The Learning Perspective Flashcards
The learning perspective – Introduction
Fundamental notions:
❖ Personality consists of all tendencies shaped/learned over all your life experiences
❖ Underlying processes drive learning
❖ Debated if one process manifested in different ways or several distinct processes
❖ Learning process/s follow their own set of rules
❖ Early learning theorists focused on the process of conditioning
Q. What do we mean by learning?
❖ Learning is gaining more knowledge (understanding)
❖ Learning is memorising and reproducing (item information)
❖ Learning is acquiring and applying procedures (gaining skills)
❖ Learning is making sense or meaning (developing schemas)
❖ Learning is personal change (emotional development)
Assumptions of human behavioural model 1
❖ Primary determinants of behaviour lie in situational conditions ❖ Humans are hedonistic. ❖ All behaviour learned by building up of associations.
Assumptions of human behavioural model 2
❖ Behaviour changes as result of experience
❖ Process is lawful & predictable
❖ Complex behaviour understood in terms of:
• building up & joining together of simple associative
bonds (stimulus-response)
❖ Brain like a switchboard
• incoming stimuli connected with outgoing responses
Learning approaches to personality: Part 1
❖ Behaviourism - dominated academic psychology in U.S. for almost 50 years (1920 - mid-1960’s).
❖ Behaviourism attempts to understand people from the outside by looking at observable behaviour
❖ Principles of learning assumed universal
Learning approaches to personality: Part 2
❖ Considered basic building blocks of behaviour. ❖ Personality is viewed as: • an accumulated set of learned tendencies • as a discipline to be a branch of the general field of learning
Research uses experimental approach
❖ Aim of experimental approach is to determine
which aspects of environment cause or maintain
our behaviour
❖ Two major theories of learning applied in the study
of personality
• Classical / Pavlovian conditioning
• Operant / Instrumental conditioning
Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning
❖ Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) ❖ Russian physiologist ❖ Study of digestive system of dogs led him to develop method for studying behaviour & a principle of learning ❖ Profound influence on psychology ❖ Won Nobel Prize in 1904 in field of digestive physiology
Pavlov’s dogs
❖ Studying gastric secretions of dogs ❖ Pavlov noticed dogs began to salivate moment he entered room ❖ This effect only occurred once dogs learned Pavlov’s appearance signalled food ❖ He called this a psychic reflex, or a conditioned reflex since it was conditional on past experience.
Classical conditioning - summary
A previously neutral stimulus elicits a response because of it’s proximity with stimulus that automatically produces a similar response.
❖ A neutral stimulus such as a sound tone will not lead to response such as salivation
❖ If on a number of trials a tone is sounded just before food is presented the sound of tone itself can elicit a salivation response.
• tone = conditioned stimulus (CS)
• salivation = conditioned response (CR)
Emotional conditioning
❖ Situations of classical conditioning in which a
conditioned response (CR) is an emotional reaction
= emotional conditioning
❖ Gives rise to
• likes & dislikes,
• preferences & biases
❖ Associations of neutral stimuli with events that
reflexively cause good or bad feelings
❖ A particular perfume can:
• trigger feelings of wellbeing, lovely memories, visual
images of the person one was with
Where do people’s attitudes come from?: Part 1
❖ Events which arouse emotions common in everyday life provide opportunities for conditioning to occur:
• e.g. you hear a political slogan while enjoying a tasty lunch in pleasant
company – your attitude to that slogan may rate more positively
• pair words with mild electric shocks & after a few pairings words are disliked
Where do people’s attitudes come from?: Part 2
❖ In terms of 2nd order conditioning:
• words such as “good” & “bad” are paired often by parents, teachers etc. with children’s behaviour & its
• the consequences become associated with positive & negative experiences of events
Principles of classical conditioning
Two processes in classical conditioning that occur
across:
• different species
• different kinds of CS & US
• different kinds of responses
❖ Acquisition
• learning of a response based on proximity between a CS and US
• depending on response to be learned, acquisition takes 3 to 15 pairings
❖ Extinction
• loss of CS’s power to produce formerly acquired response.
• brought about by presenting CS (bell) but no longer following it with US (food).
There are two important phenomena relating to properties of conditioned stimulus (CS)
❖ Stimulus generalisation - tendency of response that has become conditioned to one stimulus to be elicited by similar stimuli
• e.g. tone of a certain pitch paired with shock eliciting fear - will tones of a
lower & higher pitch also elicit fear response?
❖ Stimulus Discrimination - what are limits of generalisation?
• In above e.g.- if subject discriminates between lower & higher tones and
original tone, former tones may not elicit (conditioned) response of fear.
❖ Recognising differences among stimuli = discrimination
Instrumental (operant)conditioning: Part 1
❖ Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949)
❖ pioneer in development of instrumental conditioning
❖ was engaged in study of animal intelligence in the USA
❖ worked with cats:
❖ designed various boxes:
• some with levers to push,
• others with string to pull
• shelves to jump off that allowed hungry animal
inside to escape & receive food
Instrumental (operant)conditioning: Part 2
Process whereby behavior followed by a “positive
state of affairs”:
❖ is more likely to be done again in a similar
situation (and vice versa)
❖ Links an action, an outcome, & likelihood of
future action
❖ Recognizes contingency between response & its
consequences
❖ “Law of effect” as described by Thorndike
B.F. Skinner- Law of effect defined: Part 1
❖ A “positive state of affairs” that increases (strengthens) the likelihood of a response = reinforcer ❖ Always implies moving state of affairs in a positive direction
B.F. Skinner- Law of effect defined: Part 2
Moving in a positive direction is propelled in 2 ways:
❖ Positive reinforcer: receipt of a something positive:
• (e.g. food, gifts, money).
• behaviour that preceded receipt of something good
becomes more likely
❖ Negative reinforcer: Removal of a something negative:
• moves state of affairs in positive direction – from
unpleasant to neutral.
• causes behaviour preceding removal of something
unpleasant to become more likely to occur.
Other reinforcers and punishment
❖Primary reinforcer:
• diminishes biological needs (e.g. hunger)
❖Secondary reinforcer:
• associated (through classical conditioning) with primary reinforcer
❖Punishment:
• Negative or aversive outcome that decreases the tendency of behavior that preceded it
Not the same as negative reinforcement
Punishment = Receipt of something negative (decreases behaviour)
Negative reinforcer = Removal of something negative (increases behaviour)
Central issues in instrumental conditioning 1
- Discriminative stimulus:
❖ a stimulus that is present when a behaviour is followed by a reinforcer
• stimulus acts as a switch to turn behavior on & off (cue
function)
• important in personality because provides mechanism for behavioral complexity
Examples:
smile or frown on mother’s face - yes or no
clock moves to 5pm & everyone rush to leave workplace
Central issues in instrumental conditioning 2
- Generalisation:
• responding in a similar way to classes of similar
discriminative stimuli
– give continuity to behavior
– provides a basis for explaining traits
e.g. lecture theatre - sit on seats, take out notepads. - Extinction:
• gradual weakening of response from lack of reinforcer
Shaping behaviour
❖Successive approximation:
• gradual reinforcement of behaviors that sequentially approximate desired behavior
❖Schedules of reinforcement:
• Continuous —behaviour always followed by reinforcement
• Partial —behaviour followed by reinforcement intermittent
>. Ratio: reinforcement after a particular number of occurrences of behaviour - (number of times can be fixed or random)
>. Interval: reinforcement based on passage of time and occurrence of behaviour - (interval can be fixed or variable)
Reinforcement & rates of behaviour: Part 1
• Fixed Ratio
• high rate of responding with pause immediately after reinforcement
Example: Payment by piecework
• Variable Ratio
• higher rate of responding with no pause after reinforcement
Example: Gambling
