Chapter 10 The Learning Perspective Flashcards
1
Q
Classical conditioning (Pavlovian conditioning)
A
*reactions could be acquired by associating one stimulus with another- Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov
2
Q
Reflex
A
- existing connections between a stimulus and a response, such that the first causes the second
- Unconditioned stimulus and it causes unconditional response
- The stimulus in the reflex must become associated in time and place with another stimulus.
- The second stimulus is usually (though not always) neutral at first.
- It causes no particular response beyond being noticed.
- There are no special requirements for this stimulus.
3
Q
First stage: situation before conditioning
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- Only the reflex exists- a stimulus causing a response
- Unconditioned/unconditional stimulus (US): the stimulus
- Unconditioned/Unconditional response (UR): response
- Unconditional: no special condition is required for the response to occur
4
Q
Second stage: conditioning
A
- Neutral stimulus occurs along with, or slightly before, the US.
- Conditioned/conditional stimulus (CS): neutral stimulus
- Stimulus that’s becoming conditioned
- A response occurs in its presence only under a specific condition: that the US is there, as well.
- When the US comes, the UR follows automatically, reflexively.
5
Q
When the US and the CS are paired frequently, something gradually starts to change
A
*The CS starts to acquire the ability to produce a response of its own: conditioned response (CR)
*The CR is often very similar to the UR- look identical in some cases, except that the CR is less intense
*If the UR has an unpleasant quality, so will the CR. If the UR has a pleasant quality, so will the CR.
*Ex: Person in the restaurant (US) -> sexual arousal (UR); Background of the restaurant (CSs) -> Conditioned sexual response (CR)
-Present CS without US and see if there is a reaction
Yes -> conditioned
No -> not conditioned
6
Q
High-order conditioning
A
- The more frequently the CS is paired with the US, the more likely conditioning will occur.
- CS-CR combination acts just like any other reflex
- Ex: Background of the restaurant such as music can be used to condition that arousal to other things; the music can condition a particular photo in the place where you listen the music
7
Q
Generalization
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- responding in a similar way to similar-but-not-identical stimuli
8
Q
Discrimination
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*responding differntly to different stimuli
9
Q
Extinction
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- CRs do weaken
- When a CS appears repeatedly without the US
- Spontaneous recovery
- Classical conditioning leaves a permanent record in the nervous system, and that its effects can be muted but not erased
10
Q
Classical Conditioning and Attitudes
A
- You develop attitudes through classical conditioning
- People acquire emotional responses to attitude objects exactly that way
- Neutral stimulus (CS) -> emotional reaction (CR); Stimulus (US) -> emotional reaction (UR)
- If the attitude object is paired with an emotion-arousing stimulus, it comes to evoke the emotion itself. This response, then, is the basis for an attitude.
- Razran (1940)
- Slogans and free lunch, inhaling noxious odors, sitting in a neutral setting
- Walther (2002)
- Photos of neutral persons with liked or disliked persons -> positive and negative attitudes
- Higher-order conditioning
- Have not shown whether attitudes are usually acquired this way
- Events arouse emotions -> conditioning
- Preferences are important aspects of personality, conditioning seems an important contributor to personality
11
Q
Emotional Conditioning
A
- classical conditioning in which the CRs are emotional reactions
- Emotional reactions to properties such as colors
- Andrew Elliot
- -Color red evokes negative emotions in academic contexts
- -Red induced avoidance motivation -> emotional conditioning
- People’s likes and dislikes- all the preferences that help define personality- develop through conditioning.
- Different people have different patterns of emotional arousal
- Different people also experience the same event from the perspective of their unique “histories”
- Children from the same family experience the family differently
- Different patterns of likes and dislikes -> unqiureness of personality
12
Q
Instrumental conditioning/operant conditioning
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- Active
- Follows the Law of Effet
- Determines habit hierarchy
13
Q
The Law of Effect
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- If a behavior is followed by a better (more satisfying) state of affairs, the behavior is more likely to be done again later in a similar situation.
- If a behavior is followed by a worse (less satisfying) state of affairs, the behavior is less likely to be done again later.
- Linking an action, an outcome, and a change in the likelihood of future action law of effect deduced by E.L. *Thorndike more than a century ago
- Accounts for regularities in behavior
- Some acts come to occur with great regularity, other don’t
14
Q
Habit hierarchy
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- as outcomes are experienced after various behaviors
- Derives from prior conditioning
- Some responses are very likely (high on the hierarchy) because they’ve often been followed by more satisfying states of affairs
- Other are less likely (lower on the hierarchy)
- Form of the hierarchy shifts over time, as outcome patterns shift
- Habit Hierarchy can shift for another reason
- Every change in situation means a change in cues (discriminative stimuli)
- The cues suggest what behaviors are reinforced in that situation
- A change in cues rearranges the list of behavior probabilities
- Changing contextual cues can disrupt even very strong habits
15
Q
Reinforcer
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- strengthens the tendency to do the act that preceded it
- Can reduce biological needs or satisfy social desires (smile, acceptance)
- Some get their reinforcing quality indirectly (money)
- Primary reinforcer: diminishes a biological need
- Secondary reinforcer: reinforcing properties by association with a primary reinforcer through classical conditioning or by virtue of the fact that it can be used to get primary reinforcers
16
Q
Punisher
A
- unpleasant outcomes
- Reduce tendency to do the behavior that came before them
- Controversy about how effective they are
- Can also be primary or secondary
- Some events are intrinsically aversive (pain)
- Others are aversive because of their associations with primary punishers
17
Q
Positive Reinforcement
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- getting something good
* The behavior that preceded it becomes more likely
18
Q
Negative Reinforcement
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*when something unpleasant is removed
19
Q
Positive Punishment
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*Adding something bad
20
Q
Negative Punishment
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*Taking away something good
21
Q
Time out
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- punishing by withdrawing something good- underlies a tactic that’s widely used to discourage unwanted behavior in children
- Short for “time out from possitive reinforcement”
- Takes the child from whatever activity is going on to a place where there’s nothing fun to do.
- Appealing
- Seems more humane than punishments
- Creates a “less satisfying state of affairs” -> same effect on behavior as any other punishment
22
Q
Discriminative stimulus
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- a stimulus that turns the behavior on and off.
- Use the stimulus to discriminate among situations and thus among responses
- Behavior that’s cued by discriminative stimuli = “under stimulus control”
23
Q
Continuous reinforcement
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- behavior is followed by a reinforcer every single time
* leads to fast acquisition of behavior
24
Q
Partial reinforcement
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- behavior is followed by a reinforcer only some of the time
* most resistant to extinction
25
Q
Partial reinforcement effect
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*Eventually, even infrequent reinforcement results in high rates of the behavior
26
Q
Reinforcement of Qualities of Behavior
A
- Reinforcing effort in one setting can increase effortfulness in other settings
- Reinforcement can influence the process of selective attention
- Reinforcement can change not just particular behaviors but whole dimensions of behavior
- Many aspects of behavior at many different levels may be reinforced simultaneously when a person experiences a more satisfying state of affairs
27
Q
Social reinforcers
A
- people are most affected by
* Acceptance, smiles, hugs, praise, approval, interest, and attention from others
28
Q
Self-reinforcement
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*Idea that people may give themselves reinforcers after doing something they’ve set out to do
*Derives from the concept of social reinforcement; you react to your own behavior with approval or disapproval, much as someone else reacts to your behavior
Internal self-reinforcement, and self-punishment-> social-cognitive learning theories of behavior and behavior change
29
Q
Vicarious emotional arousal
A
- empathy
- When you observe someone feeling an intense emotion and experience the same feeling yourself (usually less intensely)
- Empathy isn’t the same as sympathy, which is a feeling of concern for someone else who’s suffering
- When you empathsize, you feel the same feeling, good or bad, as the other person.
- People differ in how intensely they empathsize
- Experiencing vicarious emotional arousal doesn’t constitute learning, but it creates an opportunity for learning.
30
Q
Vicarious classical conditioning
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*vicarious emotional arousal creates a possibility for classical conditioning
31
Q
Self-control
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the idea that people sometimes restrain their own actions
32
Q
Bandura and Mischel (1965)
Modeling and delay gratification
A
- Seeing a model choose an immediate reward made delay-preferring children more likely to choose an immediate reward
- Seeing a model choose a delayed reward made immediate-preferring children more likely to delay.
- One possibility: through vicarious reinforcement
- The model vocalized reasons for preferring one choice over the other -> felt reinforced by his choices
- People obtain information from seeing how others react to experiences and use that information to guide their own actions.
33
Q
Social Learning Theory
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One person completes action and receives rewards, other person learns by watching
34
Q
Vicarious reinforcement
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- if you observe someone do something that’s followed by reinforcement, you become more likely to do the same thing yourself.
- If you see a person punished after doing something, you’re less likely to do it.
- The reinforcer or punishment went to the other person, not to you -> affect your own behavior
- Leads you to infer that you’d get the same reinforcer if you acted the same way (Bandura, 1971)
- Bobo Doll Study: vicarious reinforcement influences whether people spontaneously do behaviors they’ve acquired through observation
- Involve developing an expectancy- a mental model of links between actions and reinforcers
35
Q
Outcome expectancy
A
a mental model of a link from action to expected outcome
36
Q
Efficacy expectancy/self-efficacy
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- confidence in having the ability to carry out a desired action
- Therapy-> restores the person’s sense of efficacy about being able to carry out actions that were troublesome before
- Wood and Bandura (1989): self-efficacy influenced how weel business students performed in a management task
- Bauer and Bonanno (2001): efficacy perceptions predicted less grief over time among persons adapting to bereavement
- Efficacy expectancies -> whether drug users stay clean during the year after treatment
- Acquiring a sense of efficacy -> positive influence on immune function
- Perceptions of efficacy may underlie the positive effects found for other variables.
- A pathway by which social support gives people a sense of well-being
- Self-esteem and optimism operate through perceptions of efficacy
37
Q
Observational learning
A
- Social learning theory
- When one person performs an action, and another person observes it and thereby acquires the ability to repeat it
- The behavior should be one the observe doesn’t already know
- The behavior should be one the observer had not previously associated with the context in which it’s now occurring
- Allows people to pack huge amounts of information into their minds quickly
- Occurs as early as the first year of life
- How simple it is
- Require little more than the observer’s noticing and understanding what’s going on.
- fast learning of complicated behaviors
- “The more you already know, the easier it is to learn”
- People learn a great many things that they never do.
38
Q
Acquisition Versus Performance
A
- Bandura (1965)
- The number of acts the child did was the measure of spontaneous performance- child was left alone in room for 10 minutes
- The number of behaviors shown was the measure of acquisition- was offered an incentive to show the experimenter as many of the previously viewed acts as he or she could remember
- Vicarious reinforcement influences whether people spontaneously do behaviors they’ve acquired by observation.
39
Q
Impact of media violence on real-life aggression
A
- Three processes
- People who observe innovative aggressive techniques acquire the techniques as behavior potentials by observational learning.
- Observing violence that’s condoned or even rewarded helps promote the sense that aggression is an appropriate way to deal with disagreements.
- -Vicarious reinforcement thus increases the likelihood that viewers will use such tactics themselves.
- Violence is reinforced in the media, a common reply is that the “bad guys” in TV and movie stories get punished.
- The punishment usually comes late in the story, after a lot of short-term reinforcement -> aggression is linked more closely to reinforcement than to punishment
- The actions of heroes usually are also aggressive, and these actions are highly reinforced
- Whether the model is live or symbolic, exposure to aggressive models increases the aggression of observers
- Repeated exposure to violence desensitizes observers to human suffering.
- Long-term: Being victimized and victimizing others is coming to be seen as an ordinary part of life
40
Q
Physiological assessment
A
- assessment of emotional responses
- Relates to biological process views of personality
- Emotional responses are partly physiological
- Changes in muscle tension, heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves, sweat gland activity, and more
41
Q
Behavioral assessment
A
- entils observing overt behavior in specific situations
- What kinds of activities people undertake, for how long, and in what patterns.
- Varies widely in how it’s actually done
- Simply counts acts of specific types, check possibilities from a prearranged list or watches how far into a sequence of action a person goes before stopping
- More elaborate procedure- using automated devices to record how long a person engages in various behaviors
42
Q
Social-Cognitive Approaches
A
- Two characteristics
- Tends to use self-report devices, rather than behavioral observation
- -Role of thoughts, feelings
- What variables are measured
- -Focus on experiential variables
- -Frequently ask people how they feel or what kinds of thought go through their minds, in certain situations
- -Expectancies of coping and expectancies of personal efficacy
- Tend to emphasize responses to specific categories of situations, as does the est of the learning perspective
- -Behavior varies greatly from one situation to another
- -People’s representations determine how they act
43
Q
Behavior modification/behavior therapy
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*emphasis is on changing the person’s actual behavior
44
Q
Phobias
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- people sometimes have intense anxiety when exposed to specific stimuli
- Can become tied to virtually any stimulus, some are more common than others
- Phobic reactions are classically conditioned
- Leads to idea about how to treat phobias
45
Q
Systematic desensitization
A
- Work with therapist to create an anxiety hierarchy- list of situations involving the feared stimulus, ranked by how much anxiety each creates
- Visualize a scene from the least-threatening end of the hierarchy -> do this repeatedly until the scene provokes no anxiety at all
- Then, move to next level on the anxiety hierarchy -> gradually, able to imagine increasingly threatening scenes without anxiety
- Eventually, the imagined scenes are replaced by the actual feared stimulus
- As the anxiety is countered by relaxation, you’re able to interact more and more effectively with the stimulus that previously produce intense fear
- Very effective in reducing fear reactions -> particularly fears that focus on a specific stimulus.
46
Q
Counterconditioning
A
*relaxation= counteract or replace fear in the presence of the phobic stimuls
47
Q
Context plays
A
- the context of the original conditioning often differs from the context of the therapy
- The response will disappear in the treatment setting but return when the person is in his or her everyday environment.
- Each context is a discriminative stimuli
- The stimuli in the original setting weren’t there during the extinction -> they will serve as cues for behavior
48
Q
Contingency management
A
- reinforce desired alternative actions and simultaneously reduce even further (if possible) any reinforcement of the undesired action
- Abusing drugs and alcohol
49
Q
Skill deficits
A
- literally unable to do something that’s necessary or desirable
- Reflect deficits in observational learning- never had good models to learn from
- Can influence the development of expectations
- Anticipate bad outcomes in situations in which the skills are relevant
50
Q
Mastery model
A
- completely without fear regarding what the person in therapy is afraid of
- Creates vicarious extinction of the conditioned fear, as the observer sees that the model experiences no distress
51
Q
Coping model
A
- initially displays fear but overcomes it and eventually handles the situation
- Depends on the fact that the model is in the same situation as the observer but is noticeably able to overcome the fear through active effort
- More cognitive
- Seem more effective than mastery models in therapy for fears-> powerful role that cognitive processes can play in coping with fear
52
Q
Participant modeling
A
- the model (often, the therapist) performs the behavior in front of the other person, who then repeats it.
- Involves a lot of verbalization, instruction, and personalized assurance from the model
- Takes more of the therapist’s time
- More powerful as a behavior change technique
