Learning
This domain tests conditioning processes and the schedules and contingencies that strengthen or weaken behaviour, plus observational and cognitive accounts.
Definition
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential produced by experience. Maturation, fatigue, injury and drugs are excluded because they are not learning.
Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
An unconditioned stimulus (UCS) elicits an unconditioned response (UCR). A neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with the UCS becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) that elicits a conditioned response (CR). Key processes: acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalisation and discrimination. Food (UCS) produces salivation (UCR); after repeated bell-plus-food trials, the bell alone produces salivation.
Operant conditioning (Skinner)
Consequences shape voluntary behaviour. Reinforcement increases a response - positive by adding something pleasant, negative by removing something unpleasant. Punishment decreases a response - positive by adding something aversive, negative by removing something pleasant. Schedules are ratio or interval, fixed or variable; variable schedules produce the greatest resistance to extinction.
Other accounts
- Observational learning (Bandura): attention, retention, reproduction, motivation; modelling without direct reinforcement.
- Insight learning (Köhler): sudden perceptual restructuring rather than trial and error.
- Latent learning (Tolman): learning occurs without reinforcement and shows up later in performance.
Worked example
A teacher scolds a pupil each time he calls out. If calling out then falls, the scolding worked as positive punishment. If calling out rises instead - because scolding supplies attention - the same scolding has functioned as a reinforcer. The effect on behaviour, not the teacher's intention, defines the contingency.
Traps
Calling the removal of a privilege 'negative reinforcement' when it is negative punishment; treating negative reinforcement as a form of punishment; equating extinction with forgetting.