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Learning & behavior summary
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LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR SUMMARYCHAPTER 1 KLEIN: AN INTRODUCTION TO LEARNING
Learning reflects a change in the potential for a behavior to occur; it doesn’t automatically
lead to a change in behavior.
Functionalism: John Dewy (1886)
Emphasizes instinctive origins of behavior.
Promoting survival through adaptive behavior.
The mind enables humans to adapt to the environment.
Human survival differs from ‘’lower’’ animals.
William James (1890):
o Difference between humans and ‘’lower’’ animals lies in the inborn instinctual
motives. Humans have a greater range of instinctual motives.
Example: animals motives are merely to eat and survive, humans also
care about love, happiness, hygiene etc.
Mechanistic approach in functionalism:
o Troland (1928): biochemical forces motivate behavior in all species.
o Psychochemical approach to explain the causes of human and animal
behavior.
“The living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of
chemistry and physics apply.”
Bernard (1924): critique on the instinct theories.
o Instincts don’t examine the understanding of the nature of human behavior.
Behaviorism
Emphasizes the role of experience in origins of behavior.
Learning comes form innate behavior and the interaction with the environment.
The process of association: two events must be temporally paired and must be
similar to each other or be the complete opposite.
o John Locke (1690/1964): we form ideas as a result of experience.
There are no innate processes.
o Simple idea: a passive impression received through senses or the
interpretation of the mind on that sensory impression.
Example: smelling the odor of a rose and seeing it’s color and feeling
it’s texture.
o Complex idea: the association of multiple simple ideas
Example: the combination of the smell, the color and the texture
creates the perception of ‘rose’.
3 principles that connect simple ideas to complex ideas (David Hume, 1748/1955)
Resemblance.
Contiguity in time or place.
Cause and effect.
,Edward Thorndike (1898)
The puzzle box: experiment where a cat was put in a box with food just beyond it’s
reach. The cat engaged in several behaviors and eventually activated a mechanism to
open the door so it could eat the food. This experiment was repeated and the time
within the cat would activate the mechanism would decrease with each trial and the
time spent in engaging in other behaviors to get to the food would also incline with
each trial.
o The cat formed an association between the stimulus (the box) and the
effective response.
Learning is based on the development of a stimulus-response (S-R) association.
The law of effect: strengthening of an S-R association by a reward (food).
Law of readiness: the animal or human must be motivated to develop an association.
Associative shifting: associating the stimulus that elicited a response (the box) with
another stimulus could result into the association of the response with that new
stimulus.
Ivan Pavlov (1927): classical conditioning
Both human and animals have unconditioned reflexes, consisting of two
components:
o First component: an unconditioned stimulus (food) which automatically elicits
the second component; the unconditioned response (salivation).
o A conditioned reflex develops when a neutral environmental event occurs at
the same time as the unconditioned stimulus. When this happens, the neutral
environmental stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus (the sight of food).
This conditioned stimulus is now able to elicit the conditioned response
(salivation).
Generalization: a stimulus similar to the conditioned stimulus can also elicit a
conditioned response. The more similar they are, the greater the chance it becomes
generalized.
Extinction: the process of eliminating a conditioned response. This happens when
you show the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus. If this keeps
happening, the conditioned stimulus does not elicit a response anymore.
John Watson
He repeated the ideas of Pavlov, but was more influenced by the ideas of the Russian
Bechterev. Instead of using positive reinforcements like food, they used things like
shocks to elicit a certain behavior.
He conducted the fear experiment with the rat and little Albert.
After only six pairings of the CS-UCS (the rat and the loud noise), little Albert became
afraid of not only the white rat but also a white rabbit or a white fur coat
(generalization).
, CHAPTER 2 KLEIN: TRADITIONAL LEARNING THEORIES
Cognitive theories on behavior: a flexible view of behavior, which stands opposite of the
inflexible S-R approach discussed in chapter 1. Mental processes control the behavior.
The 2 different S-R associative theories
The first one says that a reward is needed in order to learn a S-R association (reward
based)
The second one says that you only need an action to happen in the right situation to
have the S-R association (contiguity based)
Reward based S-R association
Clarck Hull’s drive theory: primary drives like hunger and thirst elicit an internal
arousal. This internal arousal is the drive which motivates behavior that will reduce
this drive (eating and drinking). When this happens the bodily balance is restored.
o Homeostasis: the need to maintain a steady internal state (bodily balance).
Environmental events can also produce certain drive states.
The drive reduction is responsible for S-R association.
Factors that determine the intensity of behavior:
o Incentive motivation for reward (K).
Internal arousal produced by reward or the stimuli associated with
reward.
o Habit strength/S-R association strength (H).
Strength of the connection between the stimulus and response
produced when the response reduces the drive.
o The level of inhibition control excitatory potential (I).
Inhibition is the suppression of a response produced when that
response fails to produce reward.
o The excitatory potential reflects the likelihood that a specific stimulus (S)
will cause the occurrence of a specific behavior/response (R).
o Excitatory potential is increased by drive (D), incentive motivation (K) and
habit strength (H) and is induced by inhibition (I).
The unconditioned source of Drive/acquired drive concept
Events that threaten survival (not being able to find food) also activate the internal
drive state. It elicits an antecedent condition which creates certain behavior to
restore to normal functioning. Example: if you can’t obtain any food, your body uses
stored energy to maintain your functioning. In turn, using all of the stored energy,
will motivate again to keep looking for food.
Events that don’t threaten survival can also motivate certain behavior. Example: an
animal shows a strong preference for saccharin (artificial sweetener), it eats it even
when its not hungry. It has no caloric value but the deprived animal would rather eat
that than nutritionally valuable food.
Intense environmental events motivate behavior by activating internal drive state.
o The association of an environmental cue with the antecedent condition that
produce an unconditioned drive state causes the development of a
conditioned drive state. Once the conditioned drive state has developed,
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