Unit 4. Learning: Understanding Acquired Behavior

Unit 4. Learning: Understanding Acquired Behavior

Think of ways to use the word Itarntd in a sentence, using yourself as a subject of the sentence. Here are some examples collected from psychology students:

“I learned to drive a car."'

“I learned quite a bit of Italian when I was stationed in Italy for two years.”

“Little by little I have learned to hate my business partner.³"'

“I learned a lot on the streets where I grew up."'

“I learned to be a more loving, understanding person after I got married."'

“I learned good table manners when I was a child."'

“I learned to smoke by hanging out with friends who smoked."'

The above examples of the ways students think about the learning process reveal that learning takes place under many conditions and in many situations.

Although learning takes place in school, it is dear that much—perhaps most— learning goes on outside of the classroom. Indeed, the learning process affects almost everything we do.

Learning is a more or less permanent change in behavior, or a behavioral tendency, as a result of experience. There are several points to be made about this definition. First, learning is “more or less"' permanent. This suggests that although learning tends to resist change once it is acquired, it sometimes does change. Learning can be forgotten. Learning is sometimes subject to a process known as txiinciioH (to be explained later). Also, what has been learned can sometimes be shaped or modified. So learning is far from permanent.

Second., the term behavioral tendency indicates that learning is sometimes dormant, that it does not reflect itself in immediate action. This phenomenon is called bitni Itaming and it too will be discussed later.

Third., note the focus on the word experience in the definition. In order to learn it is necessary to receive information. This is done through our sense organs.

Imagine an infant bom without vision or hearing. It would be terribly difficult for that infant to learn and develop normal intelligence. If the infant had no sense of touch or smell or balance., then learning would be next to impossible.

Trial-and-Error Learning: Taking a Rocky Road

It is instructive to note that one of the most popular books on writing ever published is called Trial and Error by the novelist Jack Woodford. It sold many copies over a number of years., and communicated to would-be authors that the only way to learn to write was by taking the rocky road of learning by making one’s own mistakes.

The first kind of learning to be studied experimentally in the United States was trial-and-error learning. Edward L. Thorndike (1874—1949) first studied maze learning in baby chickens (with the assistance and approval ofWilliam James). Later he studied the escape behavior of cats from pu22le boxes. The cats had to learn to pull a string that released a latch connected to a door. The cats learned to pull the string, but only very gradually. They showed no sudden burst of insight or comprehension. Thorndike conduded that the learning was a robotlike process controlled primarily by its outcomes. If a spedfic behavior helped a cat to escape., that behavior was retained by the cat. Thorndike called this process stamping in, meaning that an action that is useful is impressed upon the nervous system.

Wh.at stamps in a response, according to Thorndike, is satisfaction. The cat that escapes from a pu22le bos is rewarded with food. Thorndike called the tendency to retain what is learned because satisfactory results are obtained the law of effect. Thorndike’s law of effect is the forerunner of what today is usually known as the process of reinforcement.

TEST

1. The unconditioned reflex is

a. a kind of behavior acquired by experience

b. always associated with voluntary behavior

c. a learned response pattern

d. an inborn response pattern

2. What takes place when the conditioned stimulus is presented a number of times without the unconditioned stimulus?

a. Forgetting

b. Extinction

c. Discrimination

d. Stimulus generalization

3. Thorndike said that when satisfactory results are obtained there is a tendency to retain what has been learned. He called this tendency the

a. law- of effect

b. principle of reinforcement

c. principle of reward

d. law- of positive feedback

4. Operant behavior is characterized by

a. actions that have no meaning

b. its inability to be affected by reinforcement

c. its conscious nature

d. actions that have consequences

5. What principle is associated with the phrase greater resistance to extinction?

a. The law of effect

b. The total reinforcement effect

c. The partial reinforcement effect

d. The pleasure-pain effect

6. Vicarious reinforcement is characterized by

a. primary gratification

b. imagined gratification

c. extinction

d. the discriminative stimulus

". What did Kohler define as the sudden reorganization of a perceptual field?

a. Operant conditioning

b. Classical conditioning

c. Insight

d. Extinction

S. The concept of a learning set is associated with w-hat underlying process?

a. Spontaneous inhibition

b. The law of effect

c. Learned optimism

d. Learning to learn

9. The use of a mnemonic device is a special case of

a. encoding

b. short-term memory

c. antagonistic stimuli

d. involuntary conditioning

10. Which one of the following is not associated with the memory process of retrieval?

a. Recall

b. Recognition

c. Cognitive inhibition

d. Repression

 

True or False

T F Learning is a more or less permanent change in behavior, or a behavioral tendency as a result of experience.

T F A conditioned reflex is an inborn response pattern.

T F Operant behavior is characterized by actions that have no meaning for an organism, and. consequently, no consequences.

T F Observational learning takes place when an individual acquires behavior by watching the behavior of a second individual.

3. T F There is no such thing as short-term memory.

Self-check

describe the principal aspects of the learning process;

identify basic concepts in classical conditioning;

explain the process of operant conditioning;

give an example of the important role that consciousness plays in learning;

specify the most important aspects of the memory process.

Unit 4. Learning: Understanding Acquired Behavior

Think of ways to use the word Itarntd in a sentence, using yourself as a subject of the sentence. Here are some examples collected from psychology students:

“I learned to drive a car."'

“I learned quite a bit of Italian when I was stationed in Italy for two years.”

“Little by little I have learned to hate my business partner.³"'

“I learned a lot on the streets where I grew up."'

“I learned to be a more loving, understanding person after I got married."'

“I learned good table manners when I was a child."'

“I learned to smoke by hanging out with friends who smoked."'

The above examples of the ways students think about the learning process reveal that learning takes place under many conditions and in many situations.

Although learning takes place in school, it is dear that much—perhaps most— learning goes on outside of the classroom. Indeed, the learning process affects almost everything we do.

Learning is a more or less permanent change in behavior, or a behavioral tendency, as a result of experience. There are several points to be made about this definition. First, learning is “more or less"' permanent. This suggests that although learning tends to resist change once it is acquired, it sometimes does change. Learning can be forgotten. Learning is sometimes subject to a process known as txiinciioH (to be explained later). Also, what has been learned can sometimes be shaped or modified. So learning is far from permanent.

Second., the term behavioral tendency indicates that learning is sometimes dormant, that it does not reflect itself in immediate action. This phenomenon is called bitni Itaming and it too will be discussed later.

Third., note the focus on the word experience in the definition. In order to learn it is necessary to receive information. This is done through our sense organs.

Imagine an infant bom without vision or hearing. It would be terribly difficult for that infant to learn and develop normal intelligence. If the infant had no sense of touch or smell or balance., then learning would be next to impossible.