Week 6 Lecture Flashcards
(32 cards)
What is learning
Relatively permanent change in behaviour or cognition brought about by repeated experiences in that situation.
Classical conditioning
Neutral stimulus acquires the ability to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus Classical Conditioning = associations
Observational Learning
Acquiring Knowledge by observing the environment and other peoples behaviours
Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
A stimulus that has biological relevance to the learner such as food
Unconditioned Response (UR)
- A response that occurs to an unconditional response because it is biologically relevant
- Usually a naturally occurring reflex such as salivation
Conditional Stimulus (CS)
A cue or stimulus that does not have a natural response associated with it. Ie. Smell of baking bread
Conditional Response (CR)
A learned behaviour or response that is triggered by the conditional stimulus (CS)
Conditional Response (CR)
A learned behaviour or response that is triggered by the conditional stimulus (CS)
(US)
Unconditioned Stimulus
(UR)
Unconditioned Response
(CS)
Conditional Stimulus
(CR)
Conditional Response
Phase 1: Before Conditioning
a) UCS (Food in mouth) paired with UCR (Salivation)
b) NS (bell tone) not connected with a response
Phase 2: During Conditioning
c) NS (bell tone) plus UCS (Food in mouth) leads to UCR (salivation)
The Process of Classical Conditioning
- Acquisition
- Extinction
- Spontaneous Recovery
- Generalisation
- Descrimination
Classical Conditioning Phases: Acquisition
- Initial stage of learning
- Measure the strength of the response
- Response stronger with repeated pairings of the stimulus
- Response usually levels off at high levels
- Strength of conditioning influenced by
- Strength of pairing
- Timing
- Intensity of the unconditioned stimulus
- Repeated pairings of Neutral Stimulus and Unconditioned Stimulus are required
- NS and US must be associated in a timely fashion and occur together
Classical Conditioning Phases: Extinction
Removing the pairing of two stimuli that has created a conditioned response, will eventually lead to the acquired conditioned response to disappear with time
Types of classical conditioning
- Simultaneous conditioning
- Short delayed conditioning
- Taste aversions
Classical conditioning and phobias
- Seligman: humans are more prepared to develop fears than other organisms
- Excessive fear and avoidance creates the response of extreme anxiety
- 10-11.3% possibility of lasting for a lifetime
- Wolpe – thought systematic desensitisation or graduated exposure therapy and flooding or exposure therapy could cure phobias
What is learning by association
- Classical Conditioning
- Pavlovian Conditioning
The three types of learning
- Classical conditioning
- Operant conditioning
- Observational learning
Phase 3: After Conditionting
Conditioned Stimuli (S) leads to Conditioned Response (Salivation)
The Steps of Classical Conditioning
- Acquisition
- Extinction
- Spontaneous Recovery
- Generalisation
- Descrimination

Classical Conditioning: Acquisition
- the initial stage of learning
- beggining to acquire learning
- the conditioned response grows stronger with more pairings
- the more we pair CS and US the stronger the CR will be
- NS and US must occur together
- Law of contiguity