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Learning is a fundamental to survival. This course focuses on how humans and other animals learn by making associations among different stimuli in their environment, and between their actions and the outcomes of those actions. The concepts of classical and operant conditioning will be discussed together with an examination of broader learning concepts such as social learning and individual learning. Effort will be made to relate these more abstract concepts to adaptive everyday life functioning.
Based on the theme that learning is a biological mechanism that aids survival, this book embraces a scientific approach to behavior. The beginning two chapters raise basic questions about the adaptation of humans and other living things to a changing environment, and introduce the natural science approach to the scientific study of behavior. The following chapters deal with topics including Pavlovian conditioning, Pavlovian applications, operant Learning such as reinforcement and punishment, reinforcement beyond habit, schedules of reinforcement, operant applications, observational learning, generalization, discrimination, and stimulus control, forgetting, the limits of learning.
