LEARNING BEHAVIOR

1
LEARNING BEHAVIOR

2
Animal behavior

• Refers to the activities
  animals perform during their lifetime, including
  locomotion, feeding, breeding, capture of prey,
  avoidance of predators, and social behavior.
  Animals send signals, respond to signals or
  stimuli, carry out maintenance behavior, mate
  choices, and interact with one another.

3

• Animal behavior relates to what an animal
  does and why it does it. The types of behaviors
  exhibited by animals are rich and various. Some
  are genetically determined, or instinctive, while
  others are learned behaviors.

4
Instinctive behaviors/Fixed Action Pattern-
Much of
early research on animal behaviour was governed
by the idea that animals, as opposed to humans,
were largely guided by instinctive behaviour,
where stimulus-response patterns are genetically
pre-programmed and hard wired into the nervous
system
5
EXAMPLE
web making by spiders is an
example of a genetically determined or
instinctive behavior. There is little variation
between individuals in how they construct the web
and it is constructed similarly each time they do
it. Ethologists (people who study behavior) call
such a behavior a fixed action pattern. Fixed
action patterns do not require learning or prior
experience for their expression. They can,
however, be very complex
6
EXAMPLE
Egg Rolling in Graylag Goose
Fixed Action Pattern
7
Learning Behaviors
Learning and memory are two sides of a coin. A
number of surprising findings have lead
researchers to believe that virtually everything
we encounter is learned and is stored away in the
brain
8
LEARNING

Is the modification
of behavior in response to specific
experiences.
9

• Learning involves a change in behavior, often
  long lasting. It is not passed on to the next
  generation.
• Learning is characterized by persistent and
  measurable changes in behavior which are not
  associated with fatigue, altered motivation, or
  maturation.
• Some information or knowledge is acquired and is
  then used to alter the individuals actions and
  responses.
• Learning as an adaptive behavior allows
  individuals to adapt to specific environment
  challenges.

10
Types of Learning

• According to Thorpe types of learning are given
  below.
• 1). Flexible.
• Habituation (non associative
  learning)
• Classical conditioning (associative learning)
  
• Trial and error (associative
  learning)
• Latent (associative
  learning)
• Discrimination (associative
  learning)
• 2). Restricted.
• Imprinting (associative
  learning)
• Reasoning and insight (associative learning)
•  
•  

11
Flexible learning
1. Habituation It is the decrease in response to
repeated or continuous stimulation or, it is the
gradual fading of a response when a stimulus that
proves to be safe, neutral or irrelevant is given
repeatedly.

12

• Habituation is the simplest form of learning.
• Habituation like phenomena is found in every
  group of animals from Weevil to Whales.
• By habituation animals learn to conserve energy
  and time by not responding to an irrelevant
  stimulus.
• If a neutral stimulus that has neither
  noxious nor beneficial consequences is repeatedly
  delivered to an organism, its response to the
  stimulus tends to decrease gradually and may
  eventually cease all together. By habituation
  animals learn, what not to do.

13
Habituation is considered distinct
from Fatigue and Sensory adaptation. Habituation
has been reported to have correlation with a'
change in Central Nervous System.
14
Example 1
A Spider is sitting in
its web. The experimenter vibrates point on its
web, resembling the signal set up when an insect
is trapped. The spider runs out to investigate
the source of the vibration, nothing is found and
spider returns to its place in the, centre of the
web. If this same neutral stimulus is given
several times, the spider no longer rushes out to
investigate. It remains in the centre of the web.
It gets habituated to that stimulus
15
Example 2 A Snail crawling across a sheet of
glass retracts into its Shell when the glass is
tapped. After a pause it emerges and continues
moving. A second tap causes retraction again but
it emerges quickly, frequent tapping on glass
ultimately cause no response at all in snail and
it will keep on moving. This is due to
habituation.
16
Example 3 In the lab, Clark could easily get the
Nereis to live in glass tubes. He found that
mechanical stimuli like tapping on the tube or
touching the head of the worm or even a sudden
shadow passing over caused a rapid retraction
into the tube, but the majority of worms emerged
again within a minute. If these stimuli were
repeated at 1 minute intervals the percentage of
worms responding fell until none of them were
retracting. Clark concluded that Nereis got
habituated to the stimuli.
17
Example 4 Hydra has a long, slender body, and its
still longer fine tentacles (Fig. 1d) sweep the
water. A sudden increase In light, or a
mechanical disturbance, can cause general
contraction. In one experiment, hydra were
mechanically touched on tentacles without a harm
or benefit the number of hydra responding to this
gentle touch declined indicating habituation.
18
Dishabituation It has been experimentally
proved that "the effect of repeated stimulation
of one kind is cancelled by a new stimulus of
another kind and this is called "Dishabituation".
Example once hydra was habituated with
soft mechanical touch, it responded to another
kind of stimulus say a fish of light.
19
2. Classical conditioning The term conditioned
reflex is inseparable from the names of Great
Russian physiologists I.P. Pavlov (l941) and
Sherrington (1942).

• Reflexes This term implies an automatic
  adjustment to maintain homeostasis without
  conscious effort.
• There are two types of reflexes
• A simple reflex
• A conditioned reflex

20
A simple reflex is the simplest automatic
functional unit of the nervous system capable of
detecting change and cause a response to that
change. Simple reflex are also known as inborn or
unconditioned reflexes, fixed or inherited like
the knee jerk, closing of eyes.
21

• Conditioned or acquired reflexes
• Are acquired in life, are not transmitted through
  genes.
• They can be established or abolished.
• They are always established upon some
  pre-existing unconditioned reflexes.

These are flexible and steer animals through
their changing environments by means of signs,
sounds, smells.
According to Pavlov, all kinds of habits
arising from training, education and discipline
are due to chain of conditioned reflexes.
22
Conditioned Stimulus Conditioned Response
Food stimulates salivary secretion This is
an unconditioned reflex. Now, if a second
stimulus like ringing of bell be applied just
before giving of food, for some days, the bell
sound will be able to elicit salivary reflex,
even if no food is given. Such a stimulus is
called conditioned stimulus and salivary
secretion is conditioned response (CR).
23
Example 1
Famous experiment of Pavlov with dog involved
the salivary reflex. Dogs salivate when food is
put into their mouths and Pavlov could measure
the amount of saliva secreted, by inserting a
fistula, through the cheek to the salivary duct,
so that drops of saliva fell into a funnel and
could be counted. A hungry dog was placed on a
stand dog was given meat powder that caused
secretion of saliva. Pavlov rung a bell just
prior to feeding, at first this stimulus caused
no response,
24
after repeating the same thing for 5-6 times,
saliva began to drip from the fistula soon after
the hearing of bell even before the meat powder
arrived. Eventually, the saliva was produced
after hearing the bell alone. The dog had learnt
to respond to a new stimulus which was previously
"neutral" and Pavlov' called this the Conditioned
Stimulus (CS). The salivation response to CS is
the Conditioned Response (CR). Prior to this
learning, only the meat powder or Unconditioned
Stimulus (UCS) was producing salivation or
Unconditioned Response (UCR).
25
(No Transcript)
26
Positive reinforcement The stimulation that
follows with a reward is called positive
reinforcement Negative reinforcement When
stimulation is associated with punishment -it is
termed as negative reinforcement. Pavlov
had used positive reinforcement.
27
Example In another experiment, an electric
Shock (UCS) causes a dog to lift its paw (UCR),
if a bell is rung (CS) just prior to UCS, the dog
learns to raise its paw just after hearing the
bell (CR). Here the CR is associated with
punishment or negative reinforcement.
28
Example2 Karl Von Frisch kept a dwarf
Sheat fish that lived in a small tube at the
bottom of its aquarium. Von Frisch fed the
animals by holding the food (UCS) close to the
tube and the fish quickly left its shelter (UCR)
to eat it. One day he began to accompany feeding,
with whistling, the fish had never responded to
whistle before. But 5 days after, Von Frisch when
whistled (CS) before feeding the fish came out of
her tube to eat (CR), they got conditioned to
whistling.
29
Example 3
Classical conditioning is clearly a natural
phenomenon with real biological value. The
animals learn to associate the presence of prey
or predator with other normally occurring
stimuli. The deer flee (UCR) at the sight of a
tiger (UCS). When a tiger is moving towards a
herd-the monkeys whoop, the birds make noises and
these act as conditioned stimuli (CS) -and soon,
just after hearing the alarm calls (CS) from
monkey and birds the deer flee (UCR).
30

• 3. Trial and error or instrumental or
  operant learning
• This learning is called trial and error because
  in this animal tries again and again to achieve
  the goal, keeps eliminating errors and one day
  learns to perform it without any error.
• It is also called instrumental because animals
  were allowed to perform in an instrument.
• it is also called operant because animal
  operates upon surroundings.

31
Conditioned learning is associated with
unconditioned stimulus and response, whereas
trial and error has basic instincts and
motivation (drive or urge) at the base. When
animals are motivated by thirst, hunger, sex or
fear they show restlessness, and exploratory or
appetitive behavior during the course of which it
performs spontaneously a variety of motor
patterns viz-sniffing, walking and looking
around. If one of these patterns is followed by
reinforcement e.g. a hungry animal while
exploring the surroundings receives food and if
this association is repeated the animal learns to
perform a pattern regularly to that particular
situation.
32
Example 1 An example will
make it clear why this type of learning is called
trial and error. In this experiment on learning
Thorndike used, a problem box. This puzzle box,
also called Thorndike box is a cage that can be
opened from inside by depressing a lever. A cat
is shut in, which tries hard to escape, it moves
around restlessly, explores its surroundings,
bangs its head and paw here and there to somehow
open the box, after sometime, by chance it steps
on the lever and the door opens.
33
The second trial is the repetition of first, and
the third, soon the cat concentrates more
attention on the lever and eventually it moves
swiftly across the box and presses the lever as
soon as it is confined. The cat learns to
eliminate behavior that led to no reward and
increases the frequency of behavior which was
rewarding. The first reward was obtained by pure
chance.
34
Experiment 2 Trial and error learning is not
confined to animals with, well developed brains.
It is also shown even by smaller creatures like
earthworms. An earthworm is placed in the stem of
T-shaped tube. If it turns left it is given the
electric shock, if it turns right it is returned
to its box without punishment. It is claimed by
scientists that the worm learns by trial and
error to associate turning left with punishment
and eventually always turns right
35
(No Transcript)
36
Example 3 A classical
example of instrumental conditioning is that of a
rat in Skinner box developed by Skinner
(1904-1990), a prominent physiologist. When
placed in a box, the rat begins explore it moves
all about the box and, by accident, eventually
presses a lever and is rewarded with a food
pellet. Because food rewards are provided each
time the rat presses the lever, the rat associate
the reward with the behavior. Through repetition,
the rat learns to press the lever right away to
receive reward.
37
In this type of learning, the animal is
instrumental in providing its own reinforcement
38

• Experiment 4
• An octopus is seen (in fig) leaving its
  shelter and advancing towards the crab at the
  other end of its tank. It faces two situations.
• If it attacks the crab whose nearby a square is
  hanging, the octopus receives an
• electric shock.
• 2. In another situation, there was no square
  i.e. the electric plates was removed and octopus
  is allowed to attack the crab i.e. without
  getting an electric shock. After a few days, by
  trial and error, the octopus learns to attack
  when the crab is alone and does not attack the
  crab when an electric plate is hanging nearby.

39
(No Transcript)
40
THE END
Prepared by-
AMAAN ALI