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Learning Theory
Abstract
This chapter discusses learning theory which is at the heart of animal training. Changes in the animal's environment can cause learning. A great place to start to explain individual learning is with the work of Edward Thorndike. Thorndike had a strong methodological and theoretical impact on animal behaviour research influencing key concepts in learning theory. In classical conditioning, the animal learns to respond to a previously neutral stimulus that had been paired with another stimulus that elicits an automatic response. Classical conditioning, operant conditioning involves the consequence occurring only if the animal engages in a particular behaviour, making the behaviour more likely to occur in the future. Pavlov's experiments furthered the doubt, raised by Thorndike, that animals had much, if any, cognitive ability. In experiments on human verbal learning, he found that if someone said ‘right’, the subject had an increase in rate of responding.
In this chapter, we deal with the change from the exception to the rule in biological systems, both by the action of nature and by the changes that occur due to human action. We talk about the origin of life on planet Earth, the first organisms that colonized primitive environments and changed the atmosphere, giving rise to new forms of life, the appearance of eukaryotic, multicellular organisms, and the different forms of reproduction. We focus on events and changes that were initially considered teratological and that are familiar to our current vision. We also mention adaptations, plasticity, and different phenotypes that became advantages and allowed organisms to continue living in different environments. On the other hand, we point to global processes that affect humans and that in many cases are caused by humans. We discuss examples of diseases that turn into pandemics, the processes of environmental pollution, and accelerated climate change. Finally, we will discuss the changes in scientific ideas, which are closely linked to the social context at each moment in human history, the changes in the different fields of study and within society itself.
Understanding animal learning and training can greatly support animal care and good animal wellbeing through all stages of life, including when animals are ageing and often require special care. Thinking and planning for the needs and integrating the preferences of an individual animal are fundamental in short- and long-term wellbeing programmes, including animal training programmes. Good animal care and wellbeing programmes pay attention to the types of training methods specifically and learning in general, with a focus on positive reinforcement and good human–animal interactions. Through proactive planning and monitoring, age-related health concerns can potentially be detected early, and species-specific concerns can be anticipated. Animals will experience better wellbeing and potentially an extended longevity due in part to a lifelong preventive care and wellbeing programme when this includes voluntary medical behaviour training. In addition, (training staff for end-of-life decisions and training animals for euthanasia requires organization, leadership and team support. Designing for age-specific and adapting environments will facilitate care and treatments, making it easier and more comfortable for animals to participate in training sessions. Commitment and dedication of the animal care teams help provide animals with the best care possible at all stages of life.
In clicker training, animal trainers pair a small device (a ''clicker'') with a reward when teaching or maintaining responding. Animal trainers often assume clicker training is a ''science-based'' way to train animals. But, the few studies that have compared clicker training to a control have not provided evidence that adding a clicker is beneficial to training. This may be because research on clicker training has studied only one of several potential functions of the clicker stimulus that have been discussed by animal trainers. A systematic approach to researching the function of the clicker in clicker training would benefit from collaboration between applied and basic researchers. However, this will require that terminological differences between animal trainers and basic researchers are reconciled. This paper reviews the few studies that have compared clicker training to a control group and then discusses how trainers and basic researchers use the same terminology in functionally different ways-suggesting the empirical support for mechanisms underlying clicker training is less robust than previously assumed. These differences highlight many opportunities to answer basic and applied research questions relative to clicker training methods. Advancements in clicker training methods will benefit animal trainers who have been using clicker training for decades as well as applied practitioners who have extended clicker training to humans in educational and clinical settings.
"This is the history of a crackpot idea, born on the wrong side of the tracks intellectually speaking, but eventually vindicated in a sort of middle class respectability. It is the story of a proposal to use living organisms to guide missiles—of a research program during World War II called 'Project Pigeon' and a peace-time continuation at the Naval Research Laboratory called 'ORCON,' from the words 'organic Control.' " Major sections are: Project Pelican, Orcon, and The Crackpot Idea. Wide-ranging speculation about human affairs, "supported by studies of compensating rigor, will make a substantial contribution toward that world of the future in which… there will be no need for guided missiles." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The case history in scientific method cited is autobiographical; Skinner relates certain relevant experiences in the development of some of his scientific contributions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The discovery of facts and practices concerning reinforcement in the past 25 years "have increased our power to predict and control behavior and in so doing have left no doubt of their reality and importance." In the acquisition of a bowling response in pigeons 3 points are relevant: (a) The temporal relationships between behavior and reinforcement are very important. (b) Behavior was set up through successive approximations. (c) Behavior gradual "shapes up" by "reinforcing crude approximations of the final topography instead of waiting for the complete response." The maintenance of behavior through various schedules of reinforcement is discussed. "The world in which man lives may be regarded as an extraordinarily complex set of positive and negative reinforcing contingencies… . In any social situation we must discover who is reinforcing whom with what and to what effect." The modern study of reinforcement is: (a) difficult and relatively expensive; (b) usually single-organism research, in which a statistical program is "unnecessary" and "wrong"; (c) not theoretical. "The new principles and methods of analysis which are emerging from the study of reinforcement may prove to be among the most productive social instruments of the twentieth century." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 1920, John Watson and Rosalie Rayner claimed to have conditioned a baby boy, Albert, to fear a laboratory rat. In subsequent tests, they reported that the child’s fear generalized to other furry objects. After the last testing session, Albert disappeared, creating one of the greatest mysteries in the history of psychology. This article summarizes the authors’ efforts to determine Albert’s identity and fate. Examinations of Watson’s personal correspondence, scientific production (books, journal articles, film), and public documents (national census data, state birth and death records) suggested that an employee at the Harriet Lane Home was Albert’s mother. Contact with the woman’s descendents led the authors to the individual they believe to be “Little Albert.”
If the theory advanced by Watson and Morgan (in 'Emotional Reactions and Psychological Experimentation,' American Journal of Psychology, April, 1917, Vol. 28, pp. 163-174) to the effect that in infancy the original emotional reaction patterns are few, consisting so far as observed of fear, rage and love, then there must be some simple method by means of which the range of stimuli which can call out these emotions and their compounds is greatly increased. Otherwise, complexity in adult response could not be accounted for. These authors without adequate experimental evidence advanced the view that this range was increased by means of conditioned reflex factors. It was suggested there that the early home life of the child furnishes a laboratory situation for establishing conditioned emotional responses. The present authors present their experimental findings of conditioned fear responses in a male infant beginning at 11 months of age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Obra del norteamericano Burrhus Frederick Skinner (1904-1990), uno de los principales representantes del conductismo. Para Skinner el método experimental es el único criterio de cientificidad y el criterio objetivista es el paradigma de la indagación psicológica, que asume el comportamiento directamente observable desde el exterior como único objeto de la indagación misma. Publicada originalmente en 1953, esta obra era considerada por su autor, según una carta no publicada de 1967, como la mejor expresión de su postura en el campo de la psicología.
A. Whiten, D. M. Custance, J.-C. Gomez, P. Teixidor, and K. A. Bard (1996) tested chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes) and human children's (Homo sapiens) skills at imitation with a 2-action test on an "artificial fruit." Chimpanzees imitated to a restricted degree; children were more thoroughly imitative. Such results prompted some to assert that the difference in imitation indicates a difference in the subjects' understanding of the intentions of the demonstrator (M. Tomasello, 1996). In this experiment, 37 adult human subjects were tested with the artificial fruit. Far from being perfect imitators, the adults were less imitative than the children. These results cast doubt on the inference from imitative performance to an ability to understand others' intentions. The results also demonstrate how any test of imitation requires a control group and attention to the level of behavioral analysis.
Despite the seminal studies of response differentiation by the method of successive approximation detailed in chapter 8 of The Behavior of Organisms (1938), B. F. Skinner never actually shaped an operant response by hand until a memorable incident of startling serendipity on the top floor of a flour mill in Minneapolis in 1943. That occasion appears to have been a genuine eureka experience for Skinner, causing him to appreciate as never before the significance of reinforcement mediated by biological connections with the animate social environment, as opposed to purely mechanical connections with the inanimate physical environment. This insight stimulated him to coin a new term (shaping), and also led directly to a shift in his perspective on verbal behavior from an emphasis on antecedents and molecular topographical details to an emphasis on consequences and more molar, functional properties in which the social dyad inherent to the shaping process became the definitive property of verbal behavior. Moreover, the insight seems to have emboldened Skinner to explore the greater implications of his behaviorism for human behavior writ large, an enterprise that characterized the bulk of his post-World War II scholarship.
Learning and Behavior
- P. Chance