Learning
Psychology · Section 2.2 · 18 study cards
Classical and operant conditioning, reinforcement schedules, cognitive influences on learning, and observational learning.
Practice this set → Spaced repetition, card by card. No account needed.
Method
Decide which kind of learning first
Before labelling anything, ask whether the organism is reacting or acting. If a stimulus automatically triggers a reflexive response, it is classical conditioning. If the organism does something voluntary and a consequence follows, it is operant. Getting this wrong makes every label afterwards wrong.
Procedure for labelling a classical conditioning scenario
- Find the response that occurs without any training. That response is the UCR.
- Name whatever triggers it naturally. That is the UCS.
- Find the stimulus that produced no relevant response at the start but does after repeated pairing. Before pairing it is the NS, after pairing it is the CS.
- Name the response that the CS now produces on its own. That is the CR, and it will be the same behaviour as the UCR with a different trigger.
- Check the order: the NS must come before the UCS for conditioning to work well.
Procedure for classifying an operant consequence
- Name the behaviour precisely, as something the organism does.
- Ask what happens to that behaviour in future. If it increases, the answer contains the word reinforcement. If it decreases, the answer contains the word punishment. Decide this first and never revise it because of the next step.
- Ask whether something was added to the situation or taken away. Added means positive, taken away means negative.
- Put the two words together. Positive or negative always comes from step three, never from whether the stimulus felt good or bad.
Escape and avoidance behaviours are the classic trap. Anything that gets rid of something aversive and then happens more often is negative reinforcement.
Learn schedules by their two dimensions
Ratio versus interval is about responses versus time. Fixed versus variable is about predictability. From the two dimensions you can reconstruct the response pattern rather than memorising four graphs: ratio yields fast responding, and variability yields steady responding and resistance to extinction.
Keep the cognitive and observational additions attached to a study
Latent learning goes with Tolman, observational learning with Bandura, taste aversion with Garcia. Exam questions in this unit name the researcher as often as the phenomenon.
Definitions and theorems
Worked example
A child is afraid of dogs after being bitten. Her parents put a puppy in the far corner of the room while she eats a favourite snack, and over several weeks move the puppy nearer. She also begins asking to feed the puppy, because each time she does, her mother stops nagging her about her chores for the evening. Identify the classical conditioning components in the fear, name the technique used to treat it, and classify the consequence that maintains her feeding behaviour.
Take the fear first. The bite is the UCS, because pain and fear follow it with no training, and that fear is the UCR.
The dog was neutral before the bite and now triggers fear on its own, so the dog is the CS and the fear of dogs is the CR. The generalisation to all dogs rather than the one that bit her is stimulus generalisation.
The treatment pairs the feared CS with eating, a response incompatible with fear, and works up a graded hierarchy from far away to close. That is counterconditioning delivered as systematic desensitisation.
Now the feeding behaviour. Name the behaviour: asking to feed the puppy. It is voluntary and produces a consequence, so this is operant, not classical.
Ask what happens to its frequency. It increases, so the answer must be reinforcement, whatever the stimulus feels like.
Ask whether something was added or removed. The nagging was removed, so it is negative.
The answer is negative reinforcement. If she had been scolded and had then stopped asking, the same nagging would have been positive punishment, so the label depends on both the direction of change and the add-or-remove question.
Common mistakes
- Reading positive and negative as good and bad. In operant conditioning they mean only added and removed. Negative reinforcement is not punishment and is not unpleasant in effect: it strengthens behaviour by ending something aversive. Settle the reinforcement-or-punishment question from the change in behaviour frequency before you even look at what the stimulus was.
- Calling the tone the CS before conditioning. The same physical stimulus is the NS at the start of the procedure and the CS only after pairing has worked. Similarly, the UCR and CR are the same behaviour named by their trigger, so an answer that gives two different behaviours is almost always wrong.
- Confusing extinction with forgetting or with erasure. Extinction is new learning produced by presenting the CS without the UCS, and spontaneous recovery proves the old association survived. Writing that extinction deletes the association loses the mark that spontaneous recovery is there to test.
- Mixing up the schedules by guessing at examples. Decide ratio or interval from whether reinforcement depends on responses or on elapsed time, then fixed or variable from whether the requirement is predictable. A slot machine is variable ratio, not variable interval, because payouts depend on plays rather than on the clock.
- Treating Bobo doll and latent learning as optional detail. Exam items in this unit usually name the researcher, so an answer that describes observational learning without Bandura, or a cognitive map without Tolman, often does not score. Attach one study to each principle.
Practice it
Reading the method is not the same as being able to recall it under pressure. This set drills 18 cards one at a time and schedules each card separately, so the ones you keep missing come back sooner.