Learning

• Any relatively
permanent change in
behavior brought
about by experience
or practice
– Permanent
– Experience
– Practice
 Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
• Russian Physiologist
• Father= Village Priest
• Father-in-law= Priest
• Religion to Physiology
(Charles Darwin,
Origins of Species)
• St. Petersburg
 Ivan Pavlov
• Classical
Conditioning
– A stimulus
comes to elicit a
response that it
does not
normally elicit
 Ivan Pavlov
• Wanted to study digestion in dogs
– Interaction between salivation and digestion
– Dogs salivate when they eat and smell food
• This is known as a reflex (it is not learned; it is
involuntary)
 Ivan Pavlov
• What did he discover??
– Dogs salivate without
proper stimulus
• Stimulus is an
environmental condition
that evokes a response
from an organism
– Salivate at lab coats
• Why?
• Getting fed by a person in
a lab coat
– Will external stimuli affect
salivation???
• ….Its Classical
Conditioning
 Ivan Pavlov
• Thought he could control
salivation
– Play a bell (neutral
stimulus) before he gave
the dog food
– Bell could elicit salivation
even when food was
taken away
• He had conditioned the
dog to salivate when it
heard just the bell
alone
 Ivan Pavlov- Vocabulary
• Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
– Event that causes a response to occur (prior
to conditioning)
• Giving dog food
• Doctor hitting our knee
 Ivan Pavlov- Vocabulary
• Unconditioned Response (UR)
– Response that occurs after the stimulus
(natural/ involuntary, not learned)
• Salivation is the UR
• Food in front of the dog is the US
 Ivan Pavlov- Vocabulary
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
– Paired with the US
• Bell tone paired with food to elicit conditioned
response
 Ivan Pavlov- Vocabulary
• Conditioned
Response (CR)
–Salivating after
only the bell is
ringing
 Ivan Pavlov
• He helped cure phobias…how??
 Ivan Pavlov-Vocabulary
• Counterconditioning
– A pleasant stimulus is repeatedly paired with
a fear-evoking object, thereby counteracting
the fear response
 Basic Principles of Classical
Conditioning
• The CS must come before the UCS
• The CS and the UCS must come very
close together in time
• The neutral stimulus must be paired with
the UCS several times before conditioning
can take place
• The CS is usually some stimulus that is
distinctive (stands out from other stimuli)
 Generalization
• The tendency for a
Conditioned Response
(salivating) to be evoked by
stimuli that are similar to the
stimulus (objects that look
like a bell) to which the
response was conditioned
– Rustling sounds in the bushes
• Animals will still flee
regardless of what is in the
bushes
 Discrimination
• Definition:
– The tendency for an organism to distinguish
between a Conditioned Stimulus (CS) and
similar stimuli that do not forecast an
Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
 Discrimination
• 2 things that organisms
must learn:
– 1. Many stimuli that are
perceived as being similar
are functionally different
– 2. They must respond
adaptively to each
Discrimination
• Example:
– In the first couple
months of life, babies
can discriminate their
mother’s voice from
those of other women
– Babies will often stop
crying when they hear
their mother but not
when they hear a
stranger’s voice
 Extinction and Spontaneous
Recovery
• Extinction and
Spontaneous
Recovery are aspects
of conditioning that
help organisms adapt
by updating their
expectations or
revising their
representations of the
changing environment
Extinction
• Process by which
Conditioned Stimuli (CS)
lose the ability to elicit
conditioned responses
(CR) because the CS are
no longer associated with
unconditioned stimuli (US)
– The CS no longer
serves its predictive
function
 Extinction
• Pavlov-
– Found that repeated
presentations of the CS
(bell) without the US
(food) lead to extinction
of the CR (salivation in
response to the bell)
 Spontaneous Recovery
• The recurrence of an
extinguished
response as a
function of the
passage of time
– Example: Extinguish a
response, wait a
couple of days/weeks,
present the CS again
(bell), and the dog
would salivate (CR)
 Higher-Order Conditioning
• A previously Neutral
Stimulus comes to
serve as a CS after
repeatedly being
paired with a stimulus
that has already
become a CS
 Higher-Order Conditioning
• Example:
– Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivated (CR) in
response to a bell (CS). He then repeatedly
paired the shining of the light with the
sounding of a bell. After several pairings,
shining the light (the higher-order CS) came
to elicit the response (salivation) that had
been elicited by the bell (first-order CS)
 Taste Aversion
(a type of Classical Conditioning)
• A type of Classical
Conditioning in which a
previously desirable or
neutral food becomes
repugnant (repulsive)
because it is associated
with aversive stimulation
(getting sick, eating too
much)
– Known as biological
preparedness for animals
who use it for survival