Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

Human Learning and Cognition

Fall 2003

Answers - Week 6 Terry, Chapter 4

1. What is instrumental learning and how does it differ from classical conditioning?

Instrumental learning is learning in which a stimulus, response, and the consequences of the action derived from the first two are associated. This is a based on the simple and necessary extension of what we observed in classical conditioning to the real world of consequences and rewards. In instrumental learning the outcome of the newly acquired behavior (response) is evaluated against a series (possibly) of needs-based criteria. In this way the consequences have some effect on the association between the first two elements in the triumvirate (stimulus - response). While this new dimension brings behavior theory closer to the real world of cause and effect relationships (trial and error learning) it also adds a further dimension of complications and differing variables to the behavior-based model.

The beauty of instrumental learning and one of the main differences between the instrumental learning and classical conditioning is that of control. In instrumental learning because the consequences are taken into consideration the organism is able to control actions consciously. This means that once someone has made to type of associations which are necessary instrumental learning they will actually seek out situations and engage the world in order to receive a consequence which they would like. This mean that they need to plan. In classical conditioning, on the other hand, the organism is really just a passive sponge-like creature which observes what happens in the world and managed to associate things which happened to co-occur.

2. What is positive reinforcement and how does it work?

Positive reinforcement is exactly what he name implies. It occurs when the consequence of the response is perceived as being beneficial to the organism, either from a physical or psychological point of view. Such a beneficial consequence has the result of getting the organism to repeat the response with more vigor and frequency. This, in effect, is the circular definition of positive reinforcement, it is seen as being positive because it has a positive effect on the instances and types of occurrences of the response.

3. What are some different theories of reinforcement?

To try to break down the idea of positive reinforcement and make it a little easier to understand we can try to identify some different aspects of positive reinforcement. They are:

Drive reduction

Incentive motivation

Brain stimulation

Drive reduction is basically all about how much the organism really wants or needs the consequence. This is called drive. Drives are often thought of as physically determined, such as thirst, hunger, sex but for humans and maybe some other animals there are also psychological drives, such as the need to be with people. So, if you are thirsty you will a drive to satiate that thirst. The more thirsty you are, and this of course is dependent on how long you are restricted from receiving water as a consequence, the stronger your drive will be. The stronger your drive will be the stronger the response will be.

Incentive motivation is when the actual consequence is reinforced even more by the action itself. The consequence awakens a realization about the world which is positive. This provides incentive and the incentive impels the organism to engage in behavior which will lead to the consequence they now desire. In brain stimulation the explanation is physical but one that revolves around the brain. In order to understand this we have to realize that the brain is linked in a very fundamental way to the rest of the body. As we should know by now, the brain is effectively controlled by the transmission of a wide variety of different chemicals these chemicals are used to enhance brain production in addition to suppressing brain reactions and other reactions in the brain. Chemicals or released the brain based on what occurs in the rest of the body. So, if a person eats chocolate for example the composition of the chocolate as it reacts and to and is absorbed by the body is going to release certain chemicals in the brain. This happens when we eat certain food and it also happens when certain other things happen in our body, such as difficult physical exercise, fear, and many other purely body reactions. It can be safely assume that in a particular consequence to a response to the body is going to react in some way, either by getting something to eat as was demonstrated in a lot of these laboratory experiments or by reacting positively to certain stimulus inherent in the consequence. In either case the body is going to react. This reaction is going to stimulate the brain in a certain way. We know that the brain itself as an organ has its own cravings and is able to become used to certain things. In this way we can see how brain stimulation becomes a certain type of drive. If the brain is used to having certain chemical secreted as a result of the consequence then it will want this to happen. This to a large extent is the underlying formation of addiction. And interestingly because the brain is somehow affected by changes in body the brain can actually become addicted to very strange things basely because of chemical secretions as a result of these body changes. Interesting!

4. How aware are organisms in instrumental learning?

Based on several studies, one of which included a linguistic production test, it seems that contrary to what was claimed in classical conditioning the organism needs to be consciously aware of the effect of the consequence in order to learn instrumentally. As was stated above, in instrumental learning because of reinforcement factors the actual organism becomes deeply involved in the process and actually controls the process. In order for this control happened there must be a certain level of awareness in the entire process. Now, it could be argued that with enough repetition the process and the awareness of the process might actually become more automatic. We know this is basically have the brain works, that repeated processes become basically automatic and to a large extent subconscious. This, however, would take time and a large degree of conscious control. It would also need to occur in a specific type of situation.

5. What is response learning?

The basic idea in response learning is that the stimulus is cut out and response exists unto itself and without a stimulus. In effect, but basically happens in response learning is that the consequence becomes the stimulus to a large extent. For psychologists response learning is quite important because it allows them to shape responses and in doing so they can actually alter people's behavior particularly when there are problems which need to be fixed in behavior. For us, however, response learning is interesting because it ties in to language itself. Certainly in the real world when people use language they don't have to wait for a particular linguistic stimulus in order to start talking. If this were to be the case that nothing would ever get done because nobody would actually talk first. So, for us to develop a theory of language learning that is based on a released helped by behaviorist models then response learning becomes quite important. Again, the bottom line in response learning is that people will actually respond without a stimulus. So, for language this would mean people actually start speaking without having to wait for some sort of linguistic stimulus. People do this because they think they know what the consequence of their speech is going to be. This is therefore extremely basic and is extremely important for us.

6. What is learned in instrumental conditioning?

As was mentioned above, what is learned is the connection between not only the stimulus and the response as we saw in classical conditioning but both of them with the consequence. This is demonstrated by changes in behavior relative to the type and strength of the consequence. What it really interesting here is that this three-way connection can be broken. Thus, the stimulus might not be important all the time for response to occur. Likewise people can respond with out being a short of a particular consequence, so the consequence financially be cut off from the whole scheme. By advocating this three-way type of connection or association but one which is also flexible we can allow for tremendous amount of variation behavior based on simple learning. This is the type of thing which is necessary for us if we're really going to use this to describe how language might be learned and actually works in the real world.

7. What are some of the main applications of these ideas for us as language teachers?

Reward

Punishment

Motivation

There are many applications of these ideas in instrumental learning which we can apply to the language classroom. Most of these applications relate to the idea of motivation or to put it into more behaviors terms drive and incentive. We can regulate drive and incentive by carefully trying to regulate punishment and reward. Based on some the ideas presented here it would seem that a certain amount of reward is necessary in order to give people drive, but at the same time we don't want this drive to become satiated. When the drive does become satiated than people stop working so hard. That is the problem when we provide too much of what is, in our familiar terminology, extrinsic motivation. Therefore it's important to know when and how to reward and when and how to punish. The danger of punishment is the people begin to associate the punishment with the response and will therefore avoid responding in all possible cases but I think we see things like this actually happen in the English language classroom in Korea. The evaluation system is a system of punishment not a system of reward and people do associate punishment with responses, in large part because the responses never quite good enough. What this means for us is that we need to reward but not for reward's sake. We need to reward honestly and fairly and when it's applicable. Punishment should be dished on the same way. There should be no irrelevant patterns of punishment or reward.

An underlying presumption of this idea is that the students are actually responding. This mean to the students actually have to perform in some sort of way. We can only get an idea of consequences or form associations with consequences when we actually respond. This thing to language classrooms must involve a lot more real language use for the students. If language classrooms are not involve actual performance, that is responses, by the students then none of these ideas are going to work.

8. How can all this be used to further describe language learning as we discussed it last week?

As we move further and further into these behaviors series is important remember how they might actually be linked to language use and eventually language learning. We are interested in language is a specific type of behavior. This will be seen language as being in its primary sense; a type of behavior. Of course, for this behavior to actually occur there has to be some underlying knowledge and for language in very complex system of knowledge. This is what we're trying to work towards. The things we study this week about instrumental learning are quite important because now we not only can explain to how patterns of sounds, morphemes, words might actually enter the brain but now we can actually begin to talk a little bit about behavior. It instrumental learning what people actually learn is to associate consequences with either stimulus or responses or both. Knowing these consequences allows people to self direct behavior. This means that language, for our considerations in this course, has now moved out of the realm of the brain and into the realm of real behavior. People can begin conversations and engaging conversations based on somebody's very simple ideas here. The fact, mentioned above, that this three-way association between stimulus response in consequence can be broken in certain places allows people to extend the simple generalization into many different areas thus allowing language to actually occur as a type of behavior. This is very interesting in importance step for us in our quest to try to determine how language is actually learned.