CHAPTER 6

LEARNING
LEARNING DEFINITION
“Any relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by
experience”.
FEATURES OF LEARNING
1. Learning always involves some kinds of experience.
2. Behavioural changes that occur due to learning are relatively permanent.
3. Learning involves a sequence of psychological events.
4. Learning is an inferred process and is different from performance.
PARADIGMS OF LEARNING

 Conditioning: Classical conditioning and instrumental/operant conditioning.

 Observational learning
 Cognitive learning
 Verbal learning
 Skill learning

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: This type of learning was first investigated by Ivan P. Pavlov.
The Learning situation in classical conditioning is one of S–S learning in which one stimulus (e.g.,
sound of bell) becomes a signal of another stimulus (e.g., food).
One stimulus signifies the possible occurrence of another stimulus.
EXPERIMENT: (Study from Text Book)
The procedure of classical conditioning:

Stages of Nature of Stimulus Nature of Response

conditioning
Before Food (US) Salivation (UR)
Sound of the bell (N) No specific response
During Sound of the bell (CS)+Food (US) Salivation (UR)
After Sound of the bell (CS) Salivation (CR)

US- Unconditioned Stimulus N-Neutral Stimulus UR-Unconditioned Response

CS-Conditioned Stimulus CR-Conditioned Response
Classical conditioning in everyday life: BALLOON and CHILD example (Page No.110)
Determinants of Classical Conditioning:
 Time Relations between Stimuli
 Type of Unconditioned Stimuli
 Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli

1. Time Relations between Stimuli: There are four types classical conditioning procedures.
The first three are called forward conditioning procedures, and the fourth one is called
backward conditioning procedure.
 Simultaneous conditioning: When the CS and US are presented together
 Delayed conditioning: The onset of CS precedes the onset of US. The CS ends
before the end of the US.
 Trace conditioning: The onset and end of the CS precedes the onset of US with
some time gap between the two.
 Backward conditioning: The US precedes the onset of CS.
2. Type of Unconditioned Stimuli: There are basically of two types unconditioned stimuli in
studies of classical conditioning i.e. appetitive and aversive. It has been found that
 Appetitive unconditioned stimuli: Automatically elicits approach responses, such
as eating, drinking, caressing, etc. These responses give satisfaction and pleasure.
Appetitive classical conditioning is slower and requires greater number of
acquisition trials
 Aversive unconditioned stimuli: Elicit avoidance and escape responses, such as
noise, bitter taste, electric shock, painful injections, etc. They are painful and
harmful. Aversive classical conditioning is established in one, two or three trials
depending on the intensity of the aversive US.
3. Intensity of Conditioned Stimuli: The more intense the conditioned stimulus, the fewer
are the number of acquisition trials needed for conditioning.
OPERANT/INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONING: This type of conditioning was first investigated by
B.F. Skinner. (SKINNER BOX EXPERIMENT- study from textbook Page No.111&112)
 Operants: Those behaviors or responses, which are emitted by animals and human
beings voluntarily and are under their control.
 Operant/Instrumental conditioning: a form of learning in which behaviour is learned,
maintained or changed through its consequences.
 Instrumental conditioning: Operant conditioning is also called instrumental conditioning
because the response is (liver pressing) instrumental in getting the food (consequence).
In real life one learns to operate mechanical gadgets such as radio, camera, T.V., etc.
based on the principle of instrumental conditioning.
 Reinforcer: Any stimulus or event, which increases the probability of the occurrence of
a (desired) response.
Determinants of Operant Conditioning:
 Types of Reinforcement
 Number of Reinforcement and other Features
 Schedules of Reinforcement
 Delayed Reinforcement
a) Types of Reinforcement:
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
Positive reinforcement involves Negative reinforcers involve
stimuli that have pleasant unpleasant and painful stimuli.
consequences.
They strengthen and maintain the Lead organisms to get rid of painful
responses that have caused them to stimuli or avoid and escape from them
occur.
Positive reinforcers satisfy needs, Negative reinforcement leads to
which include food, water, medals, learning of avoidance and escape
praise, money, status, information, responses. For instance, one learns to
etc. put on woolen clothes, burn firewood
or use electric heaters to avoid the
unpleasant cold weather.

NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT PUNISHMENT

Negative reinforcer increases the Punishment reduces or suppresses
probability of avoidance or escape the response.
response.

b) Number of Reinforcement and other Features: It refers to the number of trials on

which an organism has been reinforced or rewarded. Amount of reinforcement
means how much of reinforcing stimulus (food or water or intensity of pain
causing agent) one receives on each trial. Quality of reinforcement refers to the
kind of reinforce. The course of operant conditioning is usually accelerated to an
extent as the number, amount, and quality of reinforcement increases.
c) Schedules of Reinforcement: partial reinforcement and has been found to
produce greater resistance to extinction – than is found with continuous
reinforcement.
CONTINUOUS REINFORCEMENT PARTIAL REINFORCEMENT
Participant is given reinforcement Responses are sometimes reinforced,
after each target response sometimes not.

d) Delayed Reinforcement: delay in the delivery of reinforcement leads to poorer

level of performance.
KEY LEARNING PROCESSES

 Reinforcement: Systematic use of reinforcers can lead to the desired response. Such a
response is shaped by reinforcing successive approximations to the desired response.
Different types of reinforcement are Positive & Negative Reinforcement (read types of
reinforcement), Primary and secondary reinforcement.
PRIMARY REINFORCEMENT SECONDARY REINFORCEMENT
Biologically important since it determines Acquired characteristics of the reinforcer
the organism’s survival because of the organism’s experience with
the environment.
E.g., food for a hungry organism E.g., money, praise, and grades

 Extinction: Disappearance of a learned response due to removal of reinforcement from

the situation in which the response used to occur. Resistance to extinction means that
even though the learned response is now not reinforced, it would continue to occur for
some time.
 Generalisation & Discrimination: Generalisation occurs due to failure of discrimination
GENERALISATION DISCRIMINATION
Responding similarly to similar stimuli. Response caused by difference in stimuli.
It represents the occurrence or elicitation Discriminative response depends on the
of learned response by a new stimulus. discrimination capacity of the organism.
For instance, in the absence of mother, a For example, a child who is scared of all
child is able to find the jar of chocolates. men with moustache may not be scared of
clean shaved men

 Spontaneous recovery: Spontaneous recovery occurs after a learned response is

extinguished in which the learned response recovers and occurs to the CS after lapse of
considerable time. The amount of spontaneous recovery depends on the duration of the
time lapsed after the extinction session. The longer the duration of time lapsed, the
greater is the recovery of learned response.
Learn Phenomenon of spontaneous recovery Fig. 6(3).Page No. 115
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING: Introduced by Albert Bandura
Study EXPERIMENT from Textbook (Page No. 116)

 Children learn social behaviour and acquire personality characteristics by observing and
emulating adults (Social learning). It is a form of learning that takes place by observing
others. Hence it is called modeling which is a form of observational learning. The
observers acquire knowledge by observing the model.
  Children learn various personality characteristics through observational learning. For
instance, traits like aggressiveness, pro-social behaviour, courtesy, politeness, diligence
and indolence are acquired through observational learning.
 A negative role model would lead to the development of negative personality while a
positive role model would lead to the development of good personality of the child.
COGNITIVE LEARNING: Focus on such processes that occur during learning rather than
concentrating solely on S-R and S-S connections.

 Insight Learning: Introduced by Kohler Study the experiment text book page No.117
1. It refers to the process through which the solution to a problem suddenly becomes
clear.
2. The problem is presented after which a period of time follows without apparent
progress and finally a solution suddenly emerges.
3. The solution can be repeated immediately the next time the problem is confronted.
4. Learning is not a specific set of conditioned associations between stimuli and responses
but a cognitive relationship between a means and an end. Thus, it can be generalised to
similar problems
 Latent Learning: Introduced by Tolman
1. A new behaviour is learnt but not demonstrated until the reinforcement is provided for
displaying it.
2. Tolman explained it with an experiment on rats wherein the rats were grouped into
two, and one group was given food at the end of maze, while the other group was not
given any food. However, after being reinforced these rats ran through the maze as
efficiently as the group that was given food.
VERBAL LEARNING: Limited to human beings. Methods used in Studying Verbal Learning are,
(i) Paired Associates Learning
 This method is used to learn foreign languages. A list of paired-associates is prepared and
the first word is used as a stimulus, while the second word is used as a response.
 Members of the each pair may be from the same language or two different languages.
 The learner is first shown both the stimulus-response pairs and instructed to remember
and recall the response after the presentation of each stimulus term.
 This continues until the participant remembers all the response words without any error.
 The total number of trials taken to reach the criterion becomes the measure of paired
associates learning.
(ii) Serial Learning
 This method is used to find out the ways through which participants learn the lists of
verbal items and the processes involved in it.
  The participant is presented with a list of nonsense syllables, most familiar or least familiar
words and interrelated words. Then, he/she is required to produce the items in the same
serial order.
 During the first trial, the participant is shown the first item after which he/she has to
produce the second item. If the participant fails to do that then the second item is
presented and the participant has to produce the third.
 The learning trials continue until the participant remembers all the items in the given
order.
(iii) Free Recall
 The participants in this method are presented with a list of words to read and speak out.
After this, they are required to remember the words in any order.
 This method is used to study the kind of organisation of words made by the participants
in order to store them in memory.
Determinants of Verbal Learning:

 Meaningfulness of the material: The number of associations elicited in a fixed time,

familiarity of the material and frequency of usage, relations among the words in the list,
and sequential dependence of each word of the list on the preceding words, are used for
assessing meaningfulness.
 Length of the list to be learned: Learning time increases with increase in length of the
list, occurrence of words with low association values or lack of relations among the items
in the list. Total time principle states that fixed amount of time is necessary to learn a
fixed amount of material, regardless of the number of trials into which that time is
divided. The more time it takes to learn, the stronger becomes the learning.
SKILL LEARNING: A skill is defined as the ability to perform some complex task smoothly and
efficiently. A skill consists of a chain of perceptual motor responses or as a sequence of S-R
associations.
Phases of Skill Acquisition:

 Cognitive phase: The learner has to understand and memorise the instructions, and also
understand how the task has to be performed. In this phase, every outside cue,
instructional demand, and one’s response outcome have to be kept alive in
consciousness.
 Associative phase: Different sensory inputs or stimuli are linked with appropriate
responses. As the practice increases, errors decrease, performance improves and time
taken is also reduced.
 Autonomous phase: In this phase, two important changes take place in performance: the
attentional demands of the associative phase decrease, and interference created by
external factors reduces. Finally, skilled performance attains automaticity with minimal
demands on conscious effort.
FACTORS FACILITATING LEARNING:

 Motivation: Motivation is a prerequisite for learning because it energises the organism to

act vigorously in order to attain some goal. It provides a purpose to actions that continue
till the goal is attained and the need is satisfied. It also provides impetus to the need for
survival and growth that is essential for learning. Thus, an organism works harder when
the motivation is high. For example, a student studies in order to achieve a good result.
This is because the student is motivated towards a good result for which s/he learns to
achieve a specific goal.
 Continuous and Partial reinforcement: It has been found that extinction of a response is
more difficult following partial reinforcement than following continuous reinforcement.
The fact that the responses acquired under partial reinforcement are highly resistant to
extinction is called partial reinforcement effect.
 Preparedness for Learning: The notion of 'preparedness for learning' means that an
organism can learn only those associations that it is genetically prepared to acquire. It
implies the biological constraints upon learning due to sensory capacities and response
abilities. This is because the kinds of S-S or S-R learning an organism can acquire, depends
upon the associative mechanism it is genetically endowed with. The dimension of
preparedness consists of learning tasks that are easy for members of particular species to
those tasks that they are unsuited to learn. Therefore, while on one hand preparedness
for learning is a dimension where the members are prepared to learn tasks, on the other
hand members are not prepared for the learning task. In the middle lie those learning
tasks whereby people are neither prepared, nor unprepared.

LEARNING DISABILITY: It refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested in terms of

difficulty in the acquisition of learning, reading, writing, speaking, reasoning, and mathematical
activities. Symptoms of Learning Disabilities are :
 They have difficulty in reading and writing letters, words, phrases and speaking. They
suffer from hearing problems without any auditory defect
 They have disorders of attention and get distracted easily leading to hyperactivity.
 They have poor space orientation and inadequate sense of time. They also have difficulty
in getting oriented to new surroundings and feel lost. They get confused in following
directions and misjudge right, left, up and down.
 These children have poor motor coordination and manual dexterity.
 They are unable to understand and follow oral directions.
 They misjudge relationships as to the classmates who are friendly and the ones who are
not and are unable to comprehend various body languages.
 They show perceptual disorders which includes visual, auditory, tactual and kinesthetic
misperception.
 Many learning disabled children suffer from dyslexia and fail to copy letters and words
and do not learn to organise verbal materials.

Study differences between classical conditioning from text book Box 6(1) page No.113
Study Learned Helplessness from text book Box 6(2) page No.114