12 - Learning

Question 1

Terminology

Answer 1

1. Stimulus: an event that happens to you (e.g. sight, sound, smell, taste)
   - Could be internal – pain, itch, cold
2. Response: something you do
   - Voluntary – under your control
   - Involuntary – e.g. breathing

Question 2

What is learning? How can you see it?

Answer 2

• It’s the process of acquiring new knowledge
• But how do you know? ASK? – can’t do this in animals or small children
• What if you’re unaware of what you know? or can’t express it?
• Persistent change in behaviour (responses) as a result of experience

Question 3

Not all behaviour is learned

Answer 3

• Some is innate – hard-wired, evolved
• Adaptive for species to deal with fixed features of environment
• Response to stimuli never seen before cant result from experience (can’t be learned):
  A) Greylag goose – will try and lie on different objects to hatch them (continues with behaviour even if egg is removed and sometimes choose volleyball over egg)
  B) Sticklebacks – will attach fake fish if they have a red belly (responds most to stimulus that looks least like a fish)

Question 4

Herring hulls experiment

Answer 4

• Tinbergen’s aim was to examine whether presence, colour and position of red patch were important to induce chicks to peck
• They presented chicks with models with a red, black, blue or white patch, and a model with no patch and one with a red patch on the forehead
• The model with a black patch received most pecks, followed, in decreasing order, by a model with a red, blue, white or no patch, with fewest pecks towards the model with the patch on its forehead
• The preference for black surprised Tinbergen, as he expected that the red patch would receive most pecks, even though they had never experienced that in the wild
• He concluded that the chicks responded primarily to a contrasting spot on the beak
• Innate stimulus that is hard wired to peck something that is contrasted to the colour of the beak (sign stimulus)

Question 5

Hard-wired S-R links

Answer 5

• Sign stimulus – elicits the response; experiments needed to find out what it is e.g. red underbelly of fish
• Fixed action pattern: stereotyped response triggered by sign stimulus; e.g. attacking fish
• Stimulus hard-wired to elicit response
• Mental link established through evolution

Question 6

Supernormal stimuli

Answer 6

• Supernormal stimulus: stimuli more effective than naturally occurring sign stimuli; the snooker ball, model fish

Question 7

What happens in the mind? Mental representations

Answer 7

• Mental state accompanying experience of stimulus
• Mental state accompanying performance of response
• Unlearned association meaning experiencing stimulus can automatically trigger response
• Linking of mental representation and response

Question 8

Unlearned behaviour can look stupid

Answer 8

• Certain aspects of environment constant for some species
• Preprograming appropriate responses to these cues increases survival and so selected for
• Is unlearned behaviour enough?
• For most animals’ environments not constant - need to adapt within their lifetimes

Question 9

What is learning?

Answer 9

• Persistent change in behaviour as a result of experience
• Necessary to adapt to changes in the environment
• Do it throughout our lives
• Whenever you talk about memory something has been learned
• How information is acquired central to study of psychology

Question 10

Classical conditioning: encoding causal relationships

Answer 10

• Two events are paired: a cough with tickling
• A stimulus signal is paired with a stimulus outcome
• Classic conditioning: stimulus predicts stimulus
• Causal relationship – prediction
• Child starts to react to the cough as it did to the tickles because it knows they’re coming – as cough predicts tickles

Question 11

Instrumental conditioning: encoding causal relationships

Answer 11

• Two events are paired:
• Tidying up (R) with praise (US)
• A response is paired with a stimulus outcome
• Operant conditioning: response predicts stimulus
• Causal relationships - control
• Child starts tidying up to get the praise (wouldn’t you?!) as tidying up produces praise
• Links form between mental representations of the two events that have been paired, to reflect what happened in the world
• Unlike unlearned case, new links form from experiencing the pairings – they have been learned

Question 12

Differences between classical and instrumental conditioning

Answer 12

1. Classical conditioning: predicting what’s going to happen
   - Stimulus predicts stimulus whatever animal does
   - Learned CR involuntary – not rational or goal directed
   - Reflects what the animal knows will happen
2. Instrumental conditioning: controlling what’s going to happen
   - Response only predicts a stimulus if animal responds
   - Response voluntary – rational, goal directed
   - Reflects what animal wants to happen

Question 13

Long box AutoShaping: Irrational involuntary CR

Answer 13

• Key followed by grain regardless of whether bird pecks it or not
• But bird pecks
• Pecking prevented bird from receiving all his grain – irrational, not goal-directed (suggests classical conditioning)
• Classical conditioning evolutionarily sensible e.g. salivation prepares you for eating food; this can make them appear rational; but it is inflexible – can’t adapt to circumstances in a rational way

Question 14

Can’t control experience

Answer 14

• In theory doing classical and instrumental conditioning distinct
• SS or RS
• In practice things can get messy – can’t control all experience
• E.g. can control what a response produces but can’t make animal perform it
• Why they put the sucrose on the lever
• E.g. shaping a rat to press a lever – for operant conditioning to be successful you have to make sure the response is performed in the first place; here classical conditioning might be helping
• Can control which stimuli are paired but not that animal will experience them
• If pigeon faced the wrong way, might miss the keylight, or even the food
• Can pair two stimuli but can’t remove all other stimuli in environment;
• Can’t stop animal responding – means other pairings might happen
• IMAGINE
• Pair illumination of keylight with food
• BUT pigeon pecks keylight whenever it goes on
• YOU paired keylightfood (classical S S)
• PIGEON paired peckfood (instrumental R) S)
• Why does he peck? instrumental or classical conditioning?

Question 15

What is omission training?

Answer 15

• Keylight S predicts food but pecking R prevents food
• Key  food Peck  no food
• Keylight CS predicts food but conditioned peck cancels food
• First two trials show the bird pecking at the key and not receiving grain.
• Eventually, the bird learned to stop pecking but note that orientation toward the key continues.
• He can override the classically conditioned response with a voluntary instrumental response to get the food
• Pigeon can be rational and do instrumental conditioning, but classical conditioning interferes with expressing it

Question 16

Summary of learning

Answer 16

• Unlearned behaviour: hard wired, independent of experience, useful in evolutionarily stable situations
• Classical conditioning: one stimulus predicts another
• Instrumental conditioning: a response predicts a stimulus/outcome
• Classically conditioned responses involuntary: Prediction SS
• Instrumentally conditioned responses voluntary, rational: Control RS