Behavioral Psychology Flashcards
What is Behavioral Psychology?
- Common in the first half of the 20th century
- Based on the belief that psychologists need empirical evidence, obtained through experimentation, to understand and change human behavior
- Emphasize the important of observable behavior
- Behavior is the result of stimulus-response (i,e. All behavior, no matter how complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus-response association)
What is Reinforcement?
In any event that strengthens or increases the behavior it follows
Ex : a teacher gives good grades to a hardworking student. This encourages the behavior to continue
What is Punishment?
Opposite of reinforcement. It is designed to weaken or eliminate a behavior rather than increase it.
Ex : a teacher sends a student to the office for misbehaving in class. This discourages the behavior from continuing
What is Extinction?
The diminishing of a conditioned response due to lack of reinforcement
Explain the Ivan Pavlov: Classical Conditioning
Pavlov was investigating salvation in dogs in response to being fed. He noticed that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever he entered the room… even when he was not bringing them food!
He is known for his experiments on classical conditioning:
A type of learning where once a neutral stimulus comes to produce a particular response after pairings with a conditioned stimulus
Explain the before, during and after about the Ivan Pavlov experiment
=> Before conditioning
Unconditional Stimulus (US)(Food)
presented to the would would produce
an unconditioned Response (UR)
(Drooling)
Neutral Stimulus(NS)(Bell) presented to
the dog produce NO response
=> During conditioning
Pavlov took a Neutral stimulus (Bell)
and began to ring it at the same time
the dog received the food
Unconditioned Stimulus this produced
an Unconditioned Response (Drooling)
in the dog
After a while the dog began to
associate the sound of the bell with
receiving the food producing a
conditioned response (CR)
=> After conditioning
Presenting a Conditioned Stimulus(Bell)
to the dog produced a Conditioned
Response (Drooling)
Real World example for the classical conditioning experiment
classical conditioning has implications for the real world
=> For example:
Children demonstrate fear in the waiting room of the doctor’s office after receiving an immunization during previous visit
But if children received candy every time they went to the doctors office, they learn to associate doctor visits with a reward-reducing the fear upon visiting the doctors office
What is the significance of classical conditioning?
By observing the conditioned behaviors, scientists can learn how to change the behavior by associating it with a new stimuli
What did B.F Skinner do for his experiment and what was it called?
=> The Experiment: The Skinner Box
Skinner was concerned with only observable behaviors
Used rats and pigeons to showcase how rewards and punishment can influence behavior
When a pedal was pressed, a food pellet was released in the cage. Therefor, the rat is rewarded with food each time it presses the bar
What is Operant conditioning?
A type of learning that uses rewards and punishment to achieve a desired behavior
How did the skinner box experiment relate to reinforcemnt?
This is reinforcement, because the likelihood of producing the behavior (i,e. Pressing the bar) id increased due to stimulus (reward of food)
What happens if the rat doesn’t get any more pellets?
The rat will stop pressing the bar, and extinction of the behavior will occur
Who and when and why was Little Albert and the White Rat conducted?
-This study was conducted by John B. Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner in 1920
-Watson was an American psychologist who believed that psychologists should only study observable behavior
- Watson and Rayner wanted to apply the principles of conditioned reflexes
- Watson believed that children were not naturally afraid of things, but they learned to be afraid
- The research subject, Little Albert, was described as a remarkably stable child, who was rarely afraid of anything
- Little albert was not afraid of animals and loud noises
This became the unconditioned stimulus (US) for Watsons study
The fear was the unconditioned response (UR)
- The goal of this experiment was to see whether little albert could be conditioned to fear a white rat
The white rat had been a neutral stimulus
Watson and Rayner paired the white rat with a loud noise (US)
Watson and Rayner struct a large steel pipe with a hammer, just above and behind alberts head
After 7 presentations, Albert began to cry and crawl away as soon as he saw the rat even when there was no loud noise
This was the conditioned response
Little Albert’s fear was generalized to other furry objects of which he displayed no fear before the experiment.
What did Albert become scared of?
Albert became scared of
A rabbit
A dog
A fur coat
A santa claus mask
Extinction
- In classical conditioning, the tendency for the response to the conditioned stimulus (the conditioned response) to go away once the conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with the unconditioned stimulus
- Note, however, that classically conditioned fears tend not to extinguish on their own, largely because people would avoid exposure to the conditioned stimulus once they have become afraid of it
Generalization (Stimulus Generalization)
In classical conditioning, the tendency to give similar responses (conditioned responses) to both the conditioned stimulus (CS) and to other stimuli that resemble it in some way
In the case of little albert, once albert had been conditioned to fear the white rat, other furry objects, such as rabbits, dogs, fur coat, and santa claus mask, also triggered the fear response (conditioned stimulus)
