Learned Behaviors

1. Animal Behavior

2. Learned Behaviors
 Behaviors animals are NOT born with
 Acquired / Modified by experience
 Behaviors are learned from observations
and experience
 Often learned from parents

3. Types of Learned Behavior
 Non-Associative Learning
 Habituation
 Sensitization
 Associative Learning
 Classical Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning (Trial and Error)
 Latent Learning
 Imprinting
 Insight (Reasoning)

4. Non-Associative Leaning
 Organisms change their response to a
stimuli without association with a positive or
negative reinforcement.
 2 Types:
1. Habituation
2. Sensitization

5. Habituation
 A decrease in response to a stimulus after
repeat exposure
 Less sensitive to stimuli
 Eliminates responses that have no value on
an animals survival or welfare.
 Helps prevent waste of energy

6. Sensitization
 The increase that occurs in an organism’s
responsiveness to stimuli following an especially
intense or irritating stimulus.
 More sensitive to stimuli
 Depending on the intensity and duration of the
original stimulus, the period of increased
responsiveness can last from several seconds to
several days.

7. Classical Conditioning
 Experiment by Ivan Pavlov
 Pavlov began to observe salivation in dogs
1. He would enter the room and place
meat powder or a food morsel on
tongue and wait for salivation to occur
2. He began to see that the dogs were
salivating as soon as he entered the room,
which was before any food was even in
sight.
3. The dogs became conditioned by Pavlov to have
expectations. When he entered the room, the dogs
expected food; therefore, they began salivating in
expectation

8. Neutral Stimulus
 A neutral stimulus is something that normally
would not produce any salivation
 Pavlov chose to ring a bell since ringing a bell
would not normally produce salivation in the dogs.
 Pavlov began ringing a bell before placing the
meat powder or item on the dog's tongue
 Each and every time that the bell was rung, meat
powder or food was given to the dog.
 Pavlov repeated these experiments many, many
times.
 Eventually, the bell alone was enough to make the
dogs salivate.
 The dog had learned to associate the sound of the
bell with food.

9. Classical Conditioning in
Summary

10. Unconditioned Stimulus
 Stimulus that leads to a response with NO
training
 Ex. Food

11. Conditioned Stimulus
 A former neutral stimulus that comes to elicit
a given response after pairing with an
unconditioned stimulus.
 Ex. Bell

12. Unconditioned Response
 Automatic Response to an unconditioned
stimulus.
 Ex. Salivate

13. Conditioned Response
 A learned response to a conditioned
stimulus.
 Ex. Salivate

14. What did this prove?
 Pavlov's experiment proved that all animals
could be trained or conditioned to expect a
consequence on the results of previous
experience.

15. Operant Conditioning
 an unassociated behavior becomes
associated with a reward
 B.F. Skinner designed an apparatus called a
"Skinner box" to test the interaction between
UCS and CS

16. Skinner Box
 A rat was placed inside the Skinner box
 If the rat pressed down a lever inside the box then
the box would release a food pellet
 Soon, the rat pressed the lever far more often than
he would just by chance.
 But with each instance of lever pressing, the
operant is reinforced by reward with food.
 The rat learns that pressing the lever is associated
with food, and so he will increasingly press it.

17. Training Rats in a Skinner Box

18. Classical vs. Operant
 In classical conditioning, the animal receives
no benefit from associating the CS with the
UCS.

19. Latent Learning
 When an organism learns something in its
life, but the knowledge is not immediately
expressed.
 Knowledge remains dormant until certain
circumstances allow or require it to be
expressed
 Learning WITHOUT REWARDS!
 No association with a positive or negative
stimulus.

20. Example of Latent Learning
 Place a rat in a maze with no food
 The rat will simply run around the maze,
familiarizing itself with the surroundings.
 If you then return the rat to the same maze the
next day and add food, the rat will find the food
much more quickly then will a rat placed in the
maze with food for the first time.

21. Imprinting
 Process by which a social attachment to a
particular object is formed during a critical
time period.
 Critical Time Period: Prior to birth to
somewhere around 30 hr old
 Early in life when recognition is critical

22. Insight Learning
 Type of learning or problem solving that
happens all-of-a-sudden.
 Prior experience is crucial to learning
 Investigations are difficult because the
learning happens quickly

23. Learning Ability of Domestic Animals
 What learning is possible for domestic
animals?
 Observations of behaviour and experimental
 studies of learning show that they can, for
example, learn to: navigate in their
environment, distinguish the qualities of food,
return to food sources, avoid physical dangers,
minimize predation risk, discriminate individual
animals and respond differentially to individuals
according to previously acquired information.
Studies indicating such abilities are described.

24.  Observations of learning in the real world,
 which domestic animals encounter, offer the
most impressive evidence of their ability.
 Pet-owners are familiar with the abilities of
their animals to learn how to get food and
other resources in their daily lives.
 sheep and cattle are very selective about
what they eat and they have to learn about
all the different plants they encounter.