As we arrived to the end of the second week of our summer semester, we have again finished another chapter in the subject of Psychology that focuses on learning. I, Ikmal will take upon the task to give you guys the breakdown of what we had learned. So grab a cola and prepare to get PSYCH!
Now, as aforementioned, I will be talking(typing) about learning, the act of our mind absorbing the events surrounding us and how it affects our behaviors. The events could be in the form of what we practise or even what we experienced while for a learning to occur, the effects must be relatively permanent and not just a short term understanding. There are also maturation in which something similar to learning occur but is caused due to our genetics and biological systems.
Our studies for this topic are focused on three things that is, classical conditioning, operant conditioning and also behavioral learning. Thus, I made the decisions to follow that flow as I believe that it is a good guideline.
To start off, classical conditioning is a term coined by Ivan Pavlov after his research to understand a dog's digestive system leads to a finding in psychology. His research, which requires him to extract the saliva excreted by the dog, unintentionally revealed that the condition for the saliva to appear can be manipulated. His tendency to ring a bell in conjunction to serving foods causes the dog to saliva even when he only heard the bell even when the food is absent. In this case, the bell, which is a neutral stimulus(when used alone, nothing happen) are paired with the food, which is an unconditioned stimulus(a stimulus that is inherent is something) for a long time that the response ,which is salivating, will react to the bell on its owned. The bell turned into a conditioned stimulus (a stimulus that is learned) which on its own, can triggered a reaction.
We also learned the concepts of classical conditioning which in simplicity is actually the requirements for it to occur. Some of it includes how the neutral stimulus must appear before the unconditioned stimulus and how it must be distinctive. We also learn how stimulus can be generalized. For example, fish and chicken is under one term, food, while canning and shocking is pain. However, there also exist stimulus discrimination where a stimulus, though similar through the conditioned stimulus, is ignored due it having never been paired with the unconditioned stimulus. There are also the idea of a conditioned stimulus creating more conditioned stimulus called higher-order conditioning. Phobias is also included in classical conditioning in which it associates a stimulus with fear. It is also present prominently in conditioned taste aversion in which we associates dangerous affects to how the food looks, tastes, and smells.
Then, we also learned operant conditioning and included in it is punishment, which is not similar but close and tend to be confused with. Operant conditioning, unlike classical conditioning, is voluntary and is learnt through pleasant and unpleasant feelings paired to response. One law in this topic, which is Thorndike's Law of Effect, state and can be simplified to, when a response leads to pleasurable feelings, it will be repeated and vice versa. The main player in this sub chapter is B.F.Skinner with his Skinner box, which while ignoring its ominous name, is actually an experiment in which a rat was put in a box with a lever that dispenses foods. Seeing the food as a reward, the rat will repeat the action of pressing the lever again and again as it is pleasurable.
We learned that in operant conditioning, there exist the Primary and the Secondary reinforcer. Primary reinforcer are stimulus that pertains to the beings' needs like food. Meanwhile, the secondary reinforcer are stimulus that leads to the primary reinforcer such as money which allows the buying of foods. We also learn how to produce this conditioning. One of it includes shaping which is actually reinforcing the act of a being step by step for it to learn a complex behavior. What occurred is successive approximation that is a multiple concurrently done steps that leads to one goal. Another is how the schedule of reinforcing affects the quality of it. Surprisingly, making it varied is more effective as it leads to anticipation and unexpected.
We also learned about positive and negative reinforcement and how both differs from punishments. To put it simply, positive reinforcement is the addition of a pleasurable feeling after a response while negative reinforcement is the elimination of an unpleasant feeling when a respond is done. Meanwhile, punishment is addition of an unpleasant feeling when a respond is done. Punishment can also be done in two ways which is addition of unpleasant feelings or removal which is removing of pleasant feelings.
Another thing we learnt is Cognitive Learning Theory which shows that what the mind thinks will affect our behavior, We then focused on Latent learning using Edward Tolman's rat maze experiment in which it uses the skill it learnt when there is a use for it. Insight can be observed in Wolfgang Kohler's chimp experiment in which the chimpanzees use sticks and boxes as a tool to get bananas without any references. What happens is insight in which they realizes the relationships of the various parts in a problem.There are also Learned Helplessness which is shown by Martin Seligman's experiment on dogs. It shows how a dog which are often shocked without a chance to escape will not escape even when there is an exit if it were later shocked. What happen is the dog believe that it is helpless when it is shocked, thus dissolving any attempt to eliminate that pain.
Finally, we learn of Observational Learning which is the act of learning by observing a model doing it. In our life, especially during childhood, these models more often than not is our parents where we learnt various acts, emotions and feelings based on their reactions. Learning distinction or performance distinction is the observation that learning can take place without the actual performance of the actual behavior. The elements in observational learning includes attention, memory, limitation and motivation.
All in all, this topic focuses on how our mind interprets a cause and its relationship to the effect. We embedded it in our mind and will remember as it reoccurred in our life. It is something that can open our eyes to how something so simple as learning is actually deep, thus the importance of learning psychology in the first place. Thank you.
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