Learning Theory & Behavior Therapy 1 Flashcards
Priority 1
Define learning.
A relatively permanent change in behavior as the result of experience. It requires active participation and is not due to maturation, disease, injury, fatigue, adaptation, or drugs.
Who coined the term “trial-and-error learning”?
Edward Thorndike. The idea is modeled on Darwin’s notion of adaptive selection, in which random occurrences are selected by effectiveness of outcome.
Name Thorndike’s three laws.
Law of Effect
Law of Exercise
Law of Readiness
Describe Thorndike’s Law of Effect.
Responses accompanied or followed by pleasant consequences is more likely to be repeated. Those with unpleasant consequences are less likely. This is a precursor to Skinner’s principle of reinforcement.
Describe Thorndike’s Law of Exercise.
Stimulus-response associations are strengthened through repetition.
Describe Thorndike’s Law of Readiness.
An organism must be ready to perform an act before doing so is reinforcing (satisfying). Similarly, being allowed not to act when not ready can be reinforcing. Conversely, being forced to act when not ready or being prevented when ready is aversive (annoying).
Define Thorndike’s Law of Spread of Effect.
The pleasure of reinforced acts becomes associated with other acts occurring at the same time.
Discuss research on transfer of training (getting better at a second thing because of study of a first)?
Transfer of training is due to similarity of concepts and techniques, not to development of intellectual or memory faculties. Transfer is specific, not general, depending on the extent to which the area of transfer contains identical elements (sic) with the first. Psychological similarity is more important than physical similarity.
Name some important aspects of John Watson.
He coined the term “behaviorism” in reaction to the introspection of his contemporaries. Insisted that all behavior can be accounted for by differences in experience and classical conditioning based on inborn reflexes, including thought (covert speech) and emotion (glandular activity). This view is now described as “radical behaviorism.”
Name the four basic sequences of classical conditioning.
Simultaneous, delayed, trace, and backward.
Define simultaneous conditioning.
Conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are presented at the same time.
Define delayed conditioning.
Conditioned stimulus precedes but overlaps unconditioned stimulus. (most effective)
Define trace conditioning.
Conditioned stimulus precedes and is terminated prior to unconditioned stimulus.
Define backwards conditioning.
Unconditioned stimulus precedes conditioned stimulus. (ineffective)
Compare meanings of the term “reinforcement” in classical vs. operant conditioning.
In classical conditioning, it means the conditioned stimulus has been confirmed by being followed by the unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning, it means a response that increases the likelihood of voluntary behavior.
