Learning

On week two of the Summer Semester, we have learnt about "Learning".

Classical Conditioning

Based on the Thesaurus Dictionary, classical conditioning is defined by a learning process by which a subject comes to respond in a specific way to a previously neutral stimulus after the subject repeatedly encounters the neutral stimulus together with another stimulus that already elicits the response.

As for an example, the above diagram shows that the dog excretes saliva (unconditioned response) when it saw the food (unconditioned stimulus). Before the classical conditioning process, when the  bell (neutral stimulus) is ringed, there is no salivation. Then, the bell is ringed, followed by the presence of food, the salivation occur. After many trials done repeatedly, the dog learned that whenever there is a sound of bell, there will be food for it. In the end, the salivation will occur when the bell ringed, even without the presence of the food. At this stage, the sound of the bell will become conditioned stimulus, whereas the salivation will become conditioned response.

            There are some disadvantages of this classical conditioning as we are able to create fear in any animals and even the human. For a simple example, please click on the video!

            
As you can see, the kid learned that whenever there is a “quack” sound, something will hit him from the back. This simple experiment done to human to show that even human can be conditioned. This situation might get worse if the fear of the duck sound continues until he grows up. He might get a phobia of any duck sound.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning - depends on consequences and involves reinforcements and punishments.

Reinforcements

Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is giving something pleasant for a behaviour or an attitude. This increases the probability that the behaviour will continue. Examples are:

• Receiving praise after a musical performance would increase the amount that you perform.
• A teacher complimenting students when they answer correctly will increase that behaviour.
• At a gym, customers receive a discount if they work out a certain number of times and eat healthy.
• In the Skinner Box experiment, a rat got food as a reward for acceptable behavior, such as pressing a lever.

Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement is taking away something unpleasant as a result of the behavior that is acceptable. This is also meant to increase the behaviour. Examples are:

• It is very noisy outside so you turn on the television to mask the noise. Turning on the radio decreased the unpleasant noise.
• At a store, a child throws a tantrum because he did not get a candy bar. Dad finally gets him one. He stopped the tantrum so he took away something unpleasant and Dad’s behavior of getting candy bars will increase.
• In the Skinner box experiment, a loud noise continuously sounded inside the cage until the rat did what Skinner wanted him to do. When he did, the noise stopped, so the unpleasant noise was taken away. 
• In a biology class, students who made an "A" on the test did not have to dissect a frog.

Shaping

Shaping is all about changing behavior gradually, step by step. For example, when training circus animals, a trainer cannot immediately expect them to master a new trick. A lion jumping through a hoop should first be trained to stay in a hoop, walk through a hoop, hop through a hoop, and then, jump through a hoop.

Schedules of Reinforcement

Schedules of reinforcement are divided into two which are ratios and intervals. Ratio is something that related with amount while interval is something that related with time.  In ratio we have fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement and variable ratio schedules of reinforcement. Same things go to interval, we have fixed interval schedules of reinforcement and variable interval schedules of reinforcement. 

Fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement	The amount you need to achieve or get in order to get the reward will always be the same. For example, you need to sell 5 cars in order to get paid RM 10 000. In the example, the amount you need to achieve is selling 5 cars and you will get RM 10 000 as the reward. So for every 5 cars you sell, you will be paid RM 10 000.
Variable schedules of reinforcement	The amount you need to achieve or get in order to get the reward are different for every trial or event. For example for the first month you will be rewarded RM 10 000 for every 5 cars you sold. For the second month you         will be rewarded RM 15 000 for every 7 cars you sold and for the third month you will be rewarded RM 7000 for every 3 cars you sold. From the example, we can see that the amount of cars that you need to sell is different in the 3 months in order to be rewarded.
Fixed interval schedules of reinforcement	In easy way to explain this term, you need to pass a certain time in order to get the reinforcement and the time will be always be the same. For example, the person who is working with the government, they need to wait until the end of the month before they receive their salary.
Variable interval schedules of reinforcement	You need to pass a certain of time in order to get the reinforcement and the time is different for every trial or event. The easiest example in order to understand this term is fishing. During fishing you need to wait before you a get a fish. Let say, after 15 minutes of waiting you caught your first fish and 30 minutes later you caught your second fish. This example actually explained that you will not know for how long you need to wait before you can catch a fish.

Punishment

Punishment are events or objects that makes a response less likely to happen again.

1. Punishment by Application

Punishment by application is also known as positive punishment. It involves the presence of an undesirable stimulus after a behavior. As an example, when a student misbehaves, a teacher might cane the child as a form of punishment by application. When the child experiences the pain and humiliation of being caned, he will stop misbehaving.

2. Punishment by Removal

Punishment by removal is known as negative punishment. It involves the removal of a pleasurable stimulus after a behavior. Let us use the example of the child misbehaving again. When the student misbehaves, the teacher will take away a desirable stimulus, such as the student's recess time away from him.

How To Make Punishment More Effective

1. Punishment should follow the behavior it is meant to punish.

The time interval between response and punishment should be kept as short as possible. For example, when the teacher catches the student misbehaving, the teacher should immediately punish the child.

2. Punishment should be consistent.

Consistency in punishment is imperative. For example, if a teacher punishes the child once for misbehavior, then the teacher should punish the child for every misbehavior.

3. Punishment of the wrong behavior should be paired, whenever possible, with reinforcement of the right behavior.

Punishment of the wrong behavior when paired with reinforcement of the right behavior would make the right behavior more prominent. For example, when the child is behaving well, then the teacher should give them a cookie.

Cognitive Learning Theory

• -          is a learning that requires cognition which is thinking process.
• -          Cognition in other words are the mental events that take place inside a person’s mind while  behaviour could no longer be ignored.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness can be seen not only in animals, but in humans as well. In fact, we believe that learned helplessness impacts students such as ourselves more than we realize. For example, an ample amount of students have had a monstrous result in a Calculus test or quiz. If the student has experienced failure enough times, then the student would feel that no matter what he does, he would always fail (helplessness). Later in life, when a student is faced with a math challenge, the student might have a sense of helplessness.

http://izquotes.com/quote/165502

Latent Learning

-          is a learning that remains hidden until its application become useful.

-          For example, when you observe the ways your mother cooks chicken curry. You gain the knowledge but you do not apply it until at one particular time, when you are alone and you want to eat chicken curry, you will apply the knowledge that you have learned by observing your mom.

Insight also is one of the most popular behavior in psychology

• -          It is the sudden perception of relationships among various parts of problem, allowing the solution to the problem to come quickly and it cannot be gained through trial-and-error learning alone.
• -          We can notice this behaviour by the presence of “Aha moment”.
• -          The most popular experiment is regarding a chimpanzee was given two sticks that can be combined together. Then the monkey was given a banana and it had to take the banana by using that particular sticks. At the end of the experiment, the chimpanzee managed to grab the banana by combining these sticks. This experiment showed that the chimpanzee didn’t learn how to combining the sticks but its sudden perception that the sticks can be combined together had helped it to grab the banana.
• -          In our daily life, we also usually use our insight to solve many problems but sometimes we just did not notice it. 

Observational Learning

A child can be too aggressive after watching the video that shows people fighting with each other and they can be either way when they are watching the video with good values. This is because during the session, they are observing every action that came out in the video. This is called observational learning. Observational learning is learning new behavior by watching a model perform that behavior. So, we need to be very careful with every action that we do in front of the child because they tend to follow us. They observe what we do and then, they will try to do it. For example, when we are smoking in front of them, there is no doubt they will try smoking too. This can be proven through the experiment that had been conducted by Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila Ross (1963). In this experiment, they asked two groups of children to watch films in which an adult or a cartoon character violently attacked an inflated ‘Bobo” doll. Another group watched a different film. They then left the children in a room with a Bobo doll. Only the children who had watched films with attacks on the doll attacked the doll themselves, using many of the same movements they had just seen. This shows that it is really important for us to be a good model for the children. If not, there will be many bad consequences to the children. The clear implication is that children copy the aggressive behavior they have seen in other.