Classical Conditioning Flashcards
The Behaviourist Approach to Personality Development
- The study of personality requires a systematic and rigorous examination of the distinctive patterns of an individual’s behaviour and their reinforcing consequences
- Skinner distinguished between two types of behaviour:
- Respondent Behaviour
- Operant Behaviour
Respondent Behaviour
•Refers to a specific response to a known stimulus
–e.g. Shivering when it is cold
•Although these responses are spontaneous and automatic,at a higher level, respondent behaviour may also be learned
•Pavlov explored how respondent behaviour could be conditioned
Classical Conditioning
•Skinner applied this phenomenon to personality development
Learning theory is rooted in the work of
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov
•Classical Conditioning Theory
–Based on physical reflexes that are already present in an organism which become associated with repeated neutral events
Classical Conditioning
•Deals with what happens before the behaviour (i.e. the response) and usually includes physiological reflexes like sweating, blinking, or salivating
Operant Conditioning
•Learning is based on the consequences of the behaviour
–Being praised for cleaning your room, will most likely do it again
•Behaviour has been reinforced
Classical Conditioning in Pavlov’s dogs
Classical conditioning can therefore be defined as a type a stimulus(S) that acquires the capacity of learning to evoke a reflexive response(R)
–In Pavlov’s experiment, the food is a stimulus, which evokes the natural reflexive response of the dog salivating
•In this situation, because salivating when food is present is a natural reaction (or reflex), we say that both the stimulus and response are unconditioned
neutral stimulus
This stimulus (that is not initially related to the unconditioned stimulus)
Factors affecting conditioning
–Contiguity
–Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
–Generalisation
–Discrimination
Contiguity
- the closeness in time between the pairing of conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus
•The closer in time two events occur, the more likely they are to become associated
•Conversely, as more time passes between the events, the less likely it is that an association will be formed
Extinction
–Pavlov discovered that there is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the conditioned response tendency in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus
Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
•In essence, if the person or animal continues to have the conditioned stimulus presented but without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned stimulus loses its power to evoke the conditioned response
–e.g. After a certain period of time, Pavlov’s dogs stopped salivating when only the bell (the conditioned stimulus) was rung without any food (unconditioned stimulus) being brought to them
Spontaneous recovery
–At times, however, the conditioned response can reappear some time after the period of extinction
•It can occur after a period of non-exposure to the conditioned stimulus
–However, it is generally not as strong or carried out to the same degree as with the initial conditioning process
Generalisation
•In his experiments, Pavlov found that sometimes, there is a tendency for a new unconditioned stimulus(similar to the original stimulus) to elicit a response that is similar to the conditioned response
–This is known as generalisation
•e.g. Little Albert
•This aspect of classical conditioning helps make human behaviour highly adaptable
Little Albert
- Watson used repeated exposure to condition an infant aged 11 months called Little Albert to become fearful of a white rat
- He did this by showing Little Albert the rat, and then clashing two metal pipes together behind the infant’s head
- The natural reaction to a sudden, booming noise is to react with fright, and this would naturally make Albert cry with fear
- While Albert would happily play with the rat prior to Watson’s conditioning, the baby would now scream with fear at the mere sight of the rat
- This was not a surprising result as the experiment confirmed the findings of Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiments
- What was surprising to Watson was that Albert would become terrified and cry in the presence of a dog, a rabbit and even when Watson approached the child wearing a fake beard
- It was at this stage that Watson realised that the fear (conditioned response) that was evoked by the white, furry rat (conditioned stimulus) had now been generalised to other stimuli that were white and furry