Basic Learning Concepts and Classical Conditioning

How Do We Learn?

LOQ: How do we define learning, and what are some basic forms of learning?

We adapt to our environments by learning

• learn to expect and prepare for significant events such as food or pain

  • classical conditioning

• learn to repeat acts that bring rewards and avoid acts that bring unwanted result

  • operant conditioning

• learn new behaviors by observing events and people, and through language and things we have neither experienced nor observed

  • cognitive learning

Learned associations also feed our habitual behaviors

• Habits form when we repeat behaviors in a given context

  • As behavior becomes linked with the context, our next experience of that context will evoke our habitual response

• Takes around 66 days of doing a task to make it habitual

Complex animals can learn to associate their own behavior with its outcomes

• Linking two events closely together causes animals to exhibit associative learning

  • The animals have learned something important to its survival: anticipating the immediate future

This process of learning associations is called conditioning

• There are two main forms:

  • Classical conditioning, we learn to associate two stimuli and thus to anticipate events. (A stimulus is any event or situation that evokes a response). We associate stimuli that we do not control, and we respond automatically (exhibiting respondent behavior)

  • Operant conditioning, we learn to associate a response (our behavior) and its consequence. Thus we (and other animals) learn to repeat acts followed by good results and avoid acts followed by bad results. These associations produce operant behaviors (which operate on the environment to produce a consequence)

Cognitive learning is another form of learning

• we acquire mental information that guides our behavior

• We learn from others’ experiences through observational learning (one form of cognitive learning)

Learning: the process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information or behaviors.

Associative Learning: learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (as in operant conditioning).

Stimulus:  any event or situation that evokes a response.

Respondent Behavior: behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

Operant Behavior: behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences

Cognitive Learning: the acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others or through language.

Classical Conditioning

LOQ: What was behaviorism’s view of learning?

Ivan Pavlov conducted famous experiments in the twentieth-century

• Explored a phenomenon we call classical conditioning

• His work became a foundation for many of John B. Watson’s ideas

Watson wanted to discard reference to inner thoughts, feelings, and motives

• He said that the science of psychology should instead study how organisms respond to stimuli in their environments

  • psychology should be an objective science based on observable behavior

    • Called this study behaviorism

Behaviorism influenced North American psychology during the first half of the twentieth century

• Pavlov and Watson shared both disdain for “mentalistic” concepts (ex. consciousness) and believed that the basic laws of learning were the same for all animals no matter the species

  • Few researchers today agree that psychology should ignore mental processes

  • Most researchers agree that classical conditioning is a basic form of learning that all organisms use to adapt to their environment

Behaviorism:  the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).

Pavlov’s Experiments

LOQ: Who was Pavlov, and what are the basic components of classical conditioning?

Palvov started an experiment from seeing that seeing food, the food dish, or the person serving the food, caused a dog to instinatiously salivate

• Pavlov considered these “psychic secretions” an annoyance

  • realized they pointed to a simple but fundamental form of learning

• Pavlov and his assistants tried to think what the dog was thinking and feeling that it caused it to drool

  • Experimented by isolating the dog in a small room secured to a harness and attached to a device that transported the dogs slaiva into a measuring device

  • Presented the food in various stages to the dog

    • First, they slide a food bowl in

    • Then blew meat powder in the dog’s mouth at a specific moment

  • They then paired a variety of neutral stimuli (NS) events that the dog could see or hear but that weren’t associated with food

  • The dog did not learn to salivate in response to food in its mouth. Rather, food in the mouth automatically, unconditionally, triggers a dog’s salivary reflex

    • Pavlov called this drooling and the unconditioned response (UR)

    • Called the food and unconditioned stimulus (US)

    • Salvation in response to the tone is learned and is called conditioned response (CR)

    • The stimulus that was used to be neutral (the tone in this case) is the conditioned stimulus (CS)

After his demonstration of associative learning he explored five major conditioning processes with his associates:

• Acquisition

• Extinction

• spontaneous recovery

• generalization

• discrimination

Neutral Stimulus (NS): In classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no

response before conditioning.

Unconditioned Response (UR): in classical conditioning, an unlearned, naturally occurring response (such as salivation) to an unconditioned stimulus (US) (such as food in the mouth).

Unconditioned Stimulus (US): in classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers an unconditioned response (UR).

Conditioned Response (CR): in classical conditioning, a learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS).

Conditioned Stimulus (CS): in classical conditioning, an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR)

Untitled

Acquisition

LOQ: In classical conditioning, what are the processes of acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination?

Pavolv tried to understand the acqusition, intial learning, by asking “How much time should elapse between presenting the NS (the tone, the light, the touch) and the US (the food)?”

• This turned out to not to be super long- usually around 0.5 seconds

Conditioning usually won’t occur when the NS follows the US

• classical conditioning is biologically adaptive

  • helps humans and other animals prepare for good or bad events

A new NS can become a new CS without a US through higher-order conditioning

• Only needs to become associated with a previously conditioned stimulus

Higher-order conditioning tends to be weaker than first-order conditioning

• also called second-order conditioning

Higher-Order Conditioning: a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus. For example, an animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that a light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone. (Also called second-order conditioning.)

Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery

If the tone was continued to play and there was no food brought to the dogs, then the dogs start to drool less and less and it continues

• This reaction is known as extinction

But if the time between the tones sounding, the dogs would begin slaivating to the tone

• This is called spontaneous recovery

Extinction: the diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS); occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced.

Spontaneous Recovery: the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Generalization

Pavlov and his students noticed that if a dog was conditioned to one tone, they would also somewhat respond to a new and different tone

• If a dog was conditioned to salivate when rubbed would also drool a bit when scratched

  • This response is called generalization (or stimulus generalization)

Generalization can be adaptive

• Gerealized fear can also linger

  • Stimuli similar to naturally disgusting objects will, by association, also evoke some disgust

Generalization: the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses. (In operant conditioning, generalization occurs when responses learned in one situation occur in other, similar situations.)

Disctrimination

Pavlov’s dogs also learned to respond to the sound of a particular tone and not to other tones

• They learned the ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus (which predicts the US) and other, irrelevant stimuli (discrimination)

• Slightly different stimuli can be followed by vastly different consequences

Discrimination:  in classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. (In operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced.)

Pavlov’s Legacy

LOQ: Why does Pavlov’s work remain so important?

Most psychologists now agree that classical conditioning is a basic form of learning

• We now see that Pavlov’s ideas were incomplete with new knowledge and research

Pavolv’s work has remained important

• He found that many other responses to many other stimuli can be classically conditioned in many other organisms

  • This showed that classical conditioning is one way that virtually all organisms learn to adapt to their environment

• showed us how a process such as learning can be studied objectively

  • His meathods involved virtually no subjective judgments or guesses about what went on in a dog’s mind

Applications of Classical Conditioning

LOQ: What have been some applications of Pavlov’s work to human health and well-being? How did Watson apply Pavlov’s principles to learned fears?

Pavlov’s principles can influence human health and well-being in three ways:

• Drug cravings: Former drug users often feel a craving when they are again in the drug-using context—with people or in places they associate with previous highs. Thus, drug counselors advise their clients to steer clear of people and settings that may trigger these cravings

• Food cravings: Classical conditioning makes dieting difficult. We readily associate sugary substances with an enjoyable sweet sensation. Researchers have conditioned healthy volunteers to experience cravings after only one instance of eating a sweet food

  • Eating one cookie can create hunger for another. People who struggle with their weight often have eaten unhealthy foods thousands of times, leaving them with strongly conditioned responses to eat the very foods that will keep them in poor health

• Immune responses: Classical conditioning even works on the body’s disease-fighting immune system. When a particular taste accompanies a drug that influences immune responses, the taste by itself may come to produce an immune response

Operant Conditioning

LOQ: What is operant conditioning?

Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are both forms of associative learning but are both very different

• Classical Conditioning: forms associations between stimuli (a CS and the US it signals). It also involves respondent behavior—automatic responses to a stimulus (such as salivating in response to meat powder and later in response to a tone)

• Operant Conditioning: organisms associate their own actions with consequences. Actions followed by reinforcers increase; those followed by punishments often decrease. Behavior that operates on the environment to produce rewarding or punishing stimuli is called operant behavior.

Operant Conditioning:  a type of learning in which a behavior becomes more likely to recur if followed by a reinforcer or less likely to recur if followed by a punisher.

Skinner’s Experiments

LOQ: Who was Skinner, and how is operant behavior reinforced and shaped?

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) was a college English major and aspiring writer

• enrolled as a graduate student in psychology

• Eventually became modern behaviorism’s most influential and controversial figure

  • His work elaborated on t Edward L. Thorndike’s “law of effect”

  • Developed behavioral technology that revealed principles of behavior control

Skinner’s pioneering studies

• designed an operant chamber

  • Also known as a Skinner box

  • The box has a bar (a lever) that an animal presses—or a key (a disc) the animal pecks

    • This releases a reward of food or water.

  • also has a device that records these responses

  • This creates a stage on which rats and other animals act out Skinner’s concept of reinforcement

Law of Effect:  Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely

Operant Chamber: in operant conditioning research, a chamber (also known as a Skinner box) containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer; attached devices record the animal’s rate of bar pressing or key pecking.

Reinforcement:  in operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.

Shaping Behavior

Skinner would tease rats to press a bar through shaping

• Did this by gradually guiding the rat’s actions toward the desired behavior

  • You start by watching how the animal naturally behaves, so that you could build on its existing behavior

    • might give the rat a bit of food each time it approaches the bar

  • Then once the rat is approaching regularly, you would give the food only when it moves close to the bar, then closer still

  • Finally you would require it to touch the bar to get food

    • This rewards successive approximations by reinforcing responses towards your disired outcome

Shaping can also help us understand what nonverbal organisms perceive

• Skinner noted that we continually reinforce and shape others’ everyday behaviors, even though we may not mean to do so

Shaping: an operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior

Types of Reinforcers

LOQ: How do positive and negative reinforcement differ, and what are the basic types of reinforcers?

Positive reinforcement strengthens the response by presenting a typically pleasurable stimulus immediately after a response

Negative reinforcement strengthens a response by reducing or removing something negative

• negative reinforcement is not punishment

• negative reinforcement removes a punishing (aversive) even

Positive Reinforcement: increasing behaviors by presenting positive reinforcers. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. negative reinforcement

Negative Reinforcement: increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. (Note: Negative reinforcement is not punishment.)

Primary and Conditioned Reinforcers

Primary reinforcers are unlearned

• Ex. getting food when hungry

Conditioned reinforcers are learned through association with primary reinforcers

• Also known as secondary reinforcers

• Ex. a rat in a Skinner box learns that a light reliably signals a food delivery, the rat will work to turn on the light

Primary Reinforcer: an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need.

Conditioned Reinforcer: a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as a secondary reinforcer.

Immediate and Delayed Reinforcers

Humans respond to delayed reinforcers

• Ex. paycheck at the end of the week, good grade at the end of a term, or a trophy after a sports season

• We must learn to delay satisfaction to function effectively

  • Learning to control our impulses in order to achieve more valued rewards is a big step toward maturity

    • can later protect us from committing an impulsive crime

  • Children who delay gratification have tended to become socially competent and high-achieving adults

Reinforcement Schedules

LOQ: How do different reinforcement schedules affect behavior?

Reinforcement schedules vary

Continous reinforcement learning occours rapidly

• Makes it the best choice for mastering a behavior

• But extinction also occurs rapidly

  • When reinforcement stops, the behavior soon stops (is extinguished)

Real-life e rarely provides continuous reinforcement.

• Ex. salespeople do not make a sale with every pitch but they are persistent

  • This persistence is called partial (intermittent) reinforcement schedules

    • Responses are sometimes reinforced but sometimes not

    • Learning is slower to appear

    • Resistance to extinction is greater than continuous reinforcement

Fixed-ratio schedules reinforce behavior after a set number of responses.

• Ex. a coffee shop gives you a free cup of coffee after 10 drinks are purchased

• This causes continued animals to only pause briefly after a reinforcer before returning to a high rate of responding

Variable-ratio schedules provide reinforcers after a seemingly unpredictable number of responses

• unpredictable reinforcement is what makes gambling and fly fishing so hard to extinguish even when they don’t produce the desired results

• Because reinforcers increase as the number of responses increases, variable-ratio schedules produce high rates of responding

Fixed-interval schedules reinforce the first response after a fixed time period

• Animals on this type of schedule tend to respond more frequently as the anticipated time for reward draws near

• produces a choppy stop-start pattern rather than a steady rate of response

  • Ex. checking the cake more often as it cooks longer

Variable-interval schedules reinforce the first response after varying time intervals

• unpredictable times, a food pellet rewarded Skinner’s pigeons for persistence in pecking a key

  • Ex. a longed-for message that finally rewards persistence in checking our phone

• variable-interval schedules tend to produce slow, steady responding

  • there is no knowing when the waiting will be over

Overall, response rates are higher when reinforcement is linked to the number of responses (a ratio schedule) rather than to time (an interval schedule)

• responding is more consistent when reinforcement is unpredictable (a variable schedule) than when it is predictable (a fixed schedule)

Reinforcement Schedule: a pattern that defines how often the desired response

will be reinforced.

Continuous Reinforcement: schedule reinforcing the desired response every

time it occurs.

Partial (Intermittent) Reinforcement Schedule Reinforcing: a response only

part of the time; results in the slower acquisition of a response but much greater

resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement.

Fixed-Ratio Schedule: in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses

Variable-Ratio Schedule: in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.

Fixed-Interval Schedule: in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed.

Variable-Interval Schedule: in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule

that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.

Punishment

LOQ: How does punishment differ from negative reinforcement, and how does punishment affect behavior?

Reinforcement increases a behavior; punishment does the opposite

• negative reinforcement increases the frequency of a preceding behavior

  • Withdraws something negative

• a punisher is any consequence that decreases the frequency of a preceding behavior

  • Ex. a child gets burned after touching a hot stove

Criminal behavior is influenced more by swift and sure punishers than by the threat of severe sentences

• Most of this behavior is impulsive

Many psychologists note four major drawbacks of physical punishment:

• Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten. This temporary state may (negatively) reinforce parents’ punishing behavior.

  • child swears, the parent swats, the parent hears no more swearing and feels the punishment successfully stopped the behavior

• Punishment teaches discrimination among situations.

  • In operant conditioning, discrimination occurs when an organism learns that certain responses, but not others, will be reinforced. Did the punishment effectively end the child’s swearing? Or did the child simply learn that while it’s not okay to swear around the house, it’s okay elsewhere?

• Punishment can teach fear

  • A punished child may associate fear not only with the undesirable behavior but also with the person who delivered the punishment or where it occurred

    • may learn to fear a punishing teacher and try to avoid school, or may become more anxious

• Physical punishment may increase aggression by modeling violence as a way to cope with problems.

  • Many aggressive delinquents and abusive parents come from abusive families

  • Studies find that spanked children are at increased risk for aggression

• There is a debate to if physical punishment children may be more aggressive

• It follows the same logic of people who have undergone psychotherapy are more likely to suffer depression since they had preexisting problems that triggered the treatments

Punishment: an event that tends to decrease the behavior that it follows.

Skinner’s Legacy

LOQ: Why did Skinner’s ideas provoke controversy, and how might his operant conditioning principles be applied at school, in sports, at work, in parenting, and for self-improvement?

Skinner said argued that brain science isn’t needed for psychological science

• Said “a science of behavior is independent of neurology”

• urged people to use operant conditioning principles to influence others’ behavior at school, work, and home

  • argued that we should use rewards to evoke more desirable behavior

• His critics objected and said that dehumanizing people by neglecting their personal freedom and by seeking to control their actions

  • Skinner’s response was that External consequences already haphazardly control people’s behavior

Applications of Operant Conditioning

At School

Skinner said “Good instruction demands two things, students must be told immediately whether what they do is right or wrong and, when right, they must be directed to the step to be taken next.”

• Many of his ideals over education are now possible

  • Students can now learn at their own pace with some programs

In Sports

Reinforcing small successes and then gradually increasing the challenge is the key to shaping behavior in athletic performance

• Compared with children taught by conventional methods, those trained by this behavioral method have shown faster skill improvement

At Work

Organizations have invited employees to share the risks and rewards of company ownership

• Others focus on reinforcing a job well done

• Rewards are most likely to increase productivity if the desired performance is both well defined and achievable

  • Reward specific, achievable behaviors, not vaguely defined “merit”

Operant conditioning reminds us that reinforcement should be immediate.

In Parenting

parents can learn from operant conditioning practices

• Parent-training researchers explain that, “Get ready for bed” and then caving into protests or defiance, parents reinforce such whining and arguing

Notice people doing something right and affirm them for it.

• This disrupts the cycle

• Give children attention and other reinforcers when they are behaving well. Target a specific behavior, reward it, and watch it increase

To Change Your Own Behaviors

1. State a realistic goal in measurable terms and announce it.

2. Decide how, when, and where you will work toward your goal.

3. Monitor how often you engage in your desired behavior

4. Reinforce the desired behavior.

5. Reduce the rewards gradually

Contrasting Classical and Operant Conditioning

LOQ: How does operant conditioning differ from classical conditioning?

Our biology and cognitive process influence both classical and operant conditioning.

Biology, Cognition, and Learning

Biological Constraints on Conditioning

LOQ: How do biological constraints affect classical and operant conditioning?

Biological Limits on Classical Conditioning

Early behaviorists realized, an animal’s capacity for conditioning is limited by biological constraints

• Ex. individual species’ predispositions prepare it to learn the associations that enhance its survival

  • This is a phenomenon called preparedness

Humans are also biologically prepared to learn some associations other than others

• Ex. you develop aversions to that taste of oysters after becoming ill from eating them rather than the sight associated with oysters such as restaurants

Arthur Schopenhaue said that important ideas are first ridiculed, then attacked, and finally taken for granted

Our preparedness to associate a CS with a US that follows predictably and immediately is adaptive

• Causes often do immediately precede effects

  • Ex. When chemotherapy triggers nausea and vomiting more than an hour following treatment, cancer patients may over time develop classically conditioned nausea (and sometimes anxiety) to the sights, sounds, and smells associated with the clinic

  • In normal circumstances, such revulsion to sickening stimuli would be adaptive.

Preparedness: a biological predisposition to learn associations, such as between taste and nausea, that have survival value.

Biological Limits on Operant Conditioning

Nature also constrains each species’ capacity for operant conditioning

• We most easily learn and retain behaviors that reflect our biological predispositions.

  • This principle of this is: “Biological constraints predispose organisms to learn associations that are naturally adaptive.”

Instinctive Drift: the tendency of learned behavior to gradually revert to biologically predisposed patterns.

Cognition’s Influence on Conditioning

LOQ: How do cognitive processes affect classical and operant conditioning?

Cognition and Classical Conditioning

Early behaviorists believed that rats’ and dogs’ learned behaviors could be reduced to mindless mechanisms, so there was no need to consider cognition

• Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner showed that an animal can learn the predictability of an event.

  • If a shock always is preceded by a tone, and then may also be preceded by a light that accompanies the tone

  • Although the light is always followed by the shock, it adds no new information; the tone is a better predictor

    • more predictable the association, the stronger the conditioned response

    • the animal learns an expectancy, an awareness of how likely it is that the US will occur.

Classical conditioning with humans is not just CS-US association

Cognition and Operant Conditioning

Skinner believed that thoughts and emotions were behaviors that follow the same laws as other behaviors

• growing belief that cognitive processes have a necessary place in the science of psychology and even in our understanding of conditioning

• viewed “cognitive science

Animals on a fixed-interval reinforcement schedule respond more and more frequently as the time approaches when a response will produce a reinforcer

• strict behaviorist would object to talk of “expectations,” the animals behave as if they expected that repeating the response would soon produce the reward

There is more to learning than associating a response with a consequence; there is also cognition

Promising people a reward for a task they already enjoy can backfire.

• Excessive rewards can destroy intrinsic motivation

  • the desire to perform a behavior effectively and for its own sake

Cognitive Map: a mental representation of the layout of one’s environment. For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it.

Latent Learning: learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.

Intrinsic Motivation: a desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.

Extrinsic Motivation: a desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.

Learning by Observation

LOQ: How does observational learning differ from associative learning? How may observational learning be enabled by neural mirroring?

Cognition supports observational learning

• Learning without direct experience

  • Ex. watching and intermittent

• This process is called modeling

Observational Learning: learning by observing others.

Modeling: the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior.

Vicarious reinforcement/ punishment

• we learn to anticipate a behavior’s consequences

Mirrors and Imitation in the Brain

In humans, imitation is pervasive

• catchphrases, fashions, ceremonies, foods, traditions, morals, and fads all spread by one person copying another

• Even children and infants are natural imitators

  • children’s brains enable their empathy and their ability to infer another’s mental state, an ability known as theory of mind

Humans have brains that support empathy and imitation

• Researchers can use fMRI scans to see brain activity associated with performing and with observing action

Our brain’s response to observing others makes emotions contagious

• The brain simulates and vicariously experiences what we observe

  • Through reenactments of these we grasp others’ states of mind, postures, faces, voices, and writing styles,

    • By observing we unconsciously synchronize our own to theirs—which helps us feel what they are feeling

  • Imitation helps us gain friends

    • We mimic people we like

      • We yawn when other people yawn, we laugh when other people laugh

Pain imagined by an empathic romantic partner has triggered some of the same brain activity experienced by the loved one actually having the pain

• we mentally simulatet the experiences described

Mirror Neurons: frontal lobe neurons that some scientists believe fire when we perform certain actions or observe another doing so. The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy.

Applications of Observational Learning

LOQ: What is the impact of prosocial modeling and of antisocial modeling?

Prosocial Effects

People’s modeling of prosocial (positive, helpful) behaviors can have prosocial effect

• businesses use behavior modeling to help new employees learn communications, sales, and customer service skills

• People who show nonviolent and helpful behavior can also prompt similar behavior

Parents are also powerful models

• observational learning of morality begins early

  • Socially responsive toddlers who imitate their parents usually become preschoolers with a strong internalized conscience

• Models are most effective when their actions and words are consistent

  • To encourage children to read, read to them and surround them with books and people who read.

Prosocial Behavior: positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior.

Antisocial Behavior

Observational learning may also have antisocial effects

• helps us know why abusive parents might have aggressive children

  • Critics note that such aggressiveness could be genetic

• The lessons we learn as children are not easily replaced as adults, and they are sometimes visited on future generations.

Summary:

Intellectual history is often made by people who risk going to extremes in pushing ideas to their limits. Researchers such as Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura defined the issues and impressed on us the importance of learning. They illustrated the impact that can result from single-minded devotion to a few well-defined problems.