LEARNING AND

COGNITION
 Introduction
O Definitions:
O Learning is the acquisition of new behavior or
modification of existing behavior and mental states as a
result of teaching, training, and tutoring (Woollard 2010).

O It is a process by which one gains new knowledge/skills

and change their thoughts feeling, attitudes and actions.

O Learning Theory - a framework describing or explaining

or predicting how people learn and is applicable to the
practice of health care and to our own life to help solve
problems or change unhealthy practices and habits.
 Learning Theories
O There are several Psychological theories (as derived from
the five perspectives) that explain how learning occurs
and are widely referred to in health education,
Psychological and Psychiatric counseling
O Behavioural psychology
O Behavioural psychology is sometimes referred to as ‘the
psychology of learning’ or ‘learning and motivation’.
O According to Behaviorist Learning theory learning is the
result of connections made between Stimuli conditions
in the environment (S) and Individual’s Response (R).
(The S – R Model).
O Conditioning and behavior modification occur in two
ways: classical conditioning and operant
conditioning.
Classical Conditioning/Pavlovian
Conditioning
O Ian Pavlov - a Russian Physiologist studied the digestive
system.
O - discovered in his labs that dogs started salivating not only
at the site of food (this is normal), but also at a stimuli that
appeared close to the presentation of the food.
O Example, if a bell was rung before the site of food, the dogs
would salivate at the mere sound of the bell.
O Hence Classical Conditioning comprises the pairing of a
neutral stimulus (Conditioned Stimulus – CS) with a
biologically potent stimulus (Unconditioned Stimulus – UC)
that will elicit Unconditioned Response (UR)
O After repeated pairings of the CS with US, one exhibits a
conditioned response displayed by a CR when confronted with
the CS – case of the dogs salivating to the sound of the bell.
Types of reinforcement
O Different types of reinforcement have
different effects on the target
behaviour:
• A child is well behaved while at the
shopping
mall and receives a chocolate bar:
positive
reinforcement
O • A child is not well behaved and gets a
‘time out’ at home: punishment.
 Types of reinforcement
contd..
O If scared of spiders and you spray your room with
insect spray (whether it is effective or not); not
seeing spiders in the house is negative
reinforcement of
that behaviour, because it is connected with the
removal of an aversive event.
O When children are fighting in the back seat of the
car their father tells them that every time they fight
he will throw a sweet out of the window; this is
omission
training, because the behaviour results in the
removal
of a desirable event.
O Extinction – describes the gradual
decline of behaviour when the CS is
repeated without the US as in the
bell without being followed with food
 Operant Conditioning
Response
O Concerns how organisms learn about the connection
between situations, behaviours and consequences.
O Edward Thorndike placed Hungry cats in a ‘puzzle box’ -
they made various responses (pacing, meowing,)
O Till they found that pressing a lever would free them from
the box and allow them access to the food outside.
O Hence, Thorndike’s (1911) Law of Effect, which states
that:

O “Of several responses made to the same situation, those

which are closely accompanied or closely followed by
satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal,
be more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when
it recurs, [the behaviours] will be more likely to recur.
 Operant contd…
O Hence, behaviour can be controlled
by its consequences. A stimulus
leads to a response which is
reinforced: Stimulus ➝ Response
➝ Reinforcement.
O The stimulus for Thorndike’s cats
was the box. The response was the
action of pressing the lever and
the reinforcement was the food.
 Operant Conditioning,
contd..
O Psychologist B. F. Skinner (1938) applied the
term ‘operant conditioning’ but used rats.
O In the now iconic ‘Skinner box,’ rats learned
to press a lever when a stimulus (e.g. a
light or tone) was present and food was
delivered (the reinforcer).
O A reinforce is a stimulus or event applied
after a response that strengthens the
probability that the response will be
repeated – like praising, hugging, or giving
a prize.
Relevance of Behaviourist
theory
O Principles of respondent conditioning
can be used to get rid of previously
learned responses as in anxiety or
break bad habits, or addiction
relapses
O Systemic desensitization technique
O According to Skinner (1974),
decreasing a response is by either
non-reinforcement , or punishment;
e.g jokes not reacted to .
 NOTE
O Despite this Behavioural perspective being
influential in many domains, as in health care
and education, it also raises question about the
influences of mental processes and the place
of personality in decision making.
O However, the principles of Behavioural
psychology relating to how behaviours are
learned and reinforced are effective in treating
some disorders, explaining Behavioural
connections, and increasing or decreasing the
likelihood of particular behaviours.
Learned Helplessness
O Rooted in behavioural Psychology, learned helplessness
is relevant to stress, control and depression.
O Seligman et al, (1967) study revealed that dogs exposed
to inescapable electric shocks gave up trying to evade
the shocks and passively succumbed to them (Mikulincer,
1994).
O One group of dogs was exposed to shocks that they were
able to control or escape while the other group could not.

The group that could not showed a pattern of cognitive,

motivational and emotional deficits – they simply
lay and
accepted the shocks - termed ‘helplessness’.
 Contd…
O These experiments highlighted the importance of ability to control
stimulus or else it leads to a learned helplessness theory of human
depression
O That once people perceive helplessness (i.e. they feel they cannot
control
particular negative outcomes and attribute it to a cause that “can be
stable or unstable and even internalize it.

O DISCUSSION
O 1. Explain the difference and similarity of the two theories:
The Classical Conditioning and the Operant Conditioning.
O
O 2. Giving as many examples as you can, how would you apply
these different types of reinforcement to change of behaviour
in your place of work situations?