Conditioning Flashcards
(21 cards)
Behaviourist approach
Way of explaining behaviour in terms of what if observable and in terms of learning.
Classical conditioning.
- One way in which animals learn by association. Can happen by itself or done deliberately.
- occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired with each other.
- an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and a neutral stimulus. The neutral stimulus eventually produces the same response that was first produced by the unlearned stimulus alone.
Operant conditioning
- A form of learning in which behaviour is shaped and maintained by the consequences.
- Include positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement or punishment.
Reinforcement.
-Consequence of behaviour that increases the likelihood of that behaviour being repeated. Can be positive or negative.
Dog-bell-food example of classical conditioning.
Pavlov’s dog
-before condition:
the dog salivates at the food alone.
Food is unconditioned stimulus and the salivation is the unconditioned response.
The bell is the neutral stimulus and when rung is has no conditioned response, the dog does nothing.
-During conditioning:
The bell and the food are paired together. The bell is rung every time the dog sees the food. The dog still salivates but it is an unconditioned response still as it is to the food and not the bell.
-After conditioning:
The dog begins to salivate every time the bell is rung as it has associated it to the food. The bell becomes the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response to it is the dogs salivation.
Process of classical condition
-Before conditioning = Unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response
-Before conditioning =
Neutral stimulus and no conditioned response
-During conditioning=
Unconditioned and neutral stimulus showed at same time and unconditioned response
-After conditioning=
Conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.
Operant conditioning:
-Positive reinforcement
Receiving a reward when a certain behaviour is performed.
-E.g praise from a teacher for answering a question correctly in class.
Operant conditioning:
-Negative reinforcement
Occurs when an animal or human avoids something unpleasant.
-E.G when a student hands in an essay so they’re not told off, the avoidance of something negative is the negative reinforcement.
Operant conditioning:
-Punishment
Unpleasant consequence of behaviour.
-E.g
Effects of positive and negative reinforcement.
Positive and negative reinforcement increase the likelihood that behaviour will be repeated.
Punishment decreases the likelihood that behaviour will be repeated.
Operant conditioning
-Successive approximations
Pattern of behaviour that gets closer and closer to what we want.
Schedules of reinforcement
-How often someone is rewarded
Intermittent reinforcement
Randomly rewarding behaviours
Operant conditioning-
Edward Thorndike
Law of effect- If you perform an action that is followed by a reward then that behaviour will increase. Vice versa with punishment.
-Designed puzzle box
What was skinners box?
-with the rats and sometimes pigeons. Every time the rat pulled the lever within the box it was rewarded with the food pellet. From then the animal would continue to perform this behaviour.
What was the process of Pavlos dog?
1) before conditioning:
food > response > dog’s salivation.
Food = unconditioned stimulus
Salivation = unconditioned response
2) before conditioning:
Bell > response >no salivation
Bell = neutral stimulus
No salivation = no conditioned response
3) During conditioning:
Bell + Food > response > dogs salivation
Dogs salivation = unconditioned response as it’s still responding to the food after he bell has been paired with it
4)After conditioning Bell > response > dog's salivation Bell = conditioned stimulus Salivation = conditioned response Bell now had same response as food which means the dog has been operantly conditioned
Evaluation: scientific credibility
By emphasising the importance of scientific processes such as objectivity and replication, behaviourism was influential in the development of psychology as a scientific discipline, giving it greater credibility and status.
-focused on The measurement of observable behaviour with highly controlled lab settings.
Evaluation: real life application
– The principles of conditioning have been applied to a broad range of real-world behaviours and problems.
– Token economy systems: rewarding appropriate behaviour with tokens that can be exchanged for privileges
Evaluation: mechanistic view of behaviour
– Behaviourist perspective views animals including humans as passive and machinelike responders to the environment.
_ other approaches in psychology, such as the social learning theory and the cognitive approach, and emphasise the importance of mental events during learning.
Evaluation: environmental determinism
– Behaviourist approach sees all behaviour as determined by past experiences that have been conditioned.
- this ignores any possible influence the free will may have on behaviour.
- skinner suggest that any sense of free will is simply an illusion, so everything we do is determined by our past conditioning history and not by our free will or decision-making.
Evaluation: ethical and practical issues in animal experiments
– Experimental procedures such as the skinner box maintained a high degree of control over experimental subjects.
– However critics of question the ethics, the animals involved were exposed to stressful conditions which may also affected how they reacted to the experimental situation.