1. Learning

2. Learning
• Change in behavior due to experience with environment
• Basic reflex between stimulus and response
• Associative learning
o Classical conditioning
o Operant conditioning
• Non-Associative learning
o Habituation
o Sensitization

3. Associative Learning
• Classical conditioning
o Pavlov’s dogs
- Measured amount of saliva produced by presenting
dogs with meat powder
- When food dispenser made a sound to deliver food,
the dogs salivated before it was delivered
- Dogs learned to associate the sound with delivery of
food

5. Associative Learning
• Classical conditioning
o Acquisition and extinction
o Stimulus generalization
o Stimulus discrimination

6. Associative Learning
• Classical conditioning
o Little Albert

7. Associative Learning
• Operant conditioning
o Learning to operate on the environment to produce a
certain change that leads to a reward
o Behavior is strengthened if it is reinforced and
weakened if it is punished/not reinforced
o Reinforcement is dependent on organism’s behavior

8. Associative Learning
• Operant conditioning
o Pigeon learns to touch a lighted key for reinforcement
(Skinner, 1938)

9. Associative Learning
• Operant conditioning
o Thorndike’s Law of Effect
- If a consequence is pleasant, the behavior will
become more frequent in the future
- If a consequence is unpleasant, the behavior
becomes less likely to occur in the future
o In classical conditioning, the controlling stimulus comes
before a behavior – in operant conditioning, the
controlling stimulus comes after a behavior

10. Associative Learning
• Operant conditioning
o Thorndike’s Puzzle Box

11. Associative Learning
• Reinforcement
o Positive reinforcement = presentation of a pleasant stimulus
o Negative reinforcement = removal of an unpleasant stimulus
- Escape/Avoidance learning
• Punishment
o Presentation of an aversive stimulus (spanking a child)
o “Bring a negative”
• Omission
o Terminate a pleasant stimulus (withholding a paycheck)
o “Stop a positive”

12. Associative Learning
• Schedules of reinforcement
o Fixed ratio
o Variable ratio
o Fixed interval
o Variable interval

13. Non-Associative Learning
• Habituation
o Decreased strength of a response after repeated
presentations of a stimulus
• Sensitization
o Repeated stimuli creates higher sensitivity
• Modeling
o Observing another’s behavior and then imitating
that behavior