In a Swiss zoo, orangutans had a skylight in their cage and
dismantled the whole thing.
* they spent summer nights on the roof of their building
* in the morning before the caretakers came back, they
went back in the cage and put the skylight precisely
back together. So no one ever noticed.
CLASSIC TEST OF SELF-AWARENESS
The mark and mirror test:
* Place a mark on the animal’s
face or body;
* give them access to a mirror;
* code behaviour of animal in
response to image in the mirror
Developed by:
* Gordon Gallop (1970), an
animal behaviourist, &
* Beulah Amsterdam (1972), a
clinical child psychologist
DOLPHIN COGNITION
Cognitive tests for dolphins include: cooperative tasks
& the mirror recognition test
ALARM CALLS IN VERVET MONKEYS
(Seyfarth, Cheney & Marler, 1980)
Vervet monkeys make alarm calls in presence of predators to warn other monkeys nearby.
Researchers recorded alarm calls, & observed reactions of monkeys when particular calls were replayed from hidden speakers (Playback experiments).
Primitive form of language:
* infants vocalised calls imperfectly,
but improved with age & experience
* Separate calls- (1) look up for
predatory eagles;
(2) look around on
ground for pythons;
(3) take to trees
to escape leopards
PROBLEM SOLVING IN CROWS: META TOOL USE
Dr Alex Taylor (Lecturer in Evolutionary Psychology,
University of Auckland, New Zealand) set a crow, named
007, an 8-step puzzle task to solve for a food reward
CAPUCHIN MONKEYS & ‘FAIRNESS’ (RECIPROCITY) TEST
Sarah F. Brosnan & Frans B. M. de Waal (2002) designed the
‘fairness’ or reciprocity test, for 2 capuchin monkeys to perform. 1 monkey gets a reward of cucumber, the other monkey gets a grape, which results in the first monkey getting ‘upset’. May also be upset when the other gets a worse reward and wait until they get a better reward.
Comparative cognition
The study of information processing across species, which includes humans and non-human animals.
