Question

Please discuss Guthrie’s Law of One-Shot Learning. Share a short real-life example demonstrating this principle. How are Guthrie's viewpoints on learning different from those of Ivan Pavlov and John Watson? Please discuss Pavlov and Watson's concepts of classical conditioning and share a short real-life example demonstrating these principles. give source from the book Theories of Human Learning: What the Professor Said - 180 Day Option, 6th Edition
Guy R. Lefrancois

Answer 1

Guthrie's Law of One-Shot Learning

Guthrie's Law of One-Shot Learning as its name suggests, the theory of one trial learning or One-Shot Learning states that learning takes place in a single pairing of a response and stimulus and is not strengthened over time by repeated exposure to a stimulus. Edwin Guthrie did not believe in conditioned learning where a reward following a behavior reinforces it. He believed that you learn from cues that come first and sort of "tell" you to do a behavior.
One-Shot Learning states that ''a combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement". What the law says, in effect, is that when an organism does something on one occasion, it will tend to do exactly the same thing if the occasion repeats itself. Furthermore, claims Guthrie, the full strength of the "bond" between a stimulus and a response is attained on the occasion of the first pairing; it will neither be weakened nor strengthened by practice. In behaviorist terms, if a stimulus leads to a specific response now, it will lead to the same response in the future. Thus, learning occurs, and is complete, in a single trial.. People, and animals, learn in one shot. What they learn is not a connection between two stimuli (as happens in Pavlovian classical conditioning. A combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement. Guthrie (1935) uses the word tend because, as he puts it, "the outcome of anyone stimulus or stimulus pattern cannot be predicted with certainty because there are other stimulus patterns present" thing you did when you were previously in this situation.

Thus in conclusion we can say that One-shot Learning is the theory of learning which states that learning takes place in a single pairing of a response and stimulus and is not strengthened over time by repeated exposure to a stimulus.

Example, if you are driving and hear a siren, all the other cars pull over, and then you are nearly run off the road by a speeding fire truck - the next time you hear a siren you will take it as a cue to pull over.

How are Guthrie's viewpoints on learning different from those of Ivan Pavlov and John Watson?

Guthrie’s theories went against those of Watson’s classical conditioning and Skinner’s operant conditioning.

Pavlov and Watson believed that bell (S) and weak acid (S) were contiguous. Association between the two led to learning (conditioning). 2. Guthrie criticized Pavlov and Watson on their explanation of learning (conditioning) and suggested that, combination of stimuli (bell & weak acid) associated themselves with a response (salivation). Whenever the stimuli occurred, response followed.

Guthrie suggested that contiguity alone, without reward, was sufficient for learning, Reward didn’t strengthen the association but it was important According to Guthrie, reward doesn't do anything to strengthen the link between stimulus and response. But what it does is change the stimulus situation, thus preventing the animal (or person) from learning something different. Punishment, too, can change a stimulus situation and serve, in Guthrie's words, to "sidetrack" a habit. The important point is that because learning depends on contiguity (that is, on the simultaneity of stimulus and response events) to be effective, punishment has to occur during the response, or very soon afterwards. And because punishment works by interrupting the unwanted habit, anything that grabs attention and brings about a different behavior will work.Whereas Pavlov and Watson has different notion about the role of reward and punishment in learning.

Guthrie’s theory predicts that learning occurs in a single trial. But performance improves over time because:o Stimuli vary or are attended to differently fromn time to time. Many stimuli can be conditioned to produce then same response. Each response element must become conditionedn to the stimulus.Whereas it is not in the case of Watson and Pavlov. According to Pavlov repeated pairings of the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) eventually leads to acquisition.

According to Guthrie learning takes place in a single pairing of a response and stimulus and is not strengthened over time by repeated exposure to a stimulus. which the Watson and Pavlov states

Pavlov and Watson's concepts of classical conditioning

Classical conditioning is the process of learning by which a neutral stimulus is associated with a specific response simply by occurring at the same time as the 'actual', or natural, stimulus for a given response.

For example, if I offered you a biscuit you might smile. This is because biscuits make you smile.

Therefore: Biscuits are an unconditioned stimulus (often shortened to UCS). And smiling is an unconditioned response (UCR).

However, if every time I give you a biscuit I clap my hands, you might start to associate clapping (a neutral stimulus or NS) with biscuits (the unconditioned stimulus).

Eventually the association will become so strong that just clapping will produce the same response as if I had given you a biscuit.

At the end of the process, therefore, clapping is a conditioned stimulus (CS) and smiling is a conditioned response (CR) to the stimulus.

Following are the experiments conducted by the two psychologists on classical conditioning

1.Pavlov's Dogs The Accidental Discovery. 2. The Little Albert Experiment (Watson, 1920)

                                              Example of classical conditioning

1. Associating thunder with fear, and lightning with thunder, so when you see lightning you cringe in anticipation of the thunder.

2. The smell of food is an unconditioned stimulus, a feeling of hunger in response the smell is a unconditioned response, and a the sound of a whistle is the conditioned stimulus. The conditioned response would be feeling hungry when you heard the sound of the whistle.