Week 6 Lecture Flashcards
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
Simultaneous Conditioning
- the CS and the UCS begin and end together
Short Delayed Conditioning
- US (needle) leads to UR (pain)
- if NS (doctor) is presented just before US (needle) an association is now being developed
- ultimatley the NS (doctor) becomes CS (Doctor)
- leads to CS (doctor) creates association CR (Pain/Fear)
Classical Conditioning: Taste Aversion
- US (chemotherapy) leads to UR (nausea)
- NS (food eaten - icecream) plus US (chemotherapy) leads to US (nausea)
- CS (food eaten - icecream) leads to CR (nausea)
Taste Aversion
- a certain type of conditioning because it breaks two cardinal rules of the process:
- may occur after a single pairing of CS-Us
- presentation of US (chemo) and CS (food eaten - icecream) may be separated by a period of hours
- clearly a survival response that allows us to learn to avoid foods that may make us sick
- eg becoming sick after drinking too much of a type of alcohol
Can taste aversion be retrained
Yes. Exposure therapy can gradually build up to create a different state of conditioning
Classical Conditioning: Extinction
- exposing subject to our CS (Bell tone) but not providing the UCS (Food)
- over time the CR (salivation) will not be triggered by the CS (bell tone)
Classical Conditioning: Spontaneous Recovery
- a learned association has become extint
- no longer displays the CR (salivation)
- the CR (salivation) will suddenly return when once again presented with the NS (bell tone)
eg: Taz - Stop, sit example
