Psychology Notes pages 288-303

Applying Operant Conditioning:

• Define the behavior to be changed.

– Has to be concrete, with a precise goal and precise ways to reach it.
• Make a commitment to change
– Knowledge and commitment.
• Collect data about behavior
-important in decreasing behaviors to see progress
• Design a program of self control.
-long term and short term goals
-positive self-talk to encourage you
• Maintenance- making program a lasting one
– Specific dates for postchecks
– Plan a course of action

Education

• Behavior modification has been shown to improve education of children.

Teaching Machines and Computer instructions:
– Skinner developed teaching machine to help students learn. Today’s version is the
computer, helps with math drill and produce s better results.
• Choosing Effective Reinforcers
– The Premack principle: high-probability activity can be used to reinforce a low-
probability activity. Probability means likelihood of occurrence.

How does observational learning occur?

• We can acquire knowledge, skills, rules, strategies, beliefs and attitudes by observing
other people.
• Observational learning: Also called imitation or modeling. Learning by observing
and then imitating another person’s behavior.
• Eliminates trial and error learning. Takes less time than operant conditioning.
• Bandura described four processes in observational learning: attention, retention,
motor reproduction, and reinforcement.
 – You must pay attention to be able to reproduce the action
– Retention means you have to store it in your memory so you can recall it
– Production means to imitate the model’s actions.
– Reinforcement is necessary to fully learn the action.

Purposive Behavior

• EC Tolman (1932) talked about the purposiveness of behavior. He thought that behavior
was mostly goal-oriented.
• Our behaviors aren’t just because they’ve been reinforced, but because it’s a means to
attain some goal that we keep in mind.

Expectancy Learning and Information

• Tolman went beyond Pavlov and Skinner to focus on cognitive mechanisms.

• Classical and operant conditioning occur and the organism starts to acquire certain
expectations.
• We get the expectancies from our experiences in the environment.
• Cognitive maps are one type of expectancy
– Organisms form cognitive maps that are made up of expectancies
– Mental representation of the structure of physical spaces.
– We all form cognitive maps of our locations on small and large scales.

Latent Learning

• Latent Learning is unreinforced learning that is not immediately reflected in behavior.

• Stored cognitively but not expressed in a behavior
• Shows itself in animals exploring their surroundings. Might not benefit immediately, but
is beneficial for the future when it might be needed.

Insight Learning

• Insight Learning is a form of problem solving in which an organism gains sudden

insight into a problem’s solution.
• Think Kohler and Apes – stacking boxes.
Biological Constraints

• The structure of an organisms body allows for and prohibits certain kinds of learning
• Instinctive Drift: tendency of animals to revert to instinctive behavior that interferes
with learning.

Preparedness and Taste Aversion

• Preparedness is the species-specific biological predisposition to learn in certain ways

but no others.
• Another biological constraint to learning is taste aversion.
– If you get sick from something you tend to develop a taste aversion to it.