Learning

What is Learning?

• A relatively permanent change caused by experience– Learn about events themselves– Learn about relationships

• Permits adaptation to an ever-changing environment

• Simple forms of learning are shared with other animals

Nonassociative

• Habituation (less responsive to an event over trials)

• Sensitization (more responsive to a event over trials or more responsive because we are aroused)

Associative Learning

• Pavlovian/Classical (learning about the relationship between a signal and a biologically potent event)

• Instrumental/Operant (learning about the relationship between our own responses and their consequences)

Pavlov’s Apparatus

Classical Conditioning

Changes Over Timein the Strength of a CR

Stimulus Generalization

Signaling of Biologically Potent Events

• Is the CR always similar to the UR?– Answer: CR not always a copy of UR

• opposite (drug tolerance)• unrelated (freeze)

• Basic features– automatic and effortless, incremental, usually

beneficial (expected versus spontaneous sex)

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Drug Tolerance and Conditioning

Initial Response to Drug:relaxation, pain reduction, warmth, peacefulness,constipation

Compensatory CRs

Learned Response to Signals for Drug :agitation, pain, hypothermia, aggression, diarrhea

Overdose Death

Response to large dose unopposed by learned compensatory response causes death

Siegel’s Result

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Benefits of Expected Sex

Karen Hollis Link

Benefits of Expected Sex

Benefits of Expected Sex

Factors

• Timing (aka “when”)

• Predictability (aka “whether”)

• UCS Intensity

• CS Attention

• Biopreparedness (aka “marriage”)– e.g., conditioned taste aversions

• Higher-Order Conditioning (aka “guilt by association”)

“Guilt by Association”

Some Applications of Classical Conditioning

• Phobias– Intense, irrational fears of objects or

situations.– Systematic desensitization uses classical

conditioning principles to extinguish fears.

• Taste aversion and chemotherapy

• Enuresis

• Advertising

Garcia’s Experiment

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