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Week 6 · Module overview

Week 6 — Learning

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 6 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A dog trainer building a new trick one small step at a time and a store manager designing a loyalty card that keeps customers coming back both rely on how experience changes behavior.

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.

  • Already covered: Week 1 introduced the behavioral perspective; Week 2 taught experiments and research ethics.
  • This week: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
  • How they connect: the classic learning studies are experiments and ethics cases 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.

Focus

How does experience change what people and animals do?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] label the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR in a new scenario
  • [ ] sort a consequence by what was added or removed and whether behavior went up or down
  • [ ] name the four schedules of reinforcement and why variable-ratio persists
  • [ ] explain observational learning with the Bobo doll study

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 6 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and the slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Analysis Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: say why pressing snooze to stop an alarm is negative reinforcement and not punishment.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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