Chapter 5: Learning

Any relatively permanent change in behavior or behavioral potential produced by

experience is called learning.

FEATURES OF LEARNING
1. It always involves some kind of experience.
- Repeated experience of a satisfaction obtained after doing something in a
particular manner leads to the formation of habit.
- Eg.- routine
2. Behavioral changes that take place are always permanent.
- Changes that take place due to fatigue, habituation or drugs are not
permanent, they are considered as temporary.
- Orienting reflexes (involuntary and immediate responses)
- Habituation is the process of not responding to repeated, non threatening
stimuli (after getting used to it).

LEARNING EXPERIMENT
1. Pre-test to know how much a person knows before learning.
2. Presenting what is to be remembered for a fixed time.
3. Acquiring new knowledge (processing).
4. After processing is complete, new knowledge is acquired (learning takes place
here).
5. Processed information is recalled.

Learning Performance

Long term Short term

Inferred process Person’s observed behaviour

Eg.- Poem recitation Eg.- Job interview

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
● Investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov
● During his study on the physiology of digestion, he noticed how dogs started
secreting saliva the moment the empty place (in which food was served) was
presented in front of them.
● Saliva is a reflexive response to food or something in the mouth.
 Experiment:-
- Setup: A tube was surgically inserted into the dog’s jaw, leading to a
measuring glass to collect saliva and record it.
- Phase One: The dog was left in the box for several sessions that
established a baseline for its natural salivation response to food.
- Phase Two: The dog was kept hungry and conditioned to associate the
sound of a bell with receiving food (meat powder). Each time the bell rang,
food was presented.
- After several trials where the bell consistently preceded the presentation of
food, the dog began to salivate upon hearing the bell alone.
- Test Trial: In a test trial, the bell was sounded without presenting food. This
resulted in a new response i.e. salivation to the sound of the bell.

Equations:-
DETERMINANTS OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
1. TIME RELATIONS BETWEEN STIMULI

● Most effective- delayed conditioning as it requires less number of trials

● Simultaneous and trace require more number of trials… thus not the most
effective.
● Acquisition of a response in backward conditioning is rare.
● Simultaneous, delayed and trace are forward conditioning procedures.

2. UNCONDITIONED STIMULI
There are types of unconditioned stimuli- Appetitive and Aversive

APPETITIVE AVERSIVE

It elicits responses that provide Elicits escape and avoidance

satisfaction and pleasure. responses

Eg.- eating, drinking water, etc. Eg.- noise, chaos, etc.

Requires more number of trials Less number of trials (max.-3)

3. INTENSITY OF A STIMULUS
● More intense -> more effective = less number of trials
● Less intense -> less effective = more number of trials

OPERANT/INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING
● Investigated by B.F. Skinner
 ● Operants are voluntary responses that animals or humans emit, those responses
are under their control.

Experiment:-
- Setup: A hungry rat is placed in a specially designed chamber, which
contains a lever connected to a food container. When the lever is pressed, a
food pellet drops on the plate placed closer to the lever.

Pressing the lever- operant

Food- consequence (reward)

DETERMINANTS OF OPERANT CONDITIONING (behavior is learned, maintained and

changed through its consequences known as reinforcers)
A reinforcer is a stimulus that increases the probability of an occurrence of an event.
1. TYPE OF REINFORCEMENT

Positive Negative

Stimuli that gives a pleasant Unpleasant and painful stimuli

consequence

Strengthen and maintain the responses Increases the probability of avoidance

that cause the stimuli to occur and escape responses (it is not
punishment, punishment suppresses a
response)

Eg.- Chocolate for completing Eg.- Medicine in case of sickness

homework

2. NUMBER OF REINFORCEMENT
- Number of trials conducted- more trials, stronger conditioning
- Amount of reinforcement- how much of that reinforcing stimulus is received
on each trial
 - Quality of reinforcement- refers to the kind of reinforcer (eg.- chickpeas-
inferior quality as compared to raisins)

3. SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT
- Continuous- reinforcement every time a behavior is occurred, high rate of
responding, reinforcement on hold=> response rates decrease => response
extinguishes
- Partial- reinforcement occurs only some of the time, very high rates of
responding, difficult when the reinforcement has been discontinued

4. DELAYED REINFORCEMENT
Delay of consequence leads to poorer level of performance

KEY LEARNING PROCESSES

1. REINFORCEMENT
Process of administering a reinforcer by the experimenter… positive and negative,
primary (biologically important) and secondary

2. EXTINCTION
Disappearance of a response because of the removal of reinforcement due to
which the response was occurring. (Refer to the second equation)
RESISTANCE TO EXTINCTION
Refers to how persistent a response is after the removal of reinforcement
- Increasing number of reinforced trials- increases the resistance to
extinction and learned response reaches its highest level
- Increasing number of reinforcements during acquisition trials- increases it,
partial reinforcement increases more resistance as compared to continuous.
3.
GENERALISATION DISCRIMINATION

Responding similarly to similar stimuli Response due to difference

Eg.- the dog salivates at the sound of Eg.- the dog salivates at the sound of
the bell as well as at the sound of a the bell only and not at any other
trumpet sound

4. SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY
Sudden reappearance of a previously extinguished behavior after a period of no
exposure to the conditioned stimuli.
For example, the dog might salivate again at the sound of the bell with no food
even after a break
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
● Observer acquires knowledge by observing the model’s behavior (the performance
is influenced by that as well)
● Also called as social learning
● When people observe and emulate others behavior, it is called modelling
● Bandura’s experimental study

COGNITIVE LEARNING
● Learning that involves the mental processes

INSIGHT LEARNING
The process by which a solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear.
- Kohler experiment on chimpanzees using food that was kept out of
their reach, and boxes and poles

LATENT LEARNING
A new behavior is learnt but not displayed until reinforcement is provided.
- Tolmar’s experiment on rats

VERBAL LEARNING
● Limited to humans as they acquire knowledge in the form of words.
● Methods used in studying verbal learning are-

○ PAIRED ASSOCIATE’S LEARNING

- Similar to S-S conditioning and S-R learning
- Used in learning languages (foreign and mother tongue)
- For eg.- learning vocab by translating the words

○ SERIAL LEARNING
Used to find out how participants learn a list of verbal items and the
processes behind it
- The participants are presented with a list of items that includes
nonsense syllables and familiar words, etc.
- They have to recall the list in the same serial order

○ FREE RECALL
A list of words is provided and required to recall in any order.
 - Used to check the storage for memory
- Eg.- learning words in the middle is hard as compared to the ones in
the beginning and in the end
DETERMINANTS OF VERBAL LEARNING
➔ Meaningfulness of the material- measured in familiarity of the material,
relations among words
➔ Length of the list- the more time it takes to learn the material, the stronger
the learning becomes. (Principal of total time)
➔ Category clustering- Subjective organization (used in free recall) shows
participants organize the material in their own way to recall.

SKILL LEARNING
Skill is the ability to perform a complex task smoothly and with ease. It consists of a series
of perpetual responses.

PHASES OF SKILL ACQUISITION

Each stage improves the performance- improvement plateau
Developed by Fitts
1. Cognitive Phase
- Focus on understanding and memorizing the instructions
- Performing the necessary steps and staying alert to all the external
cues
- Keyword- conscious awareness

2. Associative Phase
- Sensory inputs are linked with the correct responses as practice
takes place
- Errors decrease, performance improves and the time taken reduces
- Must remain attentive to continue the process

3. Autonomous Phase
- The demand for attention decreases
- External distractions do not affect the performance
- Doesn’t require low to zero effort marking high level of mastery\

“Practice makes a man perfect”

FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING

1. CONTINUOUS V/S PARTIAL REINFORCEMENT (mentioned above)
2. MOTIVATION
- Acting vigorously to attain a goal and satisfy the need.
 - Prerequisite for learning
- More motivation, more hard work

3. PREPAREDNESS FOR LEARNING

Constraints in learning capacity. For eg.- lions can hunt but rats cannot,
emphasizing that those who are not ready to learn cannot learn.

LEARNING DISABILITIES
Heterogenous group of disorders that cause trouble with learning skills like reading,
reasoning, writing, etc.

Symptoms:
1. Difficulty in writing and reading, speaking more frequently, listening problems even
though no auditory defects. Different ways of developing strategies and learning.
2. Cannot sustain on one point for long and easily distracted. Attentional deficiency
also leads to hyperactivity.
3. Poor orientation of space and inadequate sense of time.
4. Poor motor condition and manual dexterity- difficulty in maintaining balance, etc.
5. Poor understanding and not able to understand oral directions.
6. Misjudgement including failing to understand body language
7. Perceptual disorders- they have sensory acuity but don’t use it in their
performance
8. Dyslexia