Instrumental learning - Thorndike

[Insomniac]

Could someone explain to me what instrumental learning is with an example and how it's different to one trial learning?

[yearningforsimplicity]

Instrumental learning was a term coined by Edward Thorndike - he conducted experiments where if cats (that were put in a cage sort of thing called a 'puzzle box') learnt a correct response (to open the 'puzzle box'), they'd be able to get out and eat a piece of fish that was lying outside the cage. Instrumental learning pretty much describes the association an organism makes between a behaviour and its consequences; in this case between the cat's display of the correct response to open the cage AND the consequence of this response which is getting that piece of fish We call it instrumental learning because the cat is “instrumental” (meaning active and involved) in learning the correct response and thus “operates” on the environment to achieve the desired outcome (of eating the fish). Instrumental learning is related to Skinner's operant conditioning in a way!

On the other hand, one trial learning is a lot quicker in terms of how an organism learns the association between two stimuli. In Instrumental learning, it takes the cat a while to realise that "heyy If I do this response, I can escape from here and eat the fish!" but in one-trial learning, you learn a lot quicker. E.g. if you ever ate take-away and then felt sick, you probably would feel grossed out to ever eat that food again - you LEARN that eating x food makes you feel sick as a result of ONE experience or one TRIAL - this is called a taste aversion and it's the most basic example of one-trial learning. Also, learning in OTL is quite resistant to extinction, but the learning or association made in Instrumental learning can be easily extinguished (through either constantly giving the cat a shock when they do the desired response or removing the fish reward).