15. Learning and Motivation
To understand enculturation, we must know something about learning since this is the essence of how culture is "absorbed". And, of course, since learning, as a process, has been found to be universal among humans and most animals, we can assume that there is a genetic agenda.
There are two types of learning: conscious and unconscious. Unconscious learning is typically called conditioning and involves a bodily function such as hunger, the sexual response, or fear, among others. Conscious learning is typically called education. Both come in two varieties of reinforcement: positive and negative.
CONDITIONING
Pavlov's experiments
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) in 1927 performed an experiment that demonstrated the conditioned reflex. In this experiment a dog was prepared with a cannula in a saliva gland. The dogs were not fed and were hungry. In the first part of the experiment a light was lit at the same time as a drawer of food was opened. Naturally, the saliva gland reacted to the sight of food. At the same time the dog associated the light with the appearance of the food. After a short training period the dog would salivate at the sight of the light without the appearance of the food. The lessons to be learned are:
- A stimulus can lead to a secretion of a gland. Later understanding has lead us to believe that this is the case with virtually every stimulus. It is important to understand that the cocktail of hormones in our blood communicate with our internal body cells if an action has been successful or not. There are hormones for success and others for failure. These hormones chemically reinforce the activities that lead to success and inhibit the activities that lead to failure. For instance, successful activity fills our bodies with endorphins, a chemical similar to morphine.
- Sequential memory is a very primitive capability. In this case the dog was shown to have sequential memory in that it quickly learned that the appearance of a light was followed by food. Even a flat worm can learn some significant sequences: An electric shock following the appearance of a light. The animal will curl up at the appearance of a light without the electric shock after a training period. This is negative reinforcement. The flat worm is avoiding the shock.
- Responses were appropriate to the stimuli. The dogs responded to food with ptyalin in the saliva, pepsin in the stomach, and trypsin in the pancreas.
The important point to us at this time is that a gland will secrete in response to a signal. Pavlov demonstrated this in several digestive glands. The most common glandular secretion reaction causes the flow of acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is the hormone that causes the abductor reaction in muscles. A dangerous situation causes the secretion of epinephrine, the hormone of fear. A threatening situation causes the secretion of norepinephrine, the hormone of aggression and anger. An attractive potential mate causes the secretion of ethylphenylamine from the hypothalamus, and causes feelings of love. This in turn causes the secretion of testosterone in a male and estrogen in a female.
Of course, these were not the conclusions that Pavlov drew. But there is no reason that in the light of subsequent findings that we should not apply more sophisticated interpretations than he possibly could.
To best explain the difference between positive and negative reinforcement, we will consider a simple experiment with two white rats in two shoe boxes. The idea is to train them to jump through a sliding door from one side of the shoe box to the other. The only difference will be the motivation for making them learn this trick. For rat "A" we will put a piece of food on the other side of the door. This will encourage him to make the jump. For rat "B" we will electrify a grid under his feet. He will jump around till he realizes that he can escape the shock by jumping to the other side. This will encourage him to make the jump. It takes both rats about the same number of trials to learn the trick. The rat that learns to jump for the food is experiencing positive reinforcement while the rat that is jumping to avoid the shock is experiencing negative reinforcement. In both cases there was a light turned on just prior to the delivery of the food or shock.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT The important lesson in this experiment is shown during what they call the extinction trials. Why they chose that name, I do not know. During the extinction trials, the light is turned on, but no food or shock is delivered. Soon the rat jumping for food no longer associates food with the light. However, the rat jumping to avoid the shock continues to jump and jump for many trials when the light is turned on. The animal's behavior is rigid and does not change even though the shock is no longer present.
One of the characteristics of neurotic behavior in humans is that it takes place inappropriately. Neurotic behavior and neurotic emotional reactions can usually be traced back to a negatively reinforced experience as a rule.
Late one night while passing a patient's house, I noticed a light burning in her bedroom. I later asked her about it and she confessed that she was afraid of the dark. At another time she was late for her appointment because she walked and was delayed by a thunderstorm. It turned out that she was afraid of confined spaces to the extent that she could not ride in a car. She was afraid of big cities because she was afraid to ride in elevators. At that point I suggested that she could overcome her claustrophobia by clearing out a small closet and putting a chair in it. She was to use a stop watch and time how long she could sit in it with the door closed without bursting out. I advised her that, if she would do that, she would get over most of her aches and pains, and save a lot of medical bills.
She wanted to try it! I must emphasize that she wanted to try it. If I had hired three men to throw her into the closet, it would have driven her mad. I loaned her a stop watch. Her first experience in the closet lasted seven seconds, but in as little as three days she could sit in the closet as long as she liked without fear. Soon the light went out in her bedroom. She bleached her hair, began to use make-up, and became president of the local PTA. Her whole life turned around! From a dependent, timid person, she became independent and active in society.
I was surprised to get a phone call from a psychiatrist who had an office up the street from my patient's house. He inquired if I were breaking into psychiatry, and scolded me because I didn't have the proper training for the work. He had missed her, and phoned her to find out what had happened. He warned me: that to cure one neurosis that way without finding the reason for it, would only cause it to break out somewhere else. However in this case the desensitization apparently worked.
This patient also disappeared from my practice except for annual physicals. She told me she had no fewer aches and pains, but they no longer frightened her. She figured, correctly, that they were part of a normal course through life and no longer ran to me when she had them. The up shot of the case was almost fantastic.
Her husband was used to a clinging vine for a wife. When she became independent, it wrecked their previous relationship. Because he wasn't used to such a woman, he took his wife's place in my office, and it was through him that I kept track of his busy wife. Unlike his wife, he did not want to change. He didn't want to accommodate to his wife's new personality. He wanted the old state of affairs restored, but there was no way.
For those people who have been exposed to traumatic negative reinforcement such as chronic emotional abuse, violence, or war, neurotic behavior and fears can be crippling. Even when the electric grid is unplugged they will continue to jump. For the less traumatic fears, I tell mothers to teach their children to be brave. Strength to fight fears may also be obtained in strengthening our faith and understanding.
Society of fear
A society which has a large violent police force, and lots of people in jails is a society based on fear. The advantage of such a society is that the penal system is good work opportunity. Other than that, the population becomes rigid, and fear forces much activity into secrecy. New information, knowledge or experience will not alter this society. How can they change when they have already committed so much to a wrong philosophy? Free societies are more adaptable. When the reward is not there, they try something else. Societies of fear are truly evil. They are always founded on the idea that they are doing what is right for the population.
GENERALIZATION Generalization is a vague word describing a combination of neurological events. We are generalizing when we see an object in different positions and we can recognize it as the same object. This is known as "gestalt" and is a valid heritable capability. Artists and Architects use this skill. Musicians and mathematicians score very high here too.
We generalize when we have an emotional response to something through experience and then ascribe that response to all other similar things. Of course, this would be more lasting with a negatively reinforced experience than with a positively reinforced experience. An example of this is people who say, "all women are the same!" or a person who is constantly afraid of everything due to a fear of something.
Her we have two examples of a natural event, both designed through time by nature because they are beneficial to survival. Once again we see problems of rigidity when negative reinforcement is involved.
READING (Literacy)
This is an interesting subject because of its correlation with general intelligence and education. Other people have felt the same way and have placed great emphasis on reading skills in the first or second grade. There are many with the mistaken notion that if a child could read it would raise intelligence and lower the crime rate (there is a greater proportion of criminals who are nonreaders). They have the notion that if a person cannot read it is the fault of the teacher. These people have not looked to Nature for the relationships and have drawn the wrong conclusions.
Reading and general intelligence
The ability to read is governed by the maturational development of specific parts of the brain, as are all our abilities. If for some reason those parts of the brain are undeveloped, or damaged, the individual cannot read. The brain can overcome the loss of neural tissue to some degree. However, each part is busy doing what it does and is tied to it's function. If the part for reading never develops, the individual will never read.The reason reading is a good indicator of general ability, in that the reading center of the brain matures with the rest of the brain and general comprehension, as opposed to merely word recognition, is reading ability. The more developed the brain, the more abstract is the comprehension, and, as a rule, the higher the reading level. To have a full understanding of reading and maturation we should consider another factor as well: some children mature faster than others.
Most children begin to learn to read, with instruction, by age eight. About five percent of the children learn to read on their own by age four. Twenty-five percent will not learn to read till age ten and will have caught up by age twelve. Possibly, fifteen percent of children will never learn to read.
Lack of acceptance of the simple principle of the maturing brain has cost untold thousands of academically shattered lives. Since the pressure has been on the schools to show results by second grade, teachers have been trying every method they can think of to cram reading down the throats of students who are slow to mature. As a result, when they finally do mature, they don't want anything to do with reading.
Recognizing this problem, a talented teacher, who introduced me to these realizations, started a private learning facility specializing in teaching reading to only fourth, fifth and sixth graders. He was careful to use teaching methods that were different from the public schools. The teaching methods were actually no more effective, but were able to introduce the student to reading in a way that the student had not been previously negatively reinforced. There they had success with all those except the true nonreaders due to neural damage or undeveloped reading ability. By seventh grade they had caught-up.
It is amazing to me, with people who cannot draw, cannot spell, cannot sing, cannot learn foreign languages, that it is difficult for some people to understand there are people who cannot read. Low reading ability is also a perfectly natural and normal occurrence for a percentage of the population. For these individuals, the written word makes as much sense as a blackboard full of advanced calculus does to most of us.
The percentage of nonreaders is growing, but, with the exception of maturational problems, it is not the fault of the schools or the parents. Some fast food restaurants have recognized this growing illiteracy and have met the challenge by installing cash registers with pictures of the products on the buttons instead of numbers. The register automatically prescribes the correct change. Poor reading and math abilities go hand in hand.
B.F.Skinner
Another important aspect of learning was introduced by B. F. Skinner who illustrated general learning principles with pigeons. In that pigeons are descendants of dinosaurs, we might surmise that these learning principles are very old. and were formed early in evolution. However, as you are introduced to these experiments, you will easily be able to identify with the experience of the pigeon.In all his experiments Skinner deprived the pigeons of food for twenty-four hours to insure food would be a good motivation. The animal was then place in a cage with a small target disc attached to a lever in such a way that when the pigeon pecks at the disc, a pellet will drop into a nearby tray. The number of pecks on the disc per minute is recorded. As would be expected, the hungry pigeon discovers the disc pecking behavior, and the number of pecks per minute increases over time to create an upward inclined graph. This is called the "learning curve".
There are three factors that he found to effect the learning curve.
- One to one reinforcement. In this experiment the pigeon received one pellet per peck. The learning curve was fast, but the animal was soon satiated and the curve crashed.
- Fixed interval reinforcement. In this experiment the pellets were released at regular intervals, such as one every fourth peck. The learning curve is not as steep, but the pigeon had to peck more times before it was satiated. The animal hurried the process along by pecking faster.
- Random-interval reinforcement. The intervals were selected from a list of random numbers so there was no way to predict how many pecks will be necessary to get the next pellet. In this study the learning curve was the least rapid, but the pecking behavior is eventually the most vigorous by far. This is the principle of gambling.
NEEDS Needs are our motivations. The struggle to fulfill our needs is the driving force of our life as we have evolved down the path as an obligatory social mammal. The fulfillment of these needs holds the fabric of human society together by motivating human communication and community work. With these needs guaranteed, the motivation is greatly diminished. It is very important that each one of us feels the impulse to fulfill needs. Some examples of our needs are: food, shelter, waste removal, activity, sex, safety, belongingness, power, achievement, knowledge, encouragement, beauty, creativity. The order is not important. Everyone has these needs, but to different degrees depending on environment, culture and make-up.
It is the fulfillment of a need, or the generalization of what it takes to fulfill a need, that stimulates the secretion of the hormones of success. This brings us back to the beginning of the chapter.
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(Click Here) Copyright© RFHall,1995
Chapter 16, Extinct Humans
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