PSYC 2500
Learning!
Fall 2022
UConn Storrs Campus MONT 104
sec 001: TUE THU 5:00-6:15
Eric Lundquist

• OR 5TH OR 6TH EDITION (see below for page references)
• get any version of the textbook, new or used, paper or ebook or pdf, no publisher site access required -- but get the book listed above, not one of the many other textbooks with similar titles by different authors!

READING ASSIGNMENTS: a listing of all the textbook readings for the course, including an index of topics in classical conditioning which can be helpful in identifying the pages on which each topic was mentioned (if any). These links list identical readings but with page numbers specific to each edition.

READING ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE SEVENTH EDITION

READING ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE SIXTH EDITION

READING ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE FIFTH EDITION

This course is called "Learning!" The exclamation point is part of the name of the course. Humor me by watching a clip from my favorite show, but you don't have to. You can also watch the whole thing on Netflix or Hulu, I think.

[scene from Community season 2 episode 9: Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design]
Jeff is a student at Greendale Community College who uncovers a fake night school program and gets fellow student Annie to help him investigate. They discover that the night school has only one faculty member, "Professor Professorson", which is not his real name -- it's actually a Professor Woolley who's running some kind of scam involving a bunch of fake courses, which they see listed in a catalog printout. The whole episode is done as a spoof of conspiracy theory mysteries so there are several more layers to the story that get revealed by the end.
In this clip Jeff and Annie wander the halls after hours looking for the mysterious night school classes.
"So this is night school -- but where's Professor Woolley's class?... How about this one?" [tries a locked classroom door.]
"No, that's Professor Huyck's class -- History of... Something."
"You can't pronounce it?"
"No, it literally says 'History of Something.'"
"Let me see that... [examining course listing]... 'Principles of Intermediate'? 'Studyology'? 'Class 101'? Look, this one just says 'Learning!' with an exclamation point."
[Professor Woolley comes out of a door into the hall and is startled to be confronted by the pair.]
"Hello, 'Professor Professorson.'"

Spiders and turkeys and bears: some pictures from backyards (mine, my brother's). You're free to exclaim "oh my!" after reading the album title. Just something to look at if you're bored.

Do you involuntarily have a Taylor Swift song stuck in your head? This was relevant to something at some point but I forget why; still pretty funny.

10 Career Facts You'll Learn After College: I'd actually argue with a few of their points as well as the strictly corporate perspective on careers, not to mention I'm not sure what qualifies the author to make these points -- but in general, these are the kind of things college students might not realize and I think they're mostly right.

Learning styles in Wikipedia: in particular read the "criticisms" section; the rest is useful if you're unfamiliar with the concept but it just describes the whole unscientific idea.

• Nancekivell, Shaylene E., Shah, Priti, and Gelman, Susan A. (2019). Maybe They're Born With It, or Maybe It's Experience: Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Learning Style Myth. Journal of Educational Psychology, published online May 30, 2019. 2019 journal article about why people believe in the learning styles myth.
• American Psychological Association press release about 2019 article on learning styles myth
• Popular press (Newsweek) coverage of 2019 article on learning styles myth: CHILDREN AREN'T BORN WITH LEARNING STYLES, SCIENTISTS WARN PARENTS by KASHMIRA GANDER ON 5/30/19
• "Another nail in the coffin for learning styles" -- students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style, by Christian Jarrett: earlier coverage of research debunking learning styles.
• Blog post: "Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners" by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel: earlier coverage of research debunking learning styles.
• Kirschner, Paul A. (2017). Stop propagating the learning styles mythComputers & Education Volume 106, March 2017, Pages 166-171 (only abstract available without access): earlier coverage of research debunking learning styles.
• Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105-119. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x: a major review and critique from 2008.

New Findings Inform the Laptop versus Longhand Note-Taking Debate, by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel: A blog post commenting on the findings about notetaking and laptop use in class, and a failure to replicate the notetaking findings. References for those papers, and a newer one that qualifies the notetaking results, are here:

• laptop distraction paper: Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, 24-31.
• notetaking paper: Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25, 1159-1168.
• failed replication: Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2019) How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note-taking? A replication and extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 1-28.

Chaser the Border Collie in Wikipedia: she learned over 1000 words, the most of any non-human animal.

• Pilley, John W., and Reid, Alliston K. (2011). Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents. Behavioural Processes 86, 184-195. A scientific journal article detailing Chaser's training, testing, and other achievements. Abstract:

  Four experiments investigated the ability of a border collie (Chaser) to acquire receptive language skills. Experiment 1 demonstrated that Chaser learned and retained, over a 3-year period of intensive training, the proper-noun names of 1022 objects. Experiment 2 presented random pair-wise combinations of three commands and three names, and demonstrated that she understood the separate meanings of proper-noun names and commands. Chaser understood that names refer to objects, independent of the behavior directed toward those objects. Experiment 3 demonstrated Chaser's ability to learn three common nouns -- words that represent categories. Chaser demonstrated one-to-many (common noun) and many-to-one (multiple-name) name-object mappings. Experiment 4 demonstrated Chaser's ability to learn words by inferential reasoning by exclusion --inferring the name of an object based on its novelty among familiar objects that already had names. Together, these studies indicate that Chaser acquired referential understanding of nouns, an ability normally attributed to children, which included: (a) awareness that words may refer to objects, (b) awareness of verbal cues that map words upon the object referent, and (c) awareness that names may refer to unique objects or categories of objects, independent of the behaviors directed toward those objects.

• Chaser featured in a segment from PBS's "NOVA ScienceNow" 2/9/11 (Season 5 Episode 4) "How Smart Are Animals?": see 1:50-5:37 and 10:43-13:32.
• Chaser featured in a segment from CBS's "60 Minutes" 10/5/14, along with some fun but generously over-interpreted findings by Gregory Berns who was the first to do brain imaging of dogs while awake (after training them to lie still in a small loud MRI scanner).

Two short excerpts about James Gibson's Ecological Psychology: these are written by people who DON'T actually agree with Gibson and his ecological view, but who are describing him and his work fairly objectively. (While they're sort of skeptical, personally I'm not!) It's difficult to sum up the approach in brief; the linked passages are decent outsider views, but they're still incomplete and fail to appreciate some subtleties and philosophical implications. Ecological psychology is an approach to problems of perception and other aspects of psychology that is very different from conventional mainstream approaches. Instead of looking at the mind as a kind of computer involved in the processing of information (which is what mainstream psychology assumes), it is concerned with how animals and people can directly detect information in the environment which will be sufficient to guide their actions. The phrase "directly detect" is why the approach is often referred to as "direct perception"; it implies that the information doesn't need to be processed at all, which is controversial to say the least, and which certainly flies in the face of many centuries of epistemology. (At the end of the excerpt is an example of what a conventional "INdirect perception" approach looks like, for comparison.) The term "ecological" refers to a view of the animal and its environment as an integrated and co-evolving whole, as opposed to the conventional approach which seems to view the animal as an arbitrary observer placed into an arbitrary context. The ecological approach was developed by James Gibson over the whole course of his career, and today the University of Connecticut is the world leader in promoting and pursuing this approach. In particular the Psychology Department's Center For The Ecological Study Of Perception And Action (CESPA) is dedicated to advancing research and theory in ecological psychology.

• Some excerpts from a paper on the Ecological view of scientific laws: quite challenging and probably only of interest to the most devoted students, though parts of it may well be fairly accessible. I would draw your attention to the general point being made, that animals moving about in their environments are in fact an instance of motion that science needs to consider, and that traditional scientific laws are quite inadequate for describing that motion, regardless of how successful they may be at accounting for planetary orbits and planning space shuttle flights. This suggests that the laws we have at present are only applicable to the special simple case of inanimate motion, and accounting for biological and psychological phenomena will require a more sophisticated view of what counts as a scientific law. To simply say there is no lawfulness in such phenomena would be lazy; but to say that what we know as "the" laws of nature today are all that there can be, and that lawfulness consists of simple deterministic causes and effects such as apply to inanimate motion, would be equally lazy.

• An excerpt from Beyond The Brain by Louise Barrett in which she offers an overview of Gibson's perspective, for those who want to read more. It's a pretty accessible description of some subtle ideas, and the section headed "The Environment as Illusion" reviews why the mainstream approach was so unsatisfactory to Gibson. In addition, this excerpt describes Turing machines and how they are an inappropriate model for cognitive processes (unless radically reinterpreted as mentioned in this chapter), and it introduces some cutting edge concepts of dynamical systems theory as applicable to psychology, in terms an interested general reader could understand.

Excerpt from Out Of Our Heads by Alva Noë (click on "Read Excerpt" under book cover image): from an introductory chapter of a book by one of the few philosophers to question the seemingly fundamental notion that the mind is the product of the brain. It's important to understand that he doesn't promote any supernatural alternative, but rather argues that the basic concept needs to be reconsidered.

Thomas Nagel's Precis of his book Mind And Cosmos in which he questions some very fundamental assumptions about the nature of the universe.

Run screaming from the room if you ever see someone able to levitate an object in real life. This is an amusing promotional stunt for the remake of Carrie a while back, though you may suspect that everyone in the video is actually an actor.

Slides introducing behaviorism and cognitivism, scientific models and psychology: Brief overview of Behaviorism and Cognitive Psychology, classical and operant conditioning, natural and social science, and the role of models in science and in psychology in particular; conditioning as a phenomenon, a procedure, and a model.

Here is a common, useful, and sort of generic definition of learning: learning - a relatively permanent change in behavior or in behavioral potentiality that results from experience: relatively - because although the change should last some time, it needn't last forever (e.g., forgetting and extinction are allowed) behavior - because any change due to learning must be observable in principle if it is to be studied scientifically, and behavior is observable potentiality - because an organism may not have occasion to exhibit its modified behavior unless the appropriate circumstances arise experience - because modifications of behavior due to developmental or physical causes (maturation, injury, fatigue, etc.) aren't considered "learning"

A definition of cognition from the textbook that coined the term "cognitive psychology":

• [T]he term "cognition" refers to all the processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations. Such terms as sensation, perception, imagery, retention, recall, problem solving, and thinking, among many others, refer to hypothetical stages or aspects of cognition.
  Ulric Neisser (1967). Cognitive Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. (p. 4)

Two commentaries on the continuing vitality of behaviorism despite rumors of its demise:

• Roddy Roediger's March 2004 commentary from the APS Observer, 17(3) re-examines the simplistic story about behaviorism's fate after the rise of cognitive psychology, shedding some important light. One nice point he makes is that Chomsky contributed a rationalist intellectual foundation to refuting Skinner's behaviorism, but mainly was arguing at cross-purposes with Skinner and maybe shouldn't be thought of as have fomented a revolution.

• Alferink, Larry (2005). Behaviorism Died Today, Again! The General Psychologist, 40(1) (Spring 2005), 7-9. This is a brief mention of some of the many ways, both scientific and practical, in which behaviorism is still thriving today, which should counter the cliché that it's a thing of the past.

Slides on Definitions of Psychology in PDF format: Four definitions of psychology -- (1) the science of mind and behavior, 2) the science of experimental epistemology, 3) the science of knowing and experiencing, 4) the science of things that move around on their own; three important dates in the history of psychology; a timeline and four terms that are central to epistemology; the mind-body problem; what kinds of things are of interest to psychology. (For the full version of the epistemology distinctions, see the Outline of Epistemology to be linked below.) Brief overview of psychology's history: A few pages from Bruce Goldstein's Cognitive Psychology textbook that provide a sketch of the history of psychology from its beginnings up through the Cognitive Revolution of the 1950's and 1960's, for those who would like a text reference to go along with the class discussion. For our purposes this excerpt really begins on p. 9, "The First Psychology Laboratories." The "imageless thought debate" is not mentioned explicitly but problems with introspection are summarized under "Watson Founds Behaviorism." (And not that it matters for this course, but in a History Of Psychology course it would be important to recognize that Wundt's own view of psychology was not Structuralism but something a bit more subtle called Voluntarism.) Defining quotes from Watson and Neisser on their intentions for Behaviorist and Cognitive Psychology, respectively: John B. Watson (1913). Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. First published in Psychological Review, 20, 158-177; first paragraph: Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation. Ulric Neisser (1967). Cognitive Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. (p. 4). A definition of cognition from the textbook that coined the term "cognitive psychology": [T]he term "cognition" refers to all the processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. It is concerned with these processes even when they operate in the absence of relevant stimulation, as in images and hallucinations. Such terms as sensation, perception, imagery, retention, recall, problem solving, and thinking, among many others, refer to hypothetical stages or aspects of cognition.

The Godwit's Long, Long Nonstop Journey: New York Times article about the bird's surprising migratory flight, in case you've been taking it for granted that birds instinctively fly south for the winter. Non-stop wing flapping through bouts of extreme weather with no stops for rest or food, for up to 10 days and 8000 miles from Alaska to New Zealand -- "It's not really like a marathon... It's more like a trip to the moon." There are many other fascinating details in this great story, but note especially: "How migration abilities are passed on to the next generation -- whether genetically or learned or a combination -- is still unknown... Incredibly, it is possible that three-month-old godwit juveniles fly their nonstop maiden voyage without adult supervision." (Though young birds also "make mistakes and do all kinds of weird stuff. So they weren't just born with this routine." At least not entirely.)

A thing that moves around on its own: the robot called Big Dog from the Boston Dynamics robotics lab is designed to maneuver through a cluttered terrain with rocks, hills, snow, ice, and other impediments to locomotion. The computations that go into controlling and coordinating its legs, and perceiving its environment in order to do so appropriately, are of interest to psychology as well as to related fields such as artificial intelligence: the principles it uses are inspired by animate locomotion, and in turn help to develop theories about how animate locomotion works. Not to mention, Big Dog seems to take on a kind of psychological existence simply by moving around in a lifelike way; many video viewers were angered by the demonstration of how its little brother Spot regained its footing after a destabilizing kick, commenting that it was mean to kick the robot like that (click here to see Spot run).

A dog demonstrates that perceptions and actions are scaled to size.

The Venus Flytrap is pretty smart.

Thigmotropism in Wikipedia: how plants' climbing and clinging behavior works based on their "sense" of touch.

Links cited in slides on definitions of psychology: These are collected together here in a more accessible format than the pdf of the slides.

Some Relevant Quotes on the nature of science and related topics.

Crimson by Josip Novakovich is a moving and disturbing short story that features this intriguing passage -- an insight that is certainly knowledge of a sort, but not scientific knowledge: "Milan thought how strange it was that he should be held responsible for the past, three years ago, when he was conscripted and enslaved--when he wasn't even himself. 'We all have multiple personalities,' he said. 'One of us is the past, and another the future, and there's no present me. We are vacant right now--spaces through which the past and the future disagree.'" Knowledge comes in many varieties, and whether it's scientific, or poetic, or spiritual, or intuitive, or common-sense, etc., all of these are valid ways of knowing the world for different purposes and contexts. Science is not the be-all-and-end-all of knowledge, or the ultimate arbiter of what is real for all purposes, but is a specially constructed tool for uncovering certain kinds of facts about nature using certain agreed-upon types of evidence.

Here are a couple of ways to get things really wrong, in viewing the relationship between science and religion:

• Cognitive Psychologist Stephen Pinker argues in a commentary piece in Newsweek magazine that modern neuroscience has disproved the existence of the soul; responses from readers point out that no such scientific disproof is possible. Not stated explicitly is the fact that science is not the kind of inquiry that could ever be used to answer questions about the existence of souls or of God, and that deciding such questions is a matter of personal commitment that might then steer the type of inquiry you choose to pursue. See Lewontin's quote on materialism in science for a voice of reason.

• From a book on the "debate" over Intelligent Design: Intelligent Design is a euphemism for Biblical Creationism that atttempts to portray itself as science by supposing the "evidence" of the complexity of life leaves no possibility for its explanation in material terms, and that instead there must be a "designer" behind all of the complexity. That may sound like a plausible claim to some, but it's not a scientific one, since science only allows certain kinds of evidence and procedures to be used; science certainly doesn't throw up its hands and give up, and say "this is beyond us, so it all must have just been made by someone." If it all WAS made by someone, SCIENCE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DISCOVER THAT FACT, and will keep banging its head against the evidence FOREVER, in a noble failed attempt to stick to its principles. But the issue is far from settled, and probably never will be. In this excerpt, Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe (under "Conclusion") explicitly claims that science is not a game with arbitrary rules, when in fact that's exactly what it is -- well, not arbitrary rules, but rules nonetheless, which exclude the kind of conclusion Behe wants to force. Break those rules, and it's no longer science that you're doing. Then there are a few pages by noted philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga, who tries to undermine those rules of science (what he calls science's "methodological naturalism" or commitment to non-supernatural explanation), so you can get a taste of the style of argument; notice the footnote that I think shows the bankruptcy of his point of view: #31, which essentially says the thing for scientists to do is to try to solve problems for a while, then give up and say "God did it." Again, even if it's true that "God did it," that's NOT SCIENCE!

• A reflection on changing the meaning of words like "science," or in this passage, the word "art." It's from the play Travesties by Tom Stoppard (author of things you've probably heard of like Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead and Shakespeare In Love and one spectacular thing you should check out, Arcadia, a mere hundred page play that could change how you look at the world). I should note that in this excerpt the character Carr's point of view is hardly the final word on the matter, though it is the reason I've posted this link.

Outline of epistemology for psychology: This web page highlights some differences between empiricist and rationalist approaches to psychology. It contains all the relevant information, and none of the irrelevant information, from the slides shown in class, and so TAKES THE PLACE OF THE SLIDES. You are NOT responsible for the list of "technical terms" at the end, though reading and understanding them will help with your understanding of the various philosophers' positions. Illustration of top-down processing: in reading the words "THE CAT" as printed in the link, bottom-up or purely stimulus-driven processing is not sufficient to decide whether the ambiguous letter is an A or an H in each word, since it could be either; instead the reader makes use of higher-level knowledge (of vocabulary and word spellings) which is normally the end product of the reading process, to resolve the ambiguous stimulus in each context through what is known as top-down or knowledge-driven processing (i.e., the knowledge that there is a word C-A-T in English, but no word C-H-T). Plato and Aristotle: discussed in brief, from another textbook; this excerpt pretty well covers what you need to know for this class about these two figures.

Some excerpts from Plato's Dialogues: They're very readable even in this classic translation from the 19th century. "Meno" features the slave boy demonstrating that he knows the Pythagorean Theorem (this version with illustrations may be easier to follow). Book VII of The Republic contains the famous Allegory Of The Cave.

• No One Knows My Plan, by They Might Be Giants featuring Fast Leslie -- that is, splicing in me for one line (at 0:55), and the rest of my band for the guitar solo (at 1:16).
  Here's the original song and lyrics, sung by a delusional person who's been institutionalized thanks to neighbors witnessing his odd behaviors (he likens the shadows
  he cast on his window shades to the shadows on the cave wall being misinterpreted by naive observers in Plato's allegory) and now fantasizes about the grandiose plans he's making.

David Hume on causation, from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) -- in case you want to see where questions about causality all began. (See also the famous conclusion.)

Three ways Hume was influential in psychology were: Hume said simple ideas could be built up into complex ideas through some simple laws of association, instead of depending on the mind playing an active role with its unexplained homunculus abilities. PDP models of information processing are based on applying a few generic rules to a large collection of simple processing units instead of depending on a program that executes an explicit set of instructions. Hume said all knowledge could be reduced to either matters of fact or observation (synthetic statements) or matters of the relations among ideas (analytic statements), and anything else didn't count as knowledge at all. Logical positivism was the philosophy of science in the 20th century that took that as its starting point and said science was the model for all knowledge; it was the most influential philosophy underlying behaviorism, affecting the kinds of theories that were developed and favoring the neglect of any role for the mind. Hume said that cause and effect couldn't be perceived with the senses and were merely the result of observing repeated contiguity between successive events, along with the unjustifiable assumption that the future will be like the past; therefore the best attitude toward science would be to stick to cataloging the observations and their typical sequences without proposing any underlying causal explanations of why things happen. The most influential behaviorist, B.F. Skinner, adopted much the same attitude by arguing against complicated theorizing in terms of physiology or cognition or other unobservable variables, and instead just cataloging the observed relationships between stimuli, responses, and reinforcements and punishments.

Outline of Logical Positivism: This is a very brief sketch of the philosophy of science known as Logical Positivism, which was very influential in the development of psychology in the first half of the 20th century. It's mainly of interest for the concluding segment, an excerpt from the first English-language manifesto of logical positivism, in which Hume's influence is explicitly acknowledged.

Chomsky, Noam (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26-58. The famous critique of the behaviorist approach is fairly difficult, but rewarding if you're interested.

• MacCorquodale, Kenneth (1970). On Chomsky's Review Of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Journal Of The Experimental Analysis Of Behavior, 13(1), 83-99. This lesser known but fairly effective rebuttal of Chomsky's arguments shows how he missed the point of Skinner's book and chose instead to attack behaviorism in general; of course by 1970 this essay was a bit late to counter the perception that Chomsky had successfully demolished behaviorism, which of course he had not done.

Language Development: here are a couple of brief passages scanned from Erika Hoff's text that describe the Chomskyan view of language acquisition, for those who want something more than their notes to refer to. It also makes some of the same points about behaviorism and cognitivism as I made in class, and emphasizes that behaviorism fails as a theory of language. Note that connectionism / parallel distributed processing / neural network models are mentioned in passing as embodying both nativist and empiricist elements. We describe them as a type of information processing model (or "computer"), and therefore rationalist. At the same time, they are inspired by arch-empiricist David Hume's view of simple ideas "thinking for themselves" through the application of a small set of rules, rather than the complicated sets of instructions in a familiar computer "program" that might be more in line with Descartes's thinking.

Excerpt from an interview with philosopher Daniel Dennett (from Jonathan Miller's collection titled States Of Mind) on the strategy of investigating the workings of the brain by probing the information processing capacities of the mind, rather than approaching it directly through neuroscience. Note that this difference in investigational strategies is also referred to as top-down vs. bottom-up in a different context.

Two excerpts from Stephen Pinker's book How The Mind Works in which the Computational Theory of Mind is nicely described. Note that at one point, Pinker claims this theory is different from "the despised computer metaphor," which he suggests is the idea that the brain is exactly like a digital computer. But no one actually thinks that, and when people "despise" the computer metaphor, it actually is Pinker's own view that they mean. Pinker just wants to make it seem that no one could possibly have any reasonable objection to what he's saying. This is typical of Pinker, and part of the reason many people (including me) sometimes can't stand him; another believer in the Computational Theory of Mind, the famous philosopher Jerry Fodor, found enough to disagree with in this book that he wrote his own book as a response, titled The Mind Doesn't Work That Way. These pages are an interesting read nonetheless.

Innate Behavior Patterns, Habituation, and Basic Classical Conditioning Terms: This link duplicates information presented on some slides that are not posted, and so TAKES THE PLACE OF THE SLIDES.

Classical conditioning affects fertility in birds, according to a report described here in the popular media. The original research paper is here and apart from some technical stuff about the DNA work, it's pretty readable.

In school, we learned about "this scientist" who trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell... (my mouth tastes so bad all of a sudden... gaah...)

• A further comment about scientists
• This has nothing to do with anything

Summary of the inhibition / excitation model of extinction and spontaneous recovery: a brief description of the roles of excitatory and inhibitory associations in accounting for classical conditioning phenomena, which is also mentioned on pp. 57-58 in Mazur 7E (pp. 70-71 in Mazur 6E). Illustrated version of the same model: I slightly revised the above link and added pictures, but if this version doesn't work with your browser, the above text description is entirely adequate. Illustration of disinhibition shown in class, which is explained on p. 58 in Mazur 7E (pp. 71 in Mazur 6E).

Parallels between habituation and extinction, in particular comparing the a- and b-processes to the excitatory and inhibitory associations in terms of how they come about and how they work.

CS-US vs CS-CR associations diagram from Mazur's textbook, which shows two possible interpretations of what's being learned in classical conditioning. Also from Mazur's textbook is this scheme for Rescorla's US devaluation experiment which could decide between the two interpretations.

Comments on relationships and interpretations of some classical conditioning phenomena, outlining some concepts from lecture that are not explicitly addressed in the text. The habituation and extinction comparison linked above is repeated at the beginning of this page. The drug tolerance / withdrawal / overdose example at the end of the page is more completely described in its own separate link (see below). Illustration of conditioned inhibition shown in class, which is explained on p. 59 in Mazur 7E (pp. 72 in Mazur 6E).

John Watson and Rosalie Rayner's original paper on Little Albert: Judge for yourself whether this paper is a well-controlled and judiciously interpreted study deserving of the attention it's gotten for the better part of a century. Is ONE subject enough? Are they doing classical or operant conditioning? Is Albert's crying really attributable uniquely to that rat and the noise associated with it?

• To help you decide, look at this video of Watson's skill at upsetting a child regardless of the stimulus being employed. I think this would make most babies cry under the best of circumstances!
• Consider this modern evaluation:
  "By itself the Albert study was not very convincing proof of the correctness of Watson's general view of personality and emotions. In addition to the study's reliance on only one subject, the experimental stimuli were insufficient to test for generalization effects, the observers' accounts were too subjective, and the technology did not exist to permit reliable assessment of emotional responses (see Sherman, 1927); there was insufficient follow-up and there was a confounding of instrumental and classical conditioning paradigms. These methodological flaws were also apparent to critical reviewers of the day (e.g., English, 1929; Valentine, 1930) and surely to Watson and Rayner themselves... [I]t seems time, finally, to place the Watson and Rayner data in the category of 'interesting but uninterpretable results.'"
  from Harris, B. (1979). Whatever happened to Little Albert? American Psychologist, 34, 151-160.
• Here is the paper by Beck, Levinson and Irons (2009) in which Albert's identity and fate are reported. And here is the Fridlund, Beck, Goldie and Irons (2012) paper that suggests that the hydrocephalus condition that Albert / Douglas Merritte died of may have been present since birth, rendering him an inappropriate subject for this research in the first place.
• But see the identification of Albert as Douglas Merritte questioned in some back and forth arguments by Powell (2010), and by Reese (2010), and with a response from the original authors Beck Levinson and Irons (2010). Then Powell and others identified another candidate, William Albert Barger, as the real Albert in Powell, Digdon, Harris and Smithson (2014), and also questioned the evidence for any neurological impairment in Digdon, Powell and Harris (2014). You can decide which evidence seems more persuasive.
• Some notes on the intrigue surrounding John Watson: This is the fairly amazing story of John Watson's life outside academia, based on biographies by David Cohen and Kerry Buckley. It won't be on the exams, but you'll want to read it.

Phobias as learned conditioned responses (text format); alternate pdf version: Phobias as learned conditioned responses (pdf format) with illustrations of some common phobias and an extinction-based treatment

Summary of classical conditioning and drug effects: the conditioning explanation of drug tolerance, withdrawal, and paradoxical overdose. (This is an expanded version of the summary included in the "Comments on relationships and interpretations of some classical conditioning phenomena" linked above.)

Using taste aversion learning to save the wolves! (see also here)

• and lions in Africa
• and quolls in Australia (you should at least click this to find out what a quoll is)

Rescorla's (1966) experiment on contingencies in forward and backward conditioning of dogs, from a different textbook, in case you want a text description to supplement your notes. The other contingency experiment with rats is covered in your textbook, though Mazur only mentions the 40% and 20% shock groups, and not the 10% group. Makes the same point though.

PowerPoint slides including innate behavior patterns, habituation, and classical conditioning up through the topics of generalization and discrimination PowerPoint slides from belongingness and taste aversion learning up through the Rescorla-Wagner model

OPTIONAL extended discussion of the Rescorla-Wagner model from Mazur's FIFTH edition. The main difference is that here he runs through some numerical examples which may make it easier to follow what's going on. In my opinion this material should not have been deleted for the 6th edition. (Anyone who has the FIFTH edition, you already have this so ignore this link!)

A comparison of classical and operant conditioning.

Web page on Guthrie's and Hull's learning theories: this summarizes everything you'd need to know about these two theorists, who are only barely mentioned in Mazur's textbook. For those who missed the class discussion, and those who may want to have a firmer reference for this material, here are two OPTIONAL chapters from an excellent older textbook by Robert Bolles, on Guthrie and on Hull. There is far more detail in each chapter than you are responsible for; if you do read them, you only need to read as much as will make the above web page notes understandable to you. Which is not to say you shouldn't read the rest of it for fun. How To Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off, a blog entry that is implicitly making use of Guthrie's principles of learning. A description of the vast number of micro-stimuli present in your environment at a given moment, taken totally out of context from Michael Pollan's The Botany Of Desire, from a segment in which he suggests that a useful function of a cannabinoid (THC-related) receptor in the nervous system might be to mute our awareness of all the irrelevant things in our world that might otherwise occupy our attention. Figure illustrating the Crespi-Zeaman effect from p.105 of the chapter on Hull posted above.

William James on "Habit", from his Principles of Psychology (1890). This link is for those curious enough to read it but too lazy to click through a series of links above to locate it. There are occasional untranslated French phrases and long quotations from other writers, as well as other archaisms that characterize intellectual writing of the time, but these add to the charm, I think. Today's reader might also detect a whiff of elitism, which on the one hand is not surprising from a Harvard professor then or now; and on the other, might be viewed not as enthusiastic approval of the class structure of society but more of a hardheaded acknowledgement that social class, for good or evil, did and still does play a role in the functioning of society. In case you lose interest in the opening comparisons of mental habits to the habits of physical matter, and the subsequent principles that govern habits, note that the most famous parts are about two-thirds of the way in, starting around the statement, "This brings us by a very natural transition to the ethical implications of the law of habit." (A few additional quotes from William James can be found at my link above called "Some Relevant Quotes.")

Tolman, Edward C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55(4), 189-208. This is optional reading since Latent Learning is covered in Mazur on pp. 202-203. If you're interested though, this paper shows the range of his experiments and arguments. It's worth reading about experiments (1) "latent learning", (4) "hypotheses", and (5) "spatial orientation", at least. And the conclusion, which is nice.

Edward Tolman is my favorite psychologist.

Race A Rat! (1:36): Watch this rat explore the alleys of a maze, making wrong turns, peeking over the walls to orient himself... and then in the second half of the video, running the whole thing perfectly at full speed. It's highly motivational to see. You could race him, by tracing through the maze overhead view to see if you can actually stay ahead of him when they show his whole run in the second half. I'm not saying it's hard, just that he's faster than you think -- and the rat doesn't get the overhead view of the maze layout that you get. (Music by The New Pornographers: "Traveling at godspeed over the hills and trails, I have refused my call, pushing my lazy sails into the blue flame. I want to crash here right now. The hourglass spills its sand if only to punish you for listening too long to one song.")

Web page on Skinner's learning theory A page from B.F. Skinner's paper "A Case History In Scientific Method" from 1956, illustrating consistency across species in cumulative records produced by similar reinforcement schedules. It's worth reading the text on these two pages, starting just below the diagram. (Don't worry about the specific schedules employed.) B.F. Skinner audio clip 1 B.F. Skinner audio clip 2 Squirrel Obstacle Course as an example of chaining: It's reasonable to assume the squirrel was first trained on the last step, and then each additional segment of the path was added in reverse order till they finally reached the beginning of the course. In that way, the nuts reinforced the jump from the platform, and through its proximity to the nuts the platform became a conditioned reinforcer for riding in the rocket. Then the rocket became a conditioned reinforcer for the step before that, all the way back to the beginning. End result: a chain of simple behaviors linked together into a complex sequence. How to teach a pet rat to retrieve and drop a ball: A video that illustrates the method of bringing the response closer and closer to a desired response that would never be produced spontaneously. It's debatable whether this is technically shaping since the trainer is not simply reinforcing the closer approximations, but actually making the rat perform them. Fun to watch though, good song too. Driving school for dogs in New Zealand: just to reiterate, the title of this link is DRIVING SCHOOL FOR DOGS IN NEW ZEALAND!!! Musical Canine Freestyle (a.k.a. Heelwork to Music in the UK): a completely preposterous example of both shaping (getting the animal to produce responses it wouldn't normally produce) and chaining (linking together a series of responses into a sequence). It will make you happy. Look at this report from 1999 (those of us with dogs know exactly what "at-home dog-dancing" refers to): The New York Times reported in November on the recent but growing competitive sport of "musical canine freestyle" (choreographed dancing with dogs), in which costumed owners and their matching-collared pooches move to tunes such as "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Get Happy." (Holding the dogs' paws, as in at-home dog-dancing, is forbidden.) The World Canine Freestyle Organization has a mailing list of 8000 aficionados. I Was Not A Lab Rat: Skinner's daughter, Deborah Skinner Buzan, is angry with idiots like Lauren Slater (author of the obnoxious Opening Skinner's Box - don't waste your time!) and others who persist in spreading rumors claiming that her father somehow mistreated her and set her on the road to insanity and suicide. Nice appreciation of the man and of the "Air Crib" he invented for her, which was NOT a "Skinner Box" in any way!

Operant Conditioning videos - alternate versions on Kaltura:

• Chaining example:
  • Squirrel Obstacle Course (0:58): It's reasonable to assume the squirrel was first trained on the last step, and then each additional segment of the path was added in reverse order till they finally reached the beginning of the course. In that way, the nuts reinforced the jump from the platform, and through its proximity to the nuts the platform became a conditioned reinforcer for riding in the rocket. Then the rocket became a conditioned reinforcer for the step before that, all the way back to the beginning. End result: a chain of simple behaviors linked together into a complex sequence.
• Shaping example:
  • Skinner shaping a pigeon to turn around before eating (1:14)
• Shaping and Chaining examples:
  • Skinner shows pigeons conditioned to play ping pong (0:21)
  • Rats playing basketball (0:06)
  • Rats playing basketball, with announcers (0:11)
  • Musical Canine Freestyle (a.k.a. Heelwork to Music in the UK) (3:55): A completely preposterous and joyful example of both shaping (getting the animal to produce responses it wouldn't normally produce) and chaining (linking together a series of responses into a sequence). From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird column: "The New York Times reported in November on the recent but growing competitive sport of "musical canine freestyle" (choreographed dancing with dogs), in which costumed owners and their matching-collared pooches move to tunes such as "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Get Happy." (Holding the dogs' paws, as in at-home dog-dancing, is forbidden.) The World Canine Freestyle Organization has a mailing list of 8000 aficionados." Those of us with dogs know exactly what "at-home dog-dancing" refers to.

Clip from "The Big Bang Theory" in which Sheldon reinforces Penny for desirable behaviors, which is sort of funny though too oversimplified to work in real life. Notice that he says at one point that he could use "negative reinforcement" to "train [a] behavior out of her," when of course that would require punishment instead (negative reinforcement can only INCREASE the occurrence of a behavior, by definition).

• Clip from "The Big Bang Theory" five seasons later in which Sheldon (possibly on behalf of some chastened writers) explains the difference between positive punishment and negative reinforcement but gets it wrong AGAIN. He says "Negative reinforcement is the removal of a positive stimulus. It's a common mistake." But that would be negative punishment since surely it would decrease the rate of responding; negative reinforcement would involve the removal of a negative or aversive stimulus, which would increase the rate of responding. Have to admit, I prefer them getting it wrong so I can mock them. (Incidentally as they point out, the "Ghostbusters" example is wrong too, if you watch the scene in that movie -- because he's shocking a guy whose ESP attempts are incorrect. Some have suggested that it truly is negative reinforcement after all because there's also a girl who sees the guy getting shocked but doesn't get shocked herself, so that her shock has effectively been removed (or skipped) based on her responses. Yeah, I'm sure the writers thought that hard about it.)

Example of chaining from Mazur textbook

Chomsky, Noam (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26-58. The famous critique of the behaviorist approach is fairly difficult, but rewarding if you're interested.

• MacCorquodale, Kenneth (1970). On Chomsky's Review Of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Journal Of The Experimental Analysis Of Behavior, 13(1), 83-99. This lesser known but fairly effective rebuttal of Chomsky's arguments shows how he missed the point of Skinner's book and chose instead to attack behaviorism in general; of course by 1970 this essay was a bit late to counter the perception that Chomsky had successfully demolished behaviorism, which of course he had not done.

My B. F. Skinner bookshelf: Note the November 1992 issue of American Psychologist with the cover photo of all his books, then check out the rest of my collection which looks mostly the same and is actually even better than that cover photo. I'm missing four minor works but instead I have:
* hardcover editions of his first three books, which they somehow couldn't come up with for a photo shoot
* the December 1984 Behavioral and Brain Sciences issue featuring "Canonical Papers of B. F. Skinner" along with invited commentary
* a book by his daughter about applied behaviorism
* the April 2006 issue of American Psychologist with a cover illustration by his other daughter
* the biography to complement his three-volume autobiography
* a book about a community that tried to put his ideas for society into practice
* two general books about his work

Topics and page references on the topics of biological constraints on operant conditioning, and on the contemporary account of reinforcement. [SEVENTH edition] Topics and page references on the topics of biological constraints on operant conditioning, and on the contemporary account of reinforcement. [SIXTH edition]

Breland, Keller & Breland, Marian (1961). The misbehavior of organisms. American Psychologist, 16, 681-684. (Here's a PDF version, and here's their earlier article that they refer to, in case you're interested.)

Photographs of Jenkins and Moore's (1973) autoshaping observations from Mazur textbook

Moore And Stuttard's (1979) replication of Guthrie's puzzle box experiment : I'm just posting this because it's not in the Mazur text, so if you're looking for something to go with your notes, here it is. Notice that although this is a nice critique of Guthrie's stop-action principle interpretation, it doesn't have much bearing on Thorndike's original puzzle box experiment.

Interesting analysis of the case of Pavlov's cat by Eddie Izzard.

Arthur Iberall's list of Behavior Modes Of Man will not be on the final, but you may find it interesting as a possible basis for how Response Deprivation Theory could be applied to humans. These are some characteristic behavior patterns that humans engage in, along with estimates of their frequencies at various time scales (and whether engaging in each behavior is influenced by social factors). Add to that an individual's personal behavioral repertoire - how much time per week does Noam spend watching TV? playing the piano? playing World Of Warcraft? etc. - and you start to be able to make predictions about how restricting some behaviors relative to others might make them reinforcing. The list gets quite speculative as it goes on, but it's something to think about.

PowerPoint slides on operant conditioning.

11 definitions of the term "reinforcement" from various theorists and perspectives

Demos from my two bands - kind of amateur-ish, but enthusiastic; I'm on piano, keyboards, and organ, and my brother is the drummer