ch 7 Flashcards
learning
Any relatively permanent change in behaviour or potential
behaviour that occurs because of experience or knowledge.
- Behaviourism:
School of psychology that accounts for behaviour in terms of
observable acts and events.
Focuses on a basic kind of learning known as conditioning:
Learning that involves associations between environmental stimuli
and the organism’s responses. For example: Classical conditioning,
and operant conditioning.
Principles of Classical Conditioning
- Acquisition
The initial stage of learning.
The time during which a CR first
appears and increases in frequency.
- Extinction
The weakening and eventual disappearance of a learned response. CS is repeatedly presented alone, and the CR declines. Spontaneous Recovery The reappearance of a learned response after its apparent extinction.
- Higher-Order Conditioning
A procedure in which a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus through
association with an already established conditioned stimulus.
Generalization
yellow light and food-> salivation, only yellow light leadis to salivation
blue light also leads to salivation- even though its not the yellow light
- Discrimination
Participant initially responds due to stimulus generalization Participant makes conditioned response to yellow light Participant learns to descriminate. Responds to yellow light but not blue
What is Actually Learned in Classical Conditioning?
Animals and human beings learn more than just an association between
two paired stimuli that occur close together in time.
They learn information conveyed by one stimuli about another.
The mere pairing of an unconditioned stimulus and neutral stimulus is
not enough to produce learning.
To become a CS, the NS must reliably signal or predict, the US.
John B. Watson
Founded Behaviourism in North America.
Enthusiastically promoted Pavlov’s ideas.
Recognized real-life applications of classical
conditioning.
Gorn (1982) Experiment
Group 1
Students looked at slides of a beige pen or blue pen.
Heard a best-selling pop song.
Group 2
Students looked at slides of a beige pen or a blue pen.
Heard a selection of traditional music from India.
Experimental Results
Later the students were allowed to choose one of the pens.
Three-fourths of those who heard the pop song chose a
pen that was the same colour as the one they had seen
in the slides.
Learning to Fear
Dislikes and negative emotions can be classically
conditioned.
Can learn to fear almost anything if it is paired
with something that elicits pain, surprise, or
embarrassment.
Biologically primed to fear spiders, snakes and
heights
Watson and Rayner (1920)
Phobia Irrational fear of an object or situation that interferes with normal activities. Developing Phobias Researchers established a rat phobia in an 11-month-old boy named Albert.
Eliminating Fears
Fears may be eliminated with the method of counterconditioning.
Counterconditioning
The process of pairing a conditioned stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a
response that is incompatible with an unwanted conditioned response
Accounting for Taste
Classical conditioning can explain how we learn to
like and dislike certain foods and odours.
Teach animals to dislike foods or odours by
pairing them with drugs that cause nausea or
unpleasant symptoms.
Many people have learned to dislike food after
eating it and then falling ill, even when the two
events are unrelated.
Accounting for Taste
Taste aversion may occur after only one pairing of
food with illness.
Humans are biologically primed to associate
sickness with taste more readily than sights or
sounds.
Biological tendency enhances species survival.
Eating bad food is more likely to be followed by
illness or death, than are particular sights or
sounds.
Reacting to Medical Treatments
Medical treatments can create unexpected misery, for reasons that are entirely unrelated to the treatment itself. Unpleasant reactions to a treatment generalize to a wide range of other stimuli. Example: Waiting room, nurse’s uniform, smell of rubbing alcohol.
Medical treatments can create unexpected relief from
symptoms, for reasons that are entirely unrelated to
the treatment itself.
Placebos
Pills and injections that have no active ingredients or
treatments that have no direct physical effect on the
problem.
Operant Conditioning
Behaviour becomes more likely or less likely, depending on its
consequences.
The individual’s response operates or produces effects on the
environment.
These effects, in turn, influence whether the response will occur again.
Responses in Operant Conditioning are complex, not reflexive like in
Classical Conditioning.
B.F. Skinner
Elaborated and extended Thorndike’s general principles to more complex forms of behaviour. His approach was called “radical behaviourism”. To understand behaviour we should focus on the external causes of action and the action’s consequences.
Primary Reinforcers and Punishers
Primary Reinforcer
A stimulus that is inherently reinforcing, typically
satisfying a physiological need. Example: Food.
Primary Punishers
A stimulus that is inherently punishing.
Example: Electric shock.
Secondary Reinforcers and Punishers
Secondary Reinforcer
A stimulus that has acquired reinforcing
properties through association with other
reinforcers. Example: Money and awards.
Secondary Punishers
A stimulus that has acquired punishing
properties through association with other
punishers. Example: Scolding and bad
grades.
Principles of Operant Conditioning
Extinction
Weakening and eventual disappearance of a
learned response.
It occurs when a response is no longer followed
by a reinforcer.
