Learned vs. Unlearned

Modified: 2024-07-01 9:55 AM CDST

The study of learning has been one of the central foci of psychology since the turn of the twentieth century.
- During the heyday of behaviorism, learning was psychology in America.
- Although that emphasis has subsided somewhat today, a complete understanding of modern psychology requires us to know the research on learning.
- Learned behaviors can be distinguished from unlearned behaviors only if we observe the development of those behaviors. They cannot be differentiated on a simple to complex dimension.
Unlearned behaviors are "built-in" in some sense.
- Either they unfold via the process of maturation, or they manifest themselves at some stage in life in all or nearly all members of the same species.
- In other words, unlearned behaviors are more consistent in form and timing of development than learned behaviors.
- Learned behaviors must be acquired.
- Learned behaviors will exhibit a wider variability than unlearned, and will not be as universally distributed as unlearned behaviors.
- Some examples of each (below) will help to clarify these distinctions.
Example: Unlearned
- The three-spined stickleback is a small, freshwater, European fish. It lives in small streams.
  - Males of this species build nests during the mating season and then defend the cylinder of water above the nest from other males.
  - Males develop red bellies during mating season, and that is the primary cue that other males use to distinguish males from females.
  - In fact, Tinbergen showed that even crude fish models with red bellies were attacked by resident males, but accurate models without red bellies were not.
  - Females do not develop red bellies.
  - When a female enters a male's territory, he engages in the "zig-zag" dance.
  - If a female is receptive, she will follow the male to his nest, lay her eggs inside, and leave.
  - The male will then fertilize the eggs, fan water through the nest with his tail to prevent rotting, and continue to defend the nest.
  - The point of this long-winded example is that ALL normal male sticklebacks will engage in this kind of behavior WITHOUT having to learn it.
  - (Papa stickleback does not have to explain to Junior stickleback about the birds and the bees.....) The above is an example of a complex unlearned situation.
Example: Unlearned and Learned
- The digger wasp demonstrates a situation in which there are both unlearned and learned components.
  - The learned part of this example comes in navigating from the area in which the caterpillars are found to the various burrows each wasp maintains.
    - Each burrow is visited several times before it is finally sealed, and each wasp maintains several burrows.
    - The Baerends, Tinbergen's colleagues, were able to demonstrate that the wasps were navigating by learned cues.
      - They did so by moving the landmarks near burrows.
      - When the wasps returned, they landed where the burrow should have been.
      - Eventually, however, they learned the new location.
      - This example gives us an idea about a function of learning, namely, to help animals deal with environments that change.
      - The beach will change daily, but caterpillars have been the same for millions of years.
      - More recent research showed that plants being attacked by caterpillars emitted plant hormones that the wasps could detect, thus making their search easier.
Example: Learned (nearly entirely)
- The final example involves human and monkey parenting. An interesting question is, "How much of human parenting is learned?"
  - Unfortunately, we cannot run the experiment to answer that question for ethical reasons. (e.g.,. Take a number of children, raise them without parents....)
- Harlow, however, was able to run just such an experiment with rhesus monkeys.
  - Harlow separated some mothers and their offspring shortly after birth.
  - Some monkey infants were reared in total isolation, others with "surrogate mothers," others with other monkey infants, and still others were not separated from their mothers.
  - The infants raised in total isolation were completely abnormal.
  - The infants reared with surrogate mothers fared somewhat better, and they developed an attachment to the soft, warm surrogate mother.
    - Later in life, the males reared in this condition could not become fathers because they were unable to copulate with females.
    - Females in this group did copulate successfully, but made horrible mothers.
  - Both males and females in the group that was reared with other monkeys could copulate and made adequate, if somewhat below average, parents.
  - In rhesus monkeys, then, parenting skills are learned.
- Parenting skills are learned in humans as well.
  - Many of us have had experience with infants prior to giving birth to our own.
    - However, the experiences surrounding the birth and raising of the first child are the major time of learning for most parents.
    - Subsequent children are treated very differently because of those experiences. (Parents learned from having their first child.)
  - Interestingly, our society requires no demonstration of capacity to parent. But, society requires demonstration of capacity to drive an automobile.
    - Lykken and others have argued that some formal training in parenting should be required.
    - Informal avenues for training exist, such as LaMaze training and intervention programs for some parents.
    - The research on child abuse is instructive here.
    - Child abusers are much more likely to have been abused children themselves, giving rise to a cyclical hypothesis of child abuse.
    - Intervention programs aim to break that cycle.
- So, understanding learning provides insight into much of human behavior because so much of human behavior is learned.

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