LEARNING

DR. Shehla Effendi

Assistant professor
Dept. Of psychiatry
ZIAUDDIN MEDICAL UNIVERSITY

You are sitting in the dental office

of your dentist. You cringe when
you hear the whirring of the dental
drill from the next room

A four year old boy pinches his

hand in one of his toys and curses
loudly. His mother looks up in
dismay and says to his father,
where did he pick up this kind of
language

The crowd hushes as an Olympic

diver prepares to execute his dive.
In a bust of motion he propels
himself in to the air and glide
smoothly with a corkscrew
somersault.

WHAT IS LEARNING ?

Learning is a relatively permanent

change in behavior due to experience.

TYPES OF LEARNING
ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING
Connecting events that occur together or
in a sequence
Classical conditioning learning that two
things (stimuli) go together.
Operant conditioning learning that a
behavior leads to a certain consequence.

TYPES OF LEARNING
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

Learning through observing

others and imitating/modeling
after them.

Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning

Unconditioned stimulus (US) leads to the :
Unconditioned response (UR) without learning (prior
experience)
When the US is paired with a neutral stimulus over
time, that stimulus comes to bring about the
Conditioned response (CR) on its own (without the USs
presence). The neutral stimulus is then called the :
Conditioned stimulus

Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning

Acquisition responses are initially learned
best when the CS is there about second
before the US.
Extinction - acquired responses (the CR)
may weaken if the CS is not followed by the
US
Generalization and discrimination CR may
be triggered by stimuli similar to the CS, but
not by dissimilar stimuli

Examples of Learning
Role playing

Phobia
Depression
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Punishment
Positive reinforcement

I met Charlie in 1949. I guess frist

love is always the same. We went
out a lot he used to eat bee man's
gums and he smoked. We then had
a breakup. But the funny thing is
that even now whenever I smell of
cigarette smoke or bee man's gum I
could feel the butterfly dancing all
over my stomach.

Basic processes in classical

learning

Acquisition
Extinction
Spontaneous recovery
Generalization
Discrimination

Operant Conditioning
Learning that a behavior leads to a
certain consequence.

Basic processes in Operant

Conditioning

Thorndike & Skinner

Positive and negative reinforcement
Acquisition, shaping and extinction
Schedules of reinforcement continuous
versus partial (intermittent)

punishment

Operant Conditioning
Application of Operant conditioning
Crime/delinquency & punishment
Attention-seeking behavior
Rewards

Observational Learning
(Modeling)
Albert Bandura
Acquire/learn new behaviors by
observing and imitating others (the
model)
Application of Observational Learning
Therapy overcoming phobias