LEARNING

BEHAVIORAL APPROACH TO LEARNING

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 Content
The behavioral approach to learning
 Classical conditioning
 Operant conditioning
 Applied Behavior Analysis
 Social Learning Model
 Self-regulation

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 Learning
 Do we learn everything that we know?
 Swallowing ×
 Using smartphone ✓
 Blinking when an object comes too close to our eyes ×
 Driving a car ✓
 Speaking ✓

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 Learning
 «a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge»
(Woolfolk,1993,p.196)

 The change might be deliberate or unintentional, for better or

for worse, correct or incorrect, and conscious or unconscious.

 There are different approaches to learning:

 Behavioral
 Cognitive
 Humanistic

 As a teacher, in order to fulfil your students’ needs you should

be able to decide:
 Which to use
 When
 How
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 Behavioral learning

 According to Aristotle, we remember things together

 When they are similar
 When they contrast
 When they are contiguous.
Contiguity: Association of two or more events/concepts because of
repeated pairing.
According to the contiguity principle, they will become associated
whenever two or more sensations occur together often. Later, when
only one of these sensations (a stimulus) occurs, the other will be
remembered, too (a response) (Rachlin,1991).
Examples: The smell of an apple pie → my aunt
The sound of the dentist’s drill → tension in the neck
muscle

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 Classical conditioning (Ivan Pavlov)
 Basic assumption: The learning process is to respond to a
stimulus which is not naturally associated with that response.

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 Basic concepts of classical conditioning
Basic concepts Definitions
Neutral stimulus (NS) Stimulus not connected to a response

Unconditioned stimulus Stimulus that automatically produces an

(UCS) emotional/physiological response

Unconditioned
response(UCR) Naturally occurring emotional/physiological
response

Conditioned stimulus Stimulus that evokes an emotional/physiological

(CS) response after conditioning

Conditioned response Learned response to a previously neutral stimulus

(CR)

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 Classical conditioning examples from
classrooms

Positive example: A song Negative example: A

could be neutral for the child can develop fear of
child until he joins in with the classroom if she
other classmates to sing it associates the classroom
with accompanying with criticism, so the
positive feelings. criticism becomes a
conditioned stimulus for
fear.

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 Generalization, Discrimination, and
Extinction

 Generalization in classical conditioning involves the tendency of a new

stimulus similar to the original CS to produce a similar response.
 Example: In John B. Watson's famous Little Albert Experiment, a small child
was conditioned to fear a white rat. The child demonstrated stimulus
generalization by exhibiting fear in response to other fuzzy white objects,
including stuffed toys and Watson’s hair.

 Discrimination in classical conditioning occurs when the organism

responds to certain stimuli but not others.
 Example: In the case of the students taking the test in different classes, she
does not become nearly as nervous about taking a Turkish or a history test
because they are very different subject areas.

 Extinction in classical conditioning involves weakening the CR in the

absence of the UCS.
 Example: Güneş used to write small notes with drawing to her every day, and
her mother would put the notes on the mirror in her bedroom and tell Güneş
how nice the notes were. Lately, her mother hasn’t been putting her notes on
the mirror, and now Güneş has stopped writing notes to her.

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 Operant Conditioning(B. F. Skinner)

 Basic assumption: Voluntary responses are strengthened or

weakened as a result of their consequences

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 Classical vs. Operant

Classical Operant

Organism is active
Organism is passive
Responses are voluntary
Behaviors are involuntary.

Environmental event
Behavior precedes
precedes behavior (CS
environmental event.
precedes CR)

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 Operant Conditioning
 Operant conditioning =
Instrumental conditioning

 Operant conditioning is a form of

learning in which the
consequences of behavior
produce changes in the
probability that the behavior will
occur.
Positive reinforcement → Increases
behavior by presenting something
desired after a response.
 Ex: Ali gets money from his father
for cleaning the garden
 Ex: Ece’s teacher gives high five
to her, when Ece solves the math
problem

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 Operant Conditioning

Negative reinforcement → Increases behavior

by removing an aversive stimulus after a
response.
Ex: Having a shower to get rid of bed smell
Ex: Wearing the seat belt to stop the annoying
beeping sound in your car

Both (positive and negative reinforcement)

increases the probability of the response being
repeated.
 Reinforcer/Rewarding Stimulus
Primary reinforcement examples: Food, water,
sex, and shelter.
Secondary reinforce examples: Money, praise,
good grades, and awards.

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 Operant Conditioning
 Punishment: to decrease undesirable behavior

 Presentation punishment (Type I) = Positive punishment

 Reducing behaviors through presentation of an undesired consequence
 Kerim gets caught by his teacher throwing various paper trash around the
laboratory (behavior). After class, Kerim must stay and clean up all the paper
trash along with any other trash in the laboratory(undesired consequence).
 Ayza messed up her neighbor's car on purpose. When her parent realize the
situation, they made Ayza write a letter of apology to their neighbor.

 Removal punishment (Type II, time-out) = Negative punishment

 Decreasing behaviors by removing something desired immediately after the
behavior has occurred
 Ayşe fights with her brother (behavior) and has her favorite toy taken away
(reinforcing stimulus removed).
 A child yells out in a restaurant (behavior), loses the chance of eating her
favorite cake after the dinner (reinforcing stimulus removed).

 Punishment/Aversive Stimulus
 Primary punisher examples: Pain, extreme heat/cold.
 Secondary punisher examples: Criticism, fines, bad grades.

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Operant Conditioning

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Book suggestion

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 Operant Conditioning

 Discrimination: When an individual learns to notice the

unique aspects of seemingly similar situations and thus
different ways of responding

 Cueing provides a stimulus to learners to display the desired

behavior.

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 Reinforcement Schedule

 Continuous reinforcement: Reinforcing continuously

 Intermittent reinforcement: situations where responses are only periodically

reinforced.

 Types of intermittent reinforcement:

 Interval → based on the passage of time
 Ratio → based on the number of responses

 Fixed interval schedule: Reinforcement occurs after a specific amount of time

 Variable interval schedule: Reinforcement occurs after a random amount of

time

 Fixed ratio schedule: Reinforcement occurs after a specific number of

responses

 Variable ratio schedule: Reinforcement occurs after a random number of

responses

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Reinforcement Schedule

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Applied Behavior Analysis

 Behavioral modification: to
strengthen desirable
behaviors and to decrease
undesirable behaviors by
using a behavioral approach
1. Specify the behavior to be
changed
2. Plan a specific
intervention to reduce the
behavior or to reinforce it
3. Track the results and
modify the plan if
necessary
 Strategies to Reinforce Positive
Behavior
 Reinforcing with teacher attention: giving attention to
students when they exhibit positive behaviors and
ignoring students when they present undesirable
behaviors
 Ex: Give attention to the student who raises her finger to
speak and ignore the one who speaks without permission.

 Token reinforcement: reinforcing with a small gain. e.g.,

points, gold stars, minuses, and plusses
 Ex: Giving a smiling face sticker to a preschooler who ate
whole food on her plate

 The Primack principle: Grandma’s rule, “first tidy up your

room, then you can go out to play”
 Ex: First, finish your homework, then allocate time for social
media.
 Strategies to Reinforce Positive
Behavior
 Shaping: Reducing complex behaviors into several more simple behaviors;
Reinforcing successive approximations to the complex behavior
 Ex: putting the dishes in the dishwasher (6 years-old boy)
 Putting the glasses
 Putting the plates
 Putting the silverware
 Positive practice: assigning a positive behavior to reduce a negative
behavior
 Ex: A child grabs a toy from another child. Instead of
saying, “Use your words,” give the child the words. “Could I
have that when you’re done?”
 Contingency contracts: specifying desirable behaviors and consequent
reinforcements.
 Ex: Academic honesty form that you signed at the beginning of the
semester
 Dealing with undesirable behaviors

 Satiation: insisting that a behavior carried out in excess so that

the behavior is no longer desirable.
 Ex: Making students create high noise levels in the class for five
minutes.

 Reprimand: a criticism of students’ misbehavior.

 Ex: Criticizing chronic latecomer students

 Response cost: punishment is presented in small steps

 In case of late submission of homework, losing 5 points for
each day
 Social isolation/time-out: the removal of reinforcement resulting
from being in a social group, e.g., dismissal of students from
their class or jails.
 Ex: Red card after unsportsmanlike conduct
 Social Learning Model: Social Cognitive
Theory

 Theorist: Albert Bandura

 Basic assumption: People learn from observing others and

gradually acquire control over their own behavior
Bandura’s Triadic Model of Reciprocal
Determinism

Overt Environmental
Behavior Influences

Personal Factors
(beliefs, expectations,
self-perceptions)
 Social Learning Model

 Behavior, environment, and personal factors all

influence each other.

 Vicarious learning: learning through observation.

 Modeling: through imitation and observational

learning, we learn many things
 Process of Observational Learning

 Attention: attending and perceiving the significant

features of modeled behavior accurately
 Retention: recalling or rehearsing what was observed
 Production: converting verbal and visual representations
into appropriate actions
 Motivation: the anticipation of reinforcement for modeled
act
 Reinforcement in Social Learning Model

 Self-reinforcement
 Reward or punish self for a meeting or failing to
meet own standards.

 Direct reinforcement:
 Being reinforced by a model or some other
people

 Vicarious reinforcement
 A situation where the observer anticipates
receiving a reward for behaving in a given way
because someone else has been so rewarded.
 Implications of Social Learning Theory

 Helps to acquire new skills and to perform them

 Encourages and facilitates the use of already
learned behaviors
 Increases and decreases the rate of performance
of the behaviors that have been acquired and
performed under inhibition
 Observing a model’s display of emotions can change
a person’s emotional reactions
Bandura: Bobo doll experiment
 Self-regulation

Goal setting
Self-observation
Self-assessment
Self-reinforcement