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Related Concept Videos

Purposive Learning01:22

Purposive Learning

142
E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...
142
Cognitive Learning01:21

Cognitive Learning

423
Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
423
Real-World Application of Classical Conditioning01:15

Real-World Application of Classical Conditioning

627
Classical conditioning not only includes the initial pairing of stimuli but also extends to more complex forms, such as higher-order conditioning. Higher-order conditioning involves creating associations beyond the primary conditioned stimulus, resulting in a chain of conditioned responses.
Higher-order, or second-order, conditioning occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an already established conditioned stimulus through repeated pairings. For instance, if a dog has been...
627
Timing and Consequences on Behavior01:08

Timing and Consequences on Behavior

121
In operant conditioning, the timing of reinforcement is crucial. For animals like rats and cats, immediate reinforcement (within a few seconds) is much more effective than delayed reinforcement. For example, a food reward for a rat needs to follow within 30 seconds of pressing a bar to be effective. 
Humans, however, can respond to delayed reinforcers. We often make decisions between immediate small rewards and delayed larger rewards. This ability to delay gratification is a significant...
121
Associative Learning01:27

Associative Learning

444
Associative learning is a fundamental concept in behavioral psychology, wherein a connection is established between two stimuli or events, leading to a learned response. This process is critical in understanding how behaviors are acquired and modified. Conditioning, the mechanism through which associations are formed, can be divided into two main types: classical conditioning and operant conditioning, each elucidating different aspects of associative learning.
Classical conditioning, also known...
444
Reinforcement Schedules01:24

Reinforcement Schedules

204
Positive reinforcement is a powerful method for teaching new behaviors to both animals and humans. B.F. Skinner demonstrated this with his experiments using rats in a Skinner box. When a rat pressed a lever, it received a food pellet. This immediate reward encouraged the rat to repeat the behavior. This method, where a reward follows every instance of the behavior, is known as continuous reinforcement. It is highly effective for establishing new behaviors quickly.
Once a behavior is learned,...
204

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 19, 2025

Classical Short-Delay Eyeblink Conditioning in One-Year-Old Children
07:36

Classical Short-Delay Eyeblink Conditioning in One-Year-Old Children

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Causal learning with delays up to 21 hours.

Yiwen Zhang1, Benjamin M Rottman2

  • 1Uinversity of Pittsburg, Pittsburgh, USA. yiwenzhang@pitt.edu.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|August 14, 2023
PubMed
Summary

People can learn cause-effect relationships even with long delays of up to 21 hours. Extended experience helps overcome learning slowdowns caused by these delays.

Keywords:
Causal learningDelayEcological momentary experiments

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Causal Inference
  • Human Learning

Background:

  • Real-world events often have significant time lags between causes and effects.
  • Prior research on learning probabilistic cause-effect relations primarily examined short delays (seconds).

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate human ability to learn cause-effect relationships with substantial temporal delays.
  • To determine how learning is affected by delays of 0, 3, 9, and 21 hours.

Main Methods:

  • Participants learned a probabilistic cause-effect relation over 16 days.
  • The delay between the cause and effect was systematically varied across four conditions (0, 3, 9, 21 hours).

Main Results:

  • Learning speed decreased as the delay between cause and effect increased.
  • Despite slower learning with longer delays, participants achieved comparable learning levels across all conditions by day 16.
  • This indicates robust causal learning capabilities even with extended delays.

Conclusions:

  • Humans can effectively learn cause-effect relationships despite considerable temporal delays, given sufficient experience.
  • The findings suggest that real-world causal inference may be more accurate than previously assumed.
  • Further research is needed to explore how other real-world factors interact with learning delays.