Cognitive Psychology – Learning

A relatively permanent change in the behaviour, thoughts or feelings of an organism as a result of experience

- Exploration of overt behavioural changes - a lot of work based on animal models of learning - aim to produce a general theory of learning and behaviour - Focuses on the relationship between the stimulus and the response

- Postulates role of covert mechanisms (like long term memory) while recognising these are not observable - focuses more on human participants - learning conceived within the framework of information processing - there is a greater interest in complex information and events

- Attempts to understand the relationships between the cognitive mechanisms of learning and the brain regions involved - Use of imagining technologies re used to identify changes in patterns of brain activity associated with learning processes e.g. fMRI and MEG

- the simplest form of learning - repeated exposure leads to decline in response - it is innate = shown in young infants - has an evolutionary significance = if a stimulus occurs again and again without significance there is no need to waste time and energy on it

- Pavlov studied classical conditioning in dogs = salivate at the sound of food and he paired with with a bell - salivated at that - The process of learning to associate an unconditioned response to a neutral stimulus = a conditioned response

- US = UCR - NS + US = UCR - CS = CR

- in advertising to promote sales e.g. associating a trademark with an attractive person - Government campaigns - conditioning of fear e.g.

drink driving campaigns, associating cigarettes with ill health

- Conditioned a fear response of rat and other white fluffy things in a 9 month old infant - rat NS - initially produced no response - US steel bar produced UR an unconditioned fear response - The rat (NS) and loud noise (US) were then paired 7 times which meant the rat (CS) and produced the (CR) of a fear reaction

- Aversive stimulus (unpleasant) paired with Appetitive stimulus

- certain organisms are biologically prepared to fear certain things e.g. Rhesus monkeys are predisposed to fear snakes

- a single pairing of a CS and US is usually insufficient = more pairings shows gradual increase in strength - strength of the conditioned response depends on the intensity of the unconditioned stimulus and the timing of the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus

- Stimulus conditioning = CS + US presented at the same time (on and off) - Delayed conditioning = CS precedes US slightly but they end together - 1/2 s is the optimal time for conditioning - Trace conditioning = CS is presented and switched off before US is presented - Backward conditioning = the US precedes the CS e.g. advertising

- After conditioning the CS is presented repeatedly without the US and the CR gradually disappears - Spontaneous recovery = after extinction however, if CS is presented there CR will return = re-condition the CR (US) or re-extinguished (no US) - Extinguished phobias therefore may return = requirement for further treatment

- CR can be retrained more readily following an extinction and after some delay than during its initial learning - This is true even if extinction sessions are repeated to a point where even spontaneous recovery ceases - Extinction does not seem like memory loss but more like new learning

- Pavlov's dogs salivated to similar tones - Little albert - transfer of fear from rat e.

g to dog, cotton wool, Watson's hair - The greater the similarity, the greater the transfer - Evolutionary advantage?

- stops generalisation - organism is taught to distinguish between similar but different stimuli e.g. Pavlov - some tones ere followed by food while others weren't

If we always give 2 CS's together during training we may find later that only one will produce a CR alone - the more vivid of the two stimuli tends to be the one for which conditioning is established

- after successfully training as CS-CR pairing then another stimulus can be made to elicit a CR by pairing it with the now trained CS - If the new CS (CS2) is presented before the old CS in a new training phase then the CS2 would eventually produce a CR on its own

- behaviour automatically brought about by a stimuli - positive outcomes strengthen response while negative ones decrease

- Rat = in cage with leaver = pressing leaving causes food top be released - food reinforces lever press - Extinction = lever press receives no food - Discrimination = e.g. lever pressed only when light on - light is the discriminative stimulus

- stimuli that occur as a consequence of a response can increase or decrease the likelihood of repetition e.g.

positive reinforcement = like food and negative reinforcement = foot shock turned off (removing a negative stimulus) both increase the probability of repeating response - A punishment and response cost however (removal of a appetitive stimulus) will decrease the probability of a response repetition

- Primary = naturally reinforcing e.g. food, water, sex - Secondary = lesrned to associate with primary reinforcements e.g. money, clickers used in training dogs

Wolfe - chimpanzees reinforced by giving them poker chips that could buy food out a vending machine

- Fixed-ratio schedules = reinforcing a behavior after a specific number of responses have occurred.

- Fixed-interval schedules = reinforcing a behavior after a specific period of time has elapsed.

- Variable-ratio schedules = reinforcing the behavior after an unpredictable number of responses.

- Variable-interval schedules = reinforcing the behavior after an unpredictable period of time has elapsed.

- Getting animals to perform unnatural behaviour (used by animal trainers) 1) Reinforce any behaviour vaguely resembling target behaviour (e.g.

swimming close to the hoop) 2) Next reinforced if a close approximation to target behaviour is given (e.g. touching the hoop) 3) Then getting dolphin to swim through the hoop and raising it 4) Finally behaviour only reinforced for performing actual target behaviour (jumping through the hoop)