The psychology of learning and its relationship to obesity

Psychology of Learning and Obesity

Learning

There are various definitions of learning that are used in the academic circles. These definitions depend on the school of thought that they are derived from. The behaviorists define learning as the relatively permanent change that takes place in behavior alteration due to experience. It is the external change of behavior that can be seen.

The cognitive theory on the other hand defines learning as a relatively permanent change in the mental process and associations that mental due to the experiences that one goes through. Unlike the behaviorism definition that focuses on observable change, the cognitive theory focuses on the mental changes that are internal and cannot be physically observed (Ormrod, J.E., 1999).

Other definitions of learning that are commonly used are the acquisition of knowledge by study as is defined by the 19th Century theory, or sudden or slow acquisition of revelation into the tenets of particular relationships in the environment as propagated by the Discovery learning. These are some of the most common definitions of learning among many others.

Operant conditioning

The concept of operant conditioning also known as instrumental conditioning is a learning process that occurs motivated by punishments and rewards for the behavior. Here, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that particular behavior (Kendra Cherry, 2011). The idea of operant conditioning was coined by B.F. Skinner who was a behaviorist and that is why occasionally the concept is referred to as Skinnerian conditioning.

Instrumental or operant conditioning is defined as a learning process by which the consequence of an operant response affects the likelihood that the response will occur in the future. Basically, operant conditioning is a stimulus response prototype that when reinforced conditions individuals' or organisms' response to a desired behavior. Our behaviors are shaped to be desirable or undesirable through reinforcements, punishment and extermination. Generally, operant conditioning is seen to be voluntary reaction that precedes the stimulus and the reinforcement. B.F Skinner and Edward Thorndike over years developed two famous streams of research in this area. BF Skinner argued that the term reinforcement was more pleasing than the word reward. Reinforcement is any stimulus that strengthens the preferred response.

Gonzalez (2002) further gives the description that, "Instrumental conditioning is learning through consequences: Subject's behavior that produces positive results (high instrumental response) is reinforced, and that which produces negative effects (low instrumental response) is weakened. Two aspects are central; Introduction of a contingency between a highly desirable event (reinforcer) and one perceived by the subject as less desirable (instrumental response). The instrumental response is the learning goal while the reinforcer is the instrument to employ for achieving the learning goal."

It is psychologically noted that negative reinforcement occurs when something is taken away; stopping an electric shock to elicit a behavior from a rat is an example, because whatever behavior the rat exhibited to terminate the shock will increase.

Positive reinforcement is something given that increases the chance that the animal or person will repeat the behavior; for instance, open appreciation to a teenager who chooses to forego junk meal for a given period of time with the aim of reducing the weight and avoid obesity.

As seen above, the instrumental conditioning procedure does not allow the organism to return to the BBP. But the organism can achieve a contingent optimization by approaching its Behavioral Bliss Point (BBP) under the constraints of the instrumental conditioning procedure. However, the organism may want to fall back into the BBP, the mum may use punishment. Punishment is the presentation of an adverse event or outcome that causes a decrease in the behavior it follows. In the case of obesity, it is the adverse event like rebuke or withdrawal of the praise upon the teenager going back to eating junk food. There are two kinds of punishment under this theory;

(a). Positive punishment, also referred to as punishment by application, involves the presentation of an unfavorable event or outcome in order to weaken the response it follows.

(b). Negative punishment, also referred to as punishment by removal, occurs when a favorable event or outcome is removed after a behavior occurs. In our case, the teenager who is obese could be denied some privileges or the praise and congratulations can be withdrawn in an effort to make him feel he needs to continue doing the things he was doing to avoid obesity.

Here, the reward plays the role of reinforcing the good and desirable instrumental response. It helps make firm the results that the instrumental conditioning is aiming at. On the other hand punishment is aimed at limiting or suppressing the activities or behaviors that may make obtaining of the instrumental response impossible or difficult. The basic principle of instrumental conditioning is learning through consequences, what Thorndike called the Law of Effect: Behavior that produces positive results is strengthened, and that which produces negative effects is weakened.

Edward Thorndike's Law of Effect states that depending on the outcome, some responses get weakened while other responses get strengthened, and this process eventually leads to learning (Britanica 2010). Unlike classical conditioning, what comes after a behavior or response is what is primarily significant. However, after some time the absence of reinforcement results in a decline in instrumental response (behavior), referred to as extinction of instrumental behavior.

Classical Conditioning

The process of classical conditioning works with the introduction of neutral stimuli before the original stimulus and the same reaction is elicited from the organism even without the presence of the original stimulus. For instance in the instance of the Pavlov dog, it salivated with every sight of food as the original stimulus for the salivation. When a neutral stimulus was introduced like a bell that was rang each time before it was fed, the dog started salivating at the ringing of the bell even before the food was availed.

The term generalization in conditioning refers to the tendency of the subject to respond in a similar way to objects or conditions that are similar to the specific conditioned stimulus. A good example is when a child has been conditioned to fear stuffed teddies, she might go ahead and fear even stuffed rabbits, dogs and mice. One experiment that proved this was conducted on Little Albert by Rosalie Raynor and John B. Watson. The little boy was conditioned to fear a white rat, however, there was an observed stimulus generalization where the boy feared other stimuli like a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat any white Santa beards and interestingly even Watson's own hair (Kendra Cherry, 2011).

Stimulus generalization as noted above is a reaction that can occur in both classical and operant conditioning. However, the subject can be trained to discretely differentiate between the similar stimuli and respond only to the specific required stimuli, this is what is referred to as discrimination (Jeffry Ricker, 2011). For instance a dog can be taught to respond to whistle and run to the owner or start a race if it is a race dog. Once conditioned, the dog might respond to a variety of whistle sounds (generalization). In order to have the dog respond only to the whistle of the master or the match controller, further training is required to induce discrimination of the various sounds that are similar to the master's whistle and eventually, the dog will react to the whistle of the master only .

The concept of extinction in conditioning refers to the withdrawal of the unconditioned stimuli though maintaining the conditioned stimuli. Here, the likely response that will be exhibited by the subject is a perpetual reduction in the response to the conditioned stimuli. A good example is in the Pavlov dog experiment, where when the ringing of the bell was continued but never came the food there after, the dog systematically decreased the salivation upon the bell ringing till it stopped salivating at all. This can be followed by Spontaneous recovery with the resumption of the original stimuli.

Spontaneous recovery is the systematic resumption of the similar responses that were exhibited by the subject before the withdrawal of the original stimuli resulting in an extinction of the response pattern. For instance in our experiment above, it the food is re-introduced with every ringing of the bell, the dog will resume the salivation upon hearing the ring of a bell.

Observation learning

This is the learning of behavior through observing the behavior of another person. In most cases, if the behavior of the person being observed is seen to be pleasant and positive to the observer and the consequences are pleasing then he will imitate the behavior (Michael D. Breed, 2001). It is kind of learning by observing the social events. In the obesity case, if the people who are fond of lifestyle that can lead to obesity see the problems and difficulties and the health problems that an obese person has, they will want to change their eating behavior and even socially unacceptable behaviors like smoking since they have observed the eating habits of the obese person and they have seen the consequences and they have not liked it.

Latent learning; this is the type of learning that takes place oblivious of the reinforcements that are applied though these reinforcements can be useful later on in the process of learning. It is the education that is instantly expressed in a response that is obvious. Here, an organism may be learning but the information learnt is not instantly expressed (Robert Jensen, 2006). For instance, a child may watch the elders set the table and they may not instantly set the table but will store that knowledge and information till the day and time that they will need it.