Week 6 · Chapter

Chapter 6 — Learning

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~35–45 minutes · Objective 5 (compare the major models of learning and memory and apply them to everyday behavior, including why memory is reconstructive), Objective 1 (explain what makes psychology a science and compare its major theoretical perspectives (biological, psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, sociocultural)) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Analysis Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

Almost everything you do every day, from reaching for your phone to avoiding a hot burner, you had to learn. Learning is a lasting change in what you do that comes from experience, not from growing up or from being tired. Classical conditioning is learning that one thing signals another, so your body starts reacting to the signal on its own. Operant conditioning is learning from what happens after you act, so rewarded actions grow and punished ones shrink. Observational learning is learning by watching someone else, with no reward of your own at all.

Why you already care about this

Picture a dog asleep at the far end of a house. Someone in the kitchen opens a can, and the dog is there before the lid is off, drooling. Nobody taught that dog a trick. It worked something out on its own: that whirring sound comes right before dinner.

Now picture your own hand. Your phone buzzes on the table, and your hand is moving before you have decided anything. You were not born doing that either. Somewhere along the way, buzzes started bringing messages you cared about, and your behavior changed to match.

Psychologists have studied this kind of change for generations, and it turns out to follow rules you can name, predict, and use. A coffee shop's punch card, a slot machine, a dog trainer's treats, and a toddler's lesson about a hot stove all run on the same few ideas. Once you can see the rules, you will spot them in your own habits all week.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

label the parts of classical conditioning (neutral stimulus, UCS, UCR, CS, CR) in a scenario you have never seen before;
explain what happens to a learned link during acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination;
tell the Little Albert study accurately and say why it would fail today's ethics rules;
sort any consequence into positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, or negative punishment, using "added" and "removed";
explain shaping, name the four partial schedules of reinforcement, and say why variable-ratio rewards keep people going;
describe observational learning through Bandura's Bobo doll study (1961) and say when a behavior counts as classical, operant, or observational.

Carry this sentence with you: up or down tells you the type; added or removed tells you the sign.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 introduced behaviorism and the behavioral perspective; Week 2 taught experiments and research ethics; Week 3 traced how neurons carry messages; Weeks 4 and 5 covered sensation, perception, and consciousness.
This week: how experience changes behavior, through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
How they connect: this week is the behavioral perspective at full strength, and the classic learning studies are experiments you can read with Week 2's tools.
Where we're going next: Week 7, Memory, asks how the experiences that change you are kept, and why some of them fade or get rewritten.

Each earlier week hands you a tool. In Week 1 you met the behavioral perspective, which explains behavior through learning, and behaviorism, led by John B. Watson and later B. F. Skinner. This week you finally see what those researchers measured. In Week 2 you learned that an experiment manipulates an independent variable (IV) and measures a dependent variable (DV), and that research with people needs informed consent and protection from harm. Both ideas return here: the Bobo doll study is an experiment, and the Little Albert study is an ethics lesson. In Week 3 you met dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward and learning; this week stays with behavior and leaves the chemistry in the background.

1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning

Think about the sound of a microwave beeping when your food is ready. Before you ever owned a microwave, a beep meant nothing to you. After hundreds of beeps followed by hot food, the beep alone can make you hungry. You did not decide to feel hungry. Your body learned that the beep signals food.

Ivan Pavlov was the first to study this kind of learning, with dogs. A hungry dog drools at food without any training; that reflex is built in. Pavlov found that a neutral sound that came right before the food, again and again, began to make the dog drool on its own. Here are the four labels, with the extra one that names the starting point.

Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior that comes from experience, rather than from growing up, illness, or a passing state such as fatigue.
Classical conditioning is learning in which a neutral stimulus, after being paired with a stimulus that already triggers an automatic response, comes to trigger a similar response on its own; the response is involuntary.
A neutral stimulus is a stimulus that produces no particular response of interest before conditioning, such as the whir of a can opener before it has ever come before a meal.
The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is a stimulus that triggers a response automatically, with no learning needed, such as food that makes a hungry dog drool.
The unconditioned response (UCR) is the unlearned, automatic response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as drooling at the sight and smell of food.
The conditioned stimulus (CS) is a once-neutral stimulus that, after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus, triggers a response on its own.
The conditioned response (CR) is the learned response to the conditioned stimulus, such as a dog drooling at the whir of the can opener before any food appears.

"Unconditioned" means unlearned. "Conditioned" means learned. Keep those two translations in your pocket and the labels sort themselves.

Worked example — the can opener, labeled. This is the first of the week's everyday learning scenarios, the eight scenarios you will label all week.

Find the automatic part first. Food makes a hungry dog drool with no training. So the food is the UCS, and drooling at the food is the UCR.
Find the signal before pairing. At first, the whir of the can opener means nothing to the dog. It is a neutral stimulus.
Pair them. The whir comes right before dinner, night after night.
Find the signal after pairing. Now the whir alone brings the dog running and drooling. The whir is the CS, and drooling at the whir is the CR.
Check the type. The drooling is involuntary. The dog does not choose to drool. That makes this classical conditioning.

In words: the dog learned that the whir predicts food, and its body now answers the whir.

Notice that the UCR and the CR are often the same kind of response: drooling both times. What differs is what triggers it. If the food triggers it, it is the UCR. If the whir triggers it, it is the CR.

Misconception check — the swapped stimuli. Students often swap the CS and the UCS, calling the can opener "unconditioned" because it came first. It is tempting because the whir does come first in time. The cure is to ask one question: would this stimulus cause the response in an animal that had never been trained? Food would, so food is the UCS. A can opener's whir would not, so the whir is the CS. Order in time does not decide the label; the need for learning does.

2. Watch the learned link change: acquisition, extinction, and recovery

A learned link is not fixed. It grows, fades, comes back, and spreads. Think about a ringtone you used to have. When a message arrived with it every time, you jumped at the sound. Change your ringtone, and the old sound loses its pull. Then hear that old sound in a café a month later, and you may still reach for your pocket.

Five terms describe these changes.

Acquisition is the stage of conditioning in which the learned link forms and the response grows stronger with repeated pairings or reinforcement.
Extinction is the fading of a learned response when the conditioned stimulus keeps arriving without the unconditioned stimulus, or when a behavior is no longer reinforced.
Spontaneous recovery is the sudden return of a weakened, extinguished response after a rest period, with no new training.
Generalization is the tendency for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to trigger the conditioned response too, such as a blender's whir starting a dog drooling.
Discrimination is the learned ability to tell the conditioned stimulus apart from similar stimuli and to respond only to the one that predicts what follows.

Worked example — the can opener, changed. Stay with the same dog.

Acquisition. Night after night the whir comes right before dinner, and the drooling to the whir gets stronger. The link is forming.
Extinction. The family switches to dry food from a bag, but someone still opens cans for other reasons. The whir keeps sounding with no dinner after it, and the drooling fades.
Spontaneous recovery. After a few days with no cans opened at all, one whir brings back some drooling. Nobody retrained the dog. The old link was weaker, not gone.
Generalization. The blender makes a similar whir, and at first it starts the dog drooling too.
Discrimination. The blender never comes before food, and the can opener did. Over time the dog drools to the can opener's whir and ignores the blender.

In words: the link formed, faded, returned for a moment, spread to a look-alike sound, and then narrowed to the one sound that predicted food.

Misconception check — extinction is not erasing. Students often think extinction deletes a learned link, the way you delete a file. It is tempting because the response really does stop. The cure is spontaneous recovery: if the link were gone, nothing could return after a rest, yet the drooling comes back with no new training. Extinction weakens and covers the link; it does not wipe it out.

Pause and think. Choose one of these two prompts; they carry equal weight.

(a) Think of a sound, smell, or place that triggers a feeling in you because of what it used to be paired with. Label the CS and the CR.
(b) Think of a time a learned reaction faded and then briefly came back. Describe it with the words extinction and spontaneous recovery.

3. Meet Little Albert: conditioning, people, and ethics

Classical conditioning is not only about dogs and dinner. It reaches emotions too. A child who gets a painful shot at a clinic may start to cry at the sight of the waiting room, before anything happens. The room has become a signal.

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner set out to show that a human emotion could be conditioned. Their study, now called the Little Albert study, conditioned fear in an infant. They paired an object the infant had not feared with something that frightened him, until the object alone produced fear. In the language of Section 1, the frightening event was the UCS, fear of it was the UCR, the once-harmless object became the CS, and fear of the object became the CR.

Worked example — reading Little Albert with Week 2's ethics tools. Hold the study against the research rules you learned in Week 2.

Informed consent. A participant must agree after being told what a study involves. An infant cannot give that agreement.
Protection from harm. Researchers must protect participants from harm. This study created fear on purpose.
The verdict. A study built this way would not be approved by an Institutional Review Board today.

In words: Watson and Rayner (1920) showed that fear can be learned, and their methods are part of why today's research rules exist.

Misconception check — "conditioning is only for animals." Students often file classical conditioning under dog training and assume people are too thoughtful for it. It is tempting because the most famous examples involve dogs. The cure is the clinic waiting room and Little Albert: human emotions, including fear, can be conditioned, and a lot of everyday dread and comfort is a CR to a once-neutral place, smell, or sound.

An honesty note about this study: it is told here as history and as a warning, not as a model. It conditioned fear in one infant, so it is also a case study, and Week 2 taught you that one case can suggest an idea but cannot show that it fits everyone.

4. Learn from consequences: operant conditioning

Classical conditioning covers responses you do not choose. But most of your day is made of choices: what to eat, where to park, whether to raise your hand. Those choices are shaped by what happened after similar choices before.

B. F. Skinner developed the study of this kind of learning. His central idea fits in one sentence: consequences change how often a voluntary behavior happens.

Operant conditioning is learning in which the consequences that follow a voluntary behavior change how often that behavior happens.
Reinforcement is any consequence that makes the behavior it follows more likely to happen again.
Punishment is any consequence that makes the behavior it follows less likely to happen again.

Notice what the definitions do not say. They do not say "pleasant" or "unpleasant." They judge a consequence by its effect on behavior. If a behavior becomes more frequent, something reinforced it.

Now the two words that cause the most trouble. In this course, as in all of psychology:

positive means something is added after the behavior; it never means "good";
negative means something is removed after the behavior; it never means "bad."

Worked example — classical or operant? Put two scenes from your own life side by side.

Scene one. A song that played during a hard breakup comes on in a store, and your stomach drops. You did not choose that feeling. It is an involuntary response to a signal, so it is classical conditioning.
Scene two. You raised your hand in a seminar, the discussion leader built on your point, and now you raise your hand more often. You chose to raise your hand, and what followed changed how often you do it. That is operant conditioning.
The test. Ask whether the response is involuntary and reflexive (classical) or voluntary and driven by its consequences (operant).

In words: classical conditioning links two stimuli and changes involuntary responses; operant conditioning links a voluntary behavior to what follows it.

Misconception check — "positive" read as "good." Students often read "positive reinforcement" as "something nice" and "negative" as "something mean." It is tempting because that is what the words mean everywhere else. The cure is to swap in the math words: positive is plus, something added; negative is minus, something removed. A speeding fine is not "positive" because it is pleasant; whether it is positive or negative depends only on whether something was added or taken away.

5. Sort the four consequences, and keep negative reinforcement apart from punishment

Cross the two questions and you get four boxes. Did the behavior go up (reinforcement) or down (punishment)? Was something added (positive) or removed (negative)?

The table below sets the four consequences side by side.

The four consequences of operant conditioning, by what changes after the behavior and what happens to the behavior
Consequence	What changes after the behavior	What happens to the behavior	Scenario from this week
Positive reinforcement	something pleasant is added	it becomes more likely	punch card
Negative reinforcement	something unpleasant is removed	it becomes more likely	snooze alarm
Positive punishment	something unpleasant is added	it becomes less likely	hot stove
Negative punishment	something pleasant or valued is removed	it becomes less likely	parking ticket

Positive reinforcement is adding something pleasant after a behavior, which makes the behavior more likely, such as a free drink earned with a punch card.
Negative reinforcement is removing something unpleasant after a behavior, which makes the behavior more likely, such as pressing snooze to stop a blaring alarm; it strengthens behavior and is not a form of punishment.
Positive punishment is adding something unpleasant after a behavior, which makes the behavior less likely, such as the pain a toddler feels after touching a hot stove.
Negative punishment is removing something pleasant or valued after a behavior, which makes the behavior less likely, such as a fine that takes money away after illegal parking.

Worked example — four of the everyday learning scenarios, sorted. Ask the same two questions every time: what was added or removed, and did the behavior go up or down?

Hot stove. A toddler touches a hot stove, and pain is added right after. The toddler touches the stove less often. Added and down: positive punishment.
Parking ticket. A driver parks in a loading zone, and a fine takes money away. The driver parks there less often. Removed and down: negative punishment.
Snooze alarm. Pressing snooze removes the blaring alarm. Pressing snooze becomes more frequent. Removed and up: negative reinforcement, not punishment.
Punch card. A coffee shop adds a free drink after a set number of purchases. Buying there becomes more frequent. Added and up: positive reinforcement.

In words: the direction of the behavior tells you reinforcement or punishment, and what changed tells you positive or negative.

A caveat about the parking ticket: you could describe a ticket as something added to your windshield. The label follows what the driver actually loses, and a fine takes money away, so this course calls it negative punishment. When a scenario feels ambiguous, name the change you are tracking and the label will follow.

Misconception check — negative reinforcement is not punishment. Students often call negative reinforcement a kind of punishment because "negative" sounds harsh and the situation involves something unpleasant. It is tempting because an alarm, a headache, or a nagging sound is part of the story. The cure is to look at the behavior's direction. After pressing snooze, pressing snooze goes up. Anything that makes a behavior go up is reinforcement. Negative reinforcement feels like relief, not like a penalty.

6. Build a behavior step by step: shaping

Some behaviors never happen on their own, so there is nothing to reinforce. A dog will not roll over by accident often enough to learn the trick from treats. A swimmer will not produce a smooth flip turn on the first day. You cannot reward a behavior you never see.

The way forward is to reward the steps.

Shaping is building a new behavior by reinforcing successive approximations, each small step closer to the target behavior, until the whole behavior appears.

Worked example — teaching a dog to roll over. A volunteer at an animal shelter, Amara, wants a shy dog to learn a trick before adoption day.

Step one. Amara gives a treat when the dog lies down.
Step two. Lying down alone no longer earns a treat. Now the dog must lie down and tip onto one side.
Step three. Only a lie-down that rolls onto the back earns a treat.
Step four. Only a full roll, all the way over, earns a treat.

In words: each treat rewarded a step slightly closer to the trick, and the bar rose as each step became reliable.

Misconception check — waiting for the whole behavior. Students often think you train a new behavior by waiting until it appears and then rewarding it. It is tempting because that works for behaviors that already happen. The cure is to ask whether the target ever shows up on its own. If it does not, nothing gets rewarded and nothing is learned. Shaping rewards the near misses on purpose, then raises the bar.

7. Time the rewards: schedules of reinforcement

A reward does not have to follow every response. Most rewards in life arrive on some kind of schedule: after a number of tries, or after some time has passed. That schedule turns out to change how people and animals behave.

Schedules of reinforcement are the rules that decide which responses earn reinforcement, based on a number of responses (ratio) or an amount of time (interval) that is either fixed or variable.

Cross fixed or variable with ratio or interval and you get the four partial schedules.

A fixed-ratio schedule (FR) is a schedule that reinforces a behavior after a set number of responses, such as a free drink after a set number of purchases.
A variable-ratio schedule (VR) is a schedule that reinforces a behavior after an unpredictable number of responses, such as a slot machine's payouts; it produces the highest and most extinction-resistant response rates.
A fixed-interval schedule (FI) is a schedule that reinforces the first response after a set amount of time has passed, such as a paycheck that arrives on a regular payday.
A variable-interval schedule (VI) is a schedule that reinforces the first response after an unpredictable amount of time, such as passing an inspection that can come on any day.

Worked example — four schedules from the everyday learning scenarios. For each one, ask two questions: does the reward depend on a number of responses or on time, and can you predict it?

Punch card. A free drink comes after a set number of purchases. Number of responses, predictable: fixed-ratio (FR).
Paycheck. Pay arrives after the same amount of time on the job has passed. Time, predictable: fixed-interval (FI). The reward depends on time passing, not on how many responses come before it.
Slot machine. A payout comes after an unpredictable number of pulls. Number of responses, unpredictable: variable-ratio (VR).
Surprise inspection. A kitchen passes an inspection that can come at any time, so the staff keep it clean every day. Time, unpredictable: variable-interval (VI).

In words: ratio counts responses and interval counts time; fixed is predictable and variable is not.

Now the payoff. Of the four partial schedules, variable-ratio reinforcement produces the highest and most extinction-resistant response rates. A player at a slot machine never knows which pull will pay, so the next pull always might. Checking your phone works the same way: some checks bring a message you care about and most do not, and you cannot tell which check will pay off. That is why the habit is so hard to stop.

Let's tally the whole set of everyday learning scenarios. The 8 scenarios contain 1 classical conditioning case, the can opener, and 7 operant cases, since 8 − 1 = 7. The 7 operant cases use all 4 consequences once or more and all 4 partial schedules exactly once.

Misconception check — "predictable rewards make the strongest habits." Students often guess that a reward you can count on builds the most persistent behavior. It is tempting because predictability feels motivating. The cure is the slot machine: when the next response always might pay, people keep responding, and the behavior resists extinction. A limitation worth naming: "most persistent" describes response rates on these schedules, not whether a habit is good for you.

8. Learn by watching: observational learning

You have learned things you were never rewarded for doing. You may have learned to tie a tie, fix a bike chain, or cook a dish by watching a video, and you got it right on your first try. Nobody reinforced you. You learned by watching.

Observational learning is learning by watching another person, called a model, and later imitating or avoiding what the model did.
Vicarious reinforcement is becoming more likely to copy a behavior after seeing a model rewarded for it.
Vicarious punishment is becoming less likely to copy a behavior after seeing a model punished for it, even though the behavior has been learned.

The classic evidence comes from Albert Bandura's Bobo doll study (1961). Children who had watched an adult attack an inflatable doll were more likely to act aggressively toward it themselves. A 1965 follow-up by Bandura showed vicarious punishment: children who saw the model punished imitated less, even though they had learned the behavior.

Worked example — reading the Bobo doll study with Week 2's tools. Ask the design questions you learned in Week 2.

The IV. The independent variable (IV) was whether a child watched an adult attack the doll.
The DV. The dependent variable (DV) was how aggressively the child then treated the doll.
The result. Children who had watched the attack were more likely to act aggressively, with no reward of their own.
What it shows. A behavior was learned from a model, with no reinforcement to the child at all. That is observational learning, and it is something neither classical nor operant conditioning predicts on its own.

In words: the children learned aggression by watching, and the design compared children who saw the attack with children who did not.

A limitation worth naming: hitting an inflatable doll in a playroom is an operational definition of aggression, and Week 2 taught you to ask whether a measure is valid. Hitting a toy built to be hit is not the same thing as hurting a person, so the study shows that watching can teach a behavior more firmly than it shows what children will do to each other.

Misconception check — "if you were not rewarded, you did not learn." Students often think learning only counts when it shows up in behavior that was reinforced. It is tempting because operant conditioning is so tidy. The cure is the 1965 follow-up: children who saw the model punished imitated less, yet they had still learned the behavior. Learning and performing are different. You can know how to do something you choose not to do.

Pause and think. Choose one of these two prompts; they carry equal weight.

(a) Name a skill you learned mostly by watching someone else. What did the model do, and did you see the model rewarded?
(b) Describe a time you decided not to do something after seeing what happened to someone else who did it. Which term from this section fits?

Key terms

Learning — A relatively permanent change in behavior that comes from experience, rather than from growing up, illness, or a passing state such as fatigue. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Classical conditioning — Learning in which a neutral stimulus, after being paired with a stimulus that already triggers an automatic response, comes to trigger a similar response on its own; the response is involuntary. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Neutral stimulus — A stimulus that produces no particular response of interest before conditioning, such as the whir of a can opener before it has ever come before a meal. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) — A stimulus that triggers a response automatically, with no learning needed, such as food that makes a hungry dog drool. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Unconditioned response (UCR) — The unlearned, automatic response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as drooling at the sight and smell of food. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Conditioned stimulus (CS) — A once-neutral stimulus that, after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus, triggers a response on its own. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Conditioned response (CR) — The learned response to the conditioned stimulus, such as a dog drooling at the whir of the can opener before any food appears. (first used: 1. Learn by pairing: classical conditioning)
Acquisition — The stage of conditioning in which the learned link forms and the response grows stronger with repeated pairings or reinforcement. (first used: 2. Watch the learned link change: acquisition, extinction, and recovery)
Extinction — The fading of a learned response when the conditioned stimulus keeps arriving without the unconditioned stimulus, or when a behavior is no longer reinforced. (first used: 2. Watch the learned link change: acquisition, extinction, and recovery)
Spontaneous recovery — The sudden return of a weakened, extinguished response after a rest period, with no new training. (first used: 2. Watch the learned link change: acquisition, extinction, and recovery)
Generalization — The tendency for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to trigger the conditioned response too, such as a blender's whir starting a dog drooling. (first used: 2. Watch the learned link change: acquisition, extinction, and recovery)
Discrimination — The learned ability to tell the conditioned stimulus apart from similar stimuli and to respond only to the one that predicts what follows. (first used: 2. Watch the learned link change: acquisition, extinction, and recovery)
Operant conditioning — Learning in which the consequences that follow a voluntary behavior change how often that behavior happens. (first used: 4. Learn from consequences: operant conditioning)
Reinforcement — Any consequence that makes the behavior it follows more likely to happen again. (first used: 4. Learn from consequences: operant conditioning)
Punishment — Any consequence that makes the behavior it follows less likely to happen again. (first used: 4. Learn from consequences: operant conditioning)
Positive reinforcement — Adding something pleasant after a behavior, which makes the behavior more likely, such as a free drink earned with a punch card. (first used: 5. Sort the four consequences, and keep negative reinforcement apart from punishment)
Negative reinforcement — Removing something unpleasant after a behavior, which makes the behavior more likely, such as pressing snooze to stop a blaring alarm; it strengthens behavior and is not a form of punishment. (first used: 5. Sort the four consequences, and keep negative reinforcement apart from punishment)
Positive punishment — Adding something unpleasant after a behavior, which makes the behavior less likely, such as the pain a toddler feels after touching a hot stove. (first used: 5. Sort the four consequences, and keep negative reinforcement apart from punishment)
Negative punishment — Removing something pleasant or valued after a behavior, which makes the behavior less likely, such as a fine that takes money away after illegal parking. (first used: 5. Sort the four consequences, and keep negative reinforcement apart from punishment)
Shaping — Building a new behavior by reinforcing successive approximations, each small step closer to the target behavior, until the whole behavior appears. (first used: 6. Build a behavior step by step: shaping)
Schedules of reinforcement — The rules that decide which responses earn reinforcement, based on a number of responses (ratio) or an amount of time (interval) that is either fixed or variable. (first used: 7. Time the rewards: schedules of reinforcement)
Fixed-ratio schedule (FR) — A schedule that reinforces a behavior after a set number of responses, such as a free drink after a set number of purchases. (first used: 7. Time the rewards: schedules of reinforcement)
Variable-ratio schedule (VR) — A schedule that reinforces a behavior after an unpredictable number of responses, such as a slot machine's payouts; it produces the highest and most extinction-resistant response rates. (first used: 7. Time the rewards: schedules of reinforcement)
Fixed-interval schedule (FI) — A schedule that reinforces the first response after a set amount of time has passed, such as a paycheck that arrives on a regular payday. (first used: 7. Time the rewards: schedules of reinforcement)
Variable-interval schedule (VI) — A schedule that reinforces the first response after an unpredictable amount of time, such as passing an inspection that can come on any day. (first used: 7. Time the rewards: schedules of reinforcement)
Observational learning — Learning by watching another person, called a model, and later imitating or avoiding what the model did. (first used: 8. Learn by watching: observational learning)
Vicarious reinforcement — Becoming more likely to copy a behavior after seeing a model rewarded for it. (first used: 8. Learn by watching: observational learning)
Vicarious punishment — Becoming less likely to copy a behavior after seeing a model punished for it, even though the behavior has been learned. (first used: 8. Learn by watching: observational learning)

Summary

Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior that comes from experience.
Classical conditioning pairs a neutral stimulus with a UCS until it becomes a CS that triggers a CR.
Extinction weakens a learned link; spontaneous recovery shows it was not erased.
Little Albert showed that fear can be conditioned, and its methods fail today's ethics rules.
Operant conditioning: reinforcement raises a behavior and punishment lowers it.
Positive means added; negative means removed; neither means good or bad.
Negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant and raises behavior; it is not punishment.
Shaping rewards successive approximations until the target behavior appears.
Ratio counts responses, interval counts time; variable-ratio is the most persistent schedule.
Observational learning needs a model, not a reward of your own.
Classical is involuntary and reflexive; operant is voluntary and consequence-driven.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

A cat sleeps through most kitchen noise, but it races in whenever it hears the crinkle of its treat bag, already licking its lips. Label the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR.
A car chimes until the driver buckles the seat belt, and buckling stops the chime. Over a few weeks the driver starts buckling as soon as they sit down. Which of the four consequences is this, and why is it not punishment?
Diego waits for a package that the delivery service says will arrive "sometime this week." He checks his porch several times a day, and only the first check after the box lands is rewarded. Which schedule of reinforcement is this, and how do you know?
A younger sister watches her older brother get thanked and given a sticker for clearing the dinner table. The next evening, she clears her own plate without being asked. Which kind of learning is this, and which specific term fits what she saw?

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The treats are the UCS, because food triggers licking and eagerness with no training, and that response to the treats is the UCR. The crinkle of the bag was a neutral stimulus until it came right before treats many times; now it is the CS, and racing in and licking at the crinkle is the CR. The response is involuntary, so this is classical conditioning.
Negative reinforcement. Buckling removes something unpleasant, the chime, so it is negative (removed). Buckling becomes more frequent, so it is reinforcement (behavior up). It is not punishment, because punishment makes a behavior less likely, and here the behavior grew.
A variable-interval (VI) schedule. The reward depends on time passing, not on how many times Diego checks, so it is an interval schedule. He cannot predict the day, so it is variable. Checking more often does not make the box arrive sooner; only the first check after it lands pays off.
Observational learning, and specifically vicarious reinforcement. She was not rewarded herself; she watched a model, her brother, get rewarded, and she became more likely to copy the behavior. If she had seen him scolded instead and then avoided the behavior, that would be vicarious punishment.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week the three-stage model of memory shows how the experiences that change you are kept.

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