GEEC 108 Lecture 3 - Learning Part 1

Learning
(Part 1)
CF Omar Bernardino D. Domingo, D.V.M., M.Sc.
GEEC 108
Lecture 3
A Clever Mother?
• Cowbirds (Molothrus alter) are obligate nest parasites, meaning that
females always lay their eggs in the nests of other species.
• Females spend time and energy locating nests where they will lay
their eggs.
• Melanie Guigueno and her colleagues tested cowbirds on a memory
task:
• Birds were presented 25 open cups.
• One randomly selected cup had millet seed in it.
• A cowbird was allowed to search and find the cup with the food reward and
to feed at that cup for 2 minutes then the bird was removed from
experimental area.
• It was returned again later, to the same grid with 25 cups.
• The same cup that had seed in it before, again had seed placed in it, but this
time all 25 cups were covered with a lid so the bird could not see which cup
had food.
• In one treatment, birds were returned to the arena one hour after the first
test, and in a second treatment, they were returned 24 hours after the first
test. The success rate of males and females was recorded.
• What the researchers found was that while males and females spent
approximately the same amount of time searching in the second test
—suggesting their motivation levels were equal—as predicted by the
spatial memory hypothesis, females made fewer errors before finding
the correct cup in the second test.
• Evidence suggests that natural selection has favoured spatial memory
more strongly in the sex that consistently faced more difficult spatial
memory tasks.
This effect was uncovered in both the breeding and nonbreeding season.
What Is Individual Learning?
• This lecture examines the role that individual learning plays in animal
behavior.
• In our analysis of individual learning—which we will refer to as
learning in the rest of this lecture—we start by addressing three
related questions:
• How do animals learn?
• Why do animals learn?
• What do animals learn?
What do we mean when we speak of
learning?
Learning refers to a relatively permanent change

in behavior as a result of experience
(Shettleworth, 1998).
How Animals Learn
The processes underlying learning.
Experience Leads to Learning
• There are three commonly recognized types of
experience that can lead to learning:
• Single stimulus
• Stimulus-stimulus (Pavlovian Conditioning)
• Response-reinforcer
LEARNING FROM A SINGLE-
STIMULUS EXPERIENCE
• The simplest experience that can lead to learning involves a
single stimulus—a stimulus that can take almost any form.
• Sensitization and habituation are two simple stimulus forms

of learning.
Sensitization and Habituation: an example
• Let’s imagine that we are interested in studying learning in rats and
that numerous times throughout the day we place an arbitrary cue—a
blue-colored stick—in a rat’s cage.
• Rats will often take note of such a disturbance and turn their heads in
the direction of the blue stick.
• If, over time, the rats become more likely to turn their heads in the
direction of the blue stick—that is, if they become more sensitive to
the stimulus with time, sensitization has occurred.
• Conversely, if, over time, the animals become less likely to turn their
head, habituation is said to have taken place.
The Problem with Habituation (-_-)
• The process of habituation can be problematic when it comes to
designing an ethological experiment, because it can be difficult to
examine behavior if animals habituate quickly to stimuli.
• Conservation biologists also worry about habituation in animals that
may be trained in captivity and then released into the wild.
• In the safety of the lab, animals may habituate to certain stimuli that might
prove very dangerous upon the animals’ release into the wild.
• Animal trainers, however, particularly those working with

economically valuable animals such as horses, often try to habituate
the animals they work with to various stimuli, so that the animals
become less frightened by stimuli that elicit innate fear responses.
PAVLOVIAN (CLASSICAL)
CONDITIONING
• Suppose that rather than giving a rat a single stimulus like the blue
stick, from the start we pair this stimulus with a second stimulus, let’s
say the odor of a cat.
• Let’s imagine that five seconds after the blue stick is in place, we spray
the odor of a cat into one corner of the cage
• If the rat subsequently learns to pair stimulus 1 (blue stick) with
stimulus 2 (cat odor) and responds to the blue stick by climbing under
the chip shavings (a safer location) in its cage as soon as it appears,
but before the odor is sprayed in, we have designed an experiment in
Pavlovian or classical conditioning
• This form of conditioned learning was first developed by Ivan Pavlov
in the late 1800s.
• Pavlovian conditioning experiments involve two stimuli—the
conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus.
• A conditioned stimulus (CS) is defined as a stimulus that initially fails
to elicit a particular response but comes to do so when it becomes
associated with a second (unconditioned) stimulus.
• In our rat example, the blue stick is the conditioned stimulus, as initially the
rat will have no inherent fear of it.
• The unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus that elicits a vigorous

response in the absence of training.
• In our rat example, the US would be the cat odor, which inherently causes a
fear response in rats.
• Once the rat has learned to hide after the blue stick (CS) alone is in
place, we can speak of its hiding as being a conditioned response (CR)
to the presence of the blue stick
More terms in Pavlovian conditioning
• Any stimulus that is considered positive, pleasant, or
rewarding is referred to as an appetitive stimulus.
• Appetitive stimuli include food, the presence of a potential mate, a
safe habitat, and so on.
• Any stimulus that is unpleasant is labeled an aversive

stimulus.
• Shock, noxious odors, and so forth.
Positive and negative relationships
• When the first event (placement of the blue stick) in a conditioning

experiment predicts the occurrence of the second event (cat odor),
there is a positive relationship between events.
• Positive relationships produce excitatory conditioning.
• Conversely, if the first event predicts that the second event will not
occur—imagine that a blue stick is always followed by not feeding an
animal at its normal feeding time— there is a negative relationship.
• Negative relationships produce inhibitory conditioning.
• Pavlovian conditioning experiments can become complicated when
second-order conditioning is added on.
• In second-order conditioning, once a conditioned response (CR) has
been learned by pairing US and CS1, a new stimulus is presented
before the CS1, and if the new stimulus itself eventually elicits the
conditioned response, then the new stimulus has become a
conditioned stimulus (CS2).
INSTRUMENTAL (OPERANT)
CONDITIONING
• Instrumental conditioning, also known as operant or goal-directed
learning, occurs when the response that is made by an animal is:
• Reinforced (increased) by the presentation of a reward or the termination of
an aversive stimulus.
• Suppressed (decreased) by the presentation of aversive stimulus or the
termination of a reward.
• One of the most fundamental differences between Pavlovian and

instrumental learning is that, in instrumental learning, the animal
must undertake some action or response in order for the conditioning
process to produce learning.
Instrumental Conditioning: an example
• Edward Thorndike tested how quickly cats could learn to escape from
“puzzle boxes” that he had constructed (Thorndike, 1898, 1911).
When Thorndike placed a cat in a locked box, the cat initially tried all sorts of things to get out of its
confined space. Some of these behaviors, by chance, led to a successful escape from the box.
• Thorndike postulated the law of effect:
• If a response in the presence of a stimulus is
followed by a positive event, the association
between the stimulus and the response will be
strengthened.
• If the response is followed by an aversive event, the
association will be weakened.

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Learning

Learning refers to a relatively permanent change

• Sensitization and habituation are two simple stimulus forms

• Animal trainers, however, particularly those working with

• The unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus that elicits a vigorous

• Any stimulus that is unpleasant is labeled an aversive

• When the first event (placement of the blue stick) in a conditioning

• One of the most fundamental differences between Pavlovian and

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