Lecture 9 Classical Conditioning Definition and Phobias Summary Fetishism Acquisition Extinction Spontaneous Recovery and Stimulus Generalization and Discrimination Little Albert Classical Pavlovian Conditioning a previously neutral stimulus does not naturally evoke a response comes to produce a response organism learns to produce a response to this previously neutral stimulus When this happens the stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus and the response is called a conditioned response NS pair w UCS UCR CS CR Classical conditioning is a factor in phobia little girl w bridge Phobia Fetishism Sex is a very powerful drive and therefore a useful tool in learning Sexual fetishism when an object that the person is not hard wired to produce a sexual response to becomes a stimulus that produces sexual arousal Men may develop a fetish about women s shoes or underwear People develop these fetishes because they may be looking a shoe or undergarment when having sex therefore the two get paired and the previously neutral stimulus the shoe becomes a conditioned stimulus that produces the same sexual arousal response as sex This only works if the stimulus is novel unusual or intense if you are staring at the ceiling you do not pair sex and ceiling because ceiling is too general Sexual images are often used in adds since sex is such a powerful drive prior learning allows us to be aroused by sexual images We are constantly experiencing stimuli but we are not constantly being classically conditioned if the stimulus is novel unusual or intense it is much more likely for classical conditioning to occur Classical Conditioning Outline 2 Basic Processes Acquisition Extinction Spontaneous Recovery Stimulus generalization Stimulus discrimination Higher order conditioning Acquisition The neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus must occur at roughly the same time for classical conditioning to occur There are three more specific timings of the NS and UCS CS and UCS begin and end at the same time CS begins just before the UCS they both end at the same time Independent variable amount of time between the beginning of the CS and the beginning of the UCS Simultaneous Conditioning Short delay Conditioning the BEST Trace Conditioning in most cases time gap is critical and must be very short Onset is when the stimulus starts Offset is when the stimulus ends CS begins and ends before the UCS begins Independent variable amount of time between the ending of the CS and the beginning of the UCS Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery extinguish the response Extinction how you un learn something learned in classical conditioning you Extinction does not happen instantly responses gradually weaken and disappear You can extinguish the response by continually presenting the CS without the UCS You can extinguish the response at a particular time but if you let some time pass then spontaneous recovery will occur Spontaneous recovery after the CR has been extinguished if you let time go by and you present the CS again the CR will come back weaker than before It is difficult to fully extinguish a CR due to spontaneous recovery Stimulus Generalization and Discrimination Little Albert Example Stimulus generalization when an organism first learns a classically conditioned response it will generalize meaning that it will begin to make the response to other similar stimuli Example Pavlov s dog first learns to respond to a bell with a pitch of middle G then you ring a bell with a pitch of A the dog may respond to that bell even though it has never heard it before Stimulus Discrimination after generalization organisms learn to discriminate precisely the stimuli that are associated with the response that they are interested Example animals first learn that food occurs in the kitchen and that it is stored in cupboard A then they generalize and respond come into kitchen when any cupboard is opened then they discriminate distinguishing the sound of cupboard door A from any other cupboard door Little Albert Example In the 1920 s the founder of behaviorism John B Watson who did good research and introduced the white lab rat had a big affect on how psychological research was carried out Watson and Rosalie Rainer a grad student was working the JHU hospital and Little Albert was the son of one of the nurses in the hospital his mom brought him to the hospital all the time he was 11 months old For part of the day he would play with Watson s white lab rats cute not like city rats he was comfortable with the rats and was comfortable playing with them Watson hypothesized that classical conditioning worked with humans for eye blink arousal and salivation so complex human emotional responses could be classically conditioned as well He took the emotion of fear and the familiar stimuli of a white rat He conditioned for a fear response He put the rat in front of Albert and banged a rod hammer to create a noise that scared Little Albert Therefore Albert screamed and the noise was paired with the rat Then Albert became fearful of white objects like men with beards and even Santa Clause Thus human emotion can be learned through conditioning The Trial of the Century was in the 1900s Watson was considered a Slut He and Reiner s daughter had an affair together The Reiners were wealthy philanthropists in Chicago Watson divorced his wife Mary Ickes Watson and there was a scandal and Watson was fired from John Hopkins University where he was employed This was the end of his career as a research psychologist
View Full Document
Unlocking...