CH 7 THE LEARNING APPROACH Classical Conditioning Pavlovian Conditioning When the dog sees food it s mouth salivates but if a light is switched on before the dog eats the light promotes salivation even if there s no food within the bowl Learner is forming a new association not learning a new behavior Allows organisms to prepare for environmental events by learning about the relationship between stimuli adaptive seen in all animals Important Terminology US Unconditional Stimulus any stimulus that innately elicits a reflexive UCR o Dog drooling when wanting food UR Unconditional Response a reflexive innate response o Blinking when someone points puffs air into their eye salivating with food CS Conditional Stimulus a stimulus hat elicits a CR after pairings with a US o Sound of bell turning on of light to mean food CR Conditioned Response a response elicited by a CS o Dogs drooling when the light comes on associating it with food Classical Conditioning and Pavlov s Dogs Before conditioning US food UR salivation After conditioning CS light CR salivation Classical Conditioning and Little Albert What would happen with people Watson Raynor decided to try this with human babies One of the baby s names was Little Albert First thing they wanted to find was what babies were afraid of being dropped loud noises Before conditioning US loud noise UR fear crying After conditioning CS rat CR fear crying Cries when he sees a furry coat when Watson came in with a burry mask Little Albert generalized them into one category We don t know what happened to Albert Before they could de condition him they pulled him out of the study Learned taste aversion Blue Jay eats a Monarch Butterfly their caterpillars eats milkweed plants poisonous blue jay throws up the butterfly Forms association with being violently ill and monarch butterflies Blue jays don t eat monarch butterflies Happens with humans as well Ex catching the flu after eating pizza even though the pizza had nothing to do with the flu you avoid pizza Important Classical Conditioning Phenomena Second Order Conditioning higher order Ex flashing a red light then puffing air into the persons eye repeatedly one after another then we end up blinking to the flashing light even when there s no puff of air Acquisition process of acquiring the conditioning Extinction conditioning is weakening disappears when it s fully gone fully extinguished Spontaneous Recovery conditioned again after extinction it can come back Relearned condition Generalization shares the similar qualities with the original condition stimulus Little Albert generalizing a furry rat to ANYTHING furry Discrimination very specific and narrow stimulus Opposite of generalization Ex animal associating something with a specific person no one else elephants associating with only one caretaker Applications Sexual Fetishism Ex being sexually attracted to shoes sexual arousal from bee stings etc Phobias irrational fears Common phobia social phobia oral presentations spiders snakes etc even if a spider is harmless people are still afraid Heights fear of flying when you don t deal with a phobia it gets bigger q Qs similar to quiz exam questions A young child goes to the doctor to receive an immunization The shot is painful and the child cries The next day the child sees the doctor at Target and the child cries In this example pain from the shot is Unconditioned stimulus The doctor is Conditioned stimulus The crying in response to the doctor Conditioned response The child goes to Target NO DOCTOR and cries In this example Target is Second Order Conditioning In classical conditioning second order conditioning or higher order conditioning is a form of learning in which a stimulus is first made meaningful or consequential for an organism through an initial step of learning and then that stimulus is used as a basis for learning about some new stimulus For example an animal might first learn to associate a bell with food first order conditioning but then learn to associate a light with the bell second order conditioning SAME TYPE ON EXAM We discussed numerous examples of classical conditioning For the puking blue jay what is the conditioned stimulus Milkweed plants Nausea Monarch butterflies Throwing up Can not tell without more information A puff of air hits the eyes causing a blink This air puff is paired with a red light flash soon the red light alone causes a blink The red light is the Conditioned Stimulus The eye blink in response to the puff of air is Unconditioned Response 10 23 INSTRUMENTAL OPERANT CONDITIONING Thorndike and the Law of Effect The strength of a response is determined by the consequences Ex raising your hand and saying the wrong answer and everyone laughs you re most likely not going to raise your hand again because of what happened Thorndlike s Puzzle Box Put a cat in the box the cat had to step on the lever to opens the door cat leaves the box when he did this 60 times gradual decline in the time it takes for the cat to step on the lever The graph showed a decline in latency y axis and trial x axis if a human was placed in the box and had to do the same thing how would the graph look like An L the first time we ll step on it the next times the timing will be the same because we know how it ll work Insight ex suspended bananas where a chimp couldn t reach them but there were boxes around and the chimp stacked the boxes Evidence of insight Instrumental OPERANT Conditioning and B F Skinner Developed The idea of operants parallel to Thorndlikes idea of law of effect We bring about an effect we operate in the environment and the consequences determine whether we ll repeat operate on the action again The Skinner Box cage that can control every variable in the environment water food pain Through the floor Giving a rat water in a water cup bounded to the wall when the rat is first placed it explores and some show no inclination to press a lever then the exp might have to the shake the lever Rats that pull the lever learn that the lever pulling provides water time to pull the lever gets faster because they know What is Reinforcement and Punishment forget the idea that reinforcement is good and punishment is bad that is not the case Reinforcement anything that increases the frequency of a behavior Ex want to teach your dog to shake hands increase the frequency of handshaking behavior Instrumental conditioning can create brand new behaviors ex teaching tricks to a dog Reinforcement