Lecture 3 - Learning Lecture Three: Association Learning and Behaviorism The abstract: In this lecture, I will make four main points. 1) Classical conditioning (learning of stimulus-stimulus associations) is a very rulegoverned phenomenon. 2) Operant (or instrumental) conditioning (learning the consequences of your actions) has many fundamental similarities with classical conditioning. 3) Association learning exerts an important influence on human as well as animal behavior. 4) However, Behaviorism, the effort to build a complete psychology out of association learning, went too far and is an interesting and important failure. The outline: POINT 1: CLASSICAL (PAVLOVIAN) CONDITIONING unconditioned stimulus (US) unconditioned response (UR) conditioned response (CR) conditioned stimulus (CS) What is being learned here? A word about consciousness Several words about constraints on learning 1. What is a stimulus? This sounds trivial but isn't. 2. Overshadowing shows that you need to notice the stimulus - stimulus connection: What is the paradigm? 3. Contingency: Relationships must be predictive. Mere contiguity is not enough, 3.5 Extinction (of a response, not the organism): Why is extinction a subhead under contingency? 4. Preparedness shows that we are not just general purpose association learners. 5. Timing is critical - specifically, the CS->US interval. 6. Sensory Pre-conditioning points the way to more complex learning. POINT 2: OPERANT CONDITIONING Point 2: OPERANT CONDITIONING Remember the cat in the puzzle box? Let's do this again with a pigeon (rats are good, too) Lecture 3 - Learning We use the Law of Effect to shape the animal. Now we can use reinforcement to control the behavior of the organism "The Behavior of Organisms" B F Skinner (1938) In fact, contingencies of reinforcement rule the pigeon's behavior "Contingencies of Reinforcement" B F Skinner (1969) You should be able to describe the effects of Fixed and Variable Ratio (FR, VR)schedules of reinforcement and Fixed and Variable Interval (FI, BI) schedules of reinforcement Extinction in operant conditioning POINT 3: YOU ARE A SLAVE TO THESE RULES, TOO. Example 1: Food aversion Garcia, J., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). Relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learning. Psychonomic Science, 20, 313-314. Example 2: Superstitious Behavior Example 3: Parents and Children - who is conditioning whom? Extinction & schedules of reinforcement revisited Example 4: "Getting to yes" schedules of reinforcement in sexual behavior POINT 4: BEHAVIORISM John Watson: "founder" of Behaviorism "I believe that we can write a Psychology; define it as...the science of behavior... and never go back upon our definition: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like... It can be done in terms of habit formation, habit integration, and the like." {Psych Rev., 1913, 20, 158-77} A sketch of radical (Watsonian?) behaviorism. 1. RULES 2. AUTOMATIC RULES (and a note about consciousness) 3. ENVIRONMENTALLY-DRIVEN RULES 4. GENERAL RULES - Of course, there are some biological constraints but… Today, Evolutionary Psychology begs to differ Why aren't we all Behaviorists?

Lecture 3: Learning

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