Study Guide for Pavlovian Conditioning Scott Methe Ph D Thought Exercise Brenda is driving to work on a cold and icy morning As is the case most mornings she prepares her coffee grabs a bagel and plugs her iPod into her car stereo This morning she decides to listen to Bruce Springsteen s Radio Nowhere Suddenly just a few minutes into her drive she loses control of the car and veers into a ditch Brenda is not seriously injured but she was quite shaken up emotionally and had to receive a few minor stitches just above her hairline It takes her a few days to get back to work Two months later at work Brenda feels a sudden panic and quickly leaves the building Her co workers watched her walk out and one of her friends Joanne called her at home to check up Brenda told Joanne I was just sitting there at work listening to my iPod and something came over me I didn t know what to do I felt panicked and had to come home Before you go on try to formulate an answer If you need help here are some guided notes for the Brenda situation They are redundant to ensure deeper learning of this concept and the answers are at the end of this study guide What happened to Brenda Was there a trigger at work that set her off and if so what is the mechanism by which this could happen Could it happen again If you already have a background in Pavlovian inductive theory then you ll notice an 1 reflex an 2 reflex is a stimulus response pair that is not learned Sliding off the road is a fear provoking event that acts as an 3 stimulus and the unlearned instinctive or innate 4 response was the intense fear likely brought about by the body s protective endocrine system that pumps adrenaline into the bloodstream to enhance alertness and kick in the fight or flight response Poor Bruce he just wrote a catchy hit song that is known as a neutral stimulus and was unfortunately paired or associated with the 5 reflex When Brenda leaves work she experienced a 6 reflex where the song became the 7 stimulus and the feeling of fear and leaving work was the 8 response Notes on Pavlov s Theory Brenda s example illustrated how fear is conditioned in an organism There is much more to Pavlov s theory and quite a bit to be integrated from other chapters especially two ideas contiguity and innate reflexes Contiguity originally conceptualized by Guthrie but also by others such as Pavlov is used in almost every behavioral theory especially Pavlov s to illustrate the important idea that two stimuli need to be paired together for one stimuli to elicit a desired response A key idea to keep in mind is that most readings on Pavlov do not really focus your attention on the idea of the neutral stimulus The neutral stimulus is 2015 Scott Methe and LuvoLearning com the random thing that initially has no control over the response Watson and Skinner use the term stimulus control but comes to completely lead to the response being made A neutral stimulus is NOT an unconditioned stimulus An unconditioned stimulus is an event or situation that needs absolutely no learning to produce an unconditioned response In Brenda s case there is no amount of learning that could take away the power of sliding down an embankment in an automobile as an unconditioned stimulus Reflexes are drawn from research on instincts which is the focus of chapter 3 It s important to be clear that a reflex is a S R pair that can either be pre learning UCS UCR during learning pairing the neutral stimulus with the UCS to produce a UCR or after learning CS CR Forget fear conditioning for a second and let s think of a common but unfortunate classroom example Mrs Gradgrind introduces a lesson and says kids get to work She notices quickly that Johnny is not working Approaching Johnny she then says in a much louder and menacing voice Johnny get to work NOW Her initial direction of kids get to work was a neutral stimulus for Johnny much like the song was neutral for Brenda but then later produced such an intense conditioned response For some other kids it was a conditioned stimulus When the teacher paired an unconditioned stimulus loud menacing tone with the neutral stimulus the message of get to work producing an unconditioned response in Johnny the looking around for his work as a survival response both Johnny and the teacher learned something Over time you may find that the kids get to work stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus that controls Johnny s getting to work response Keep this scenario in mind because when we get to Skinner he is the first to bring in a simplified version of reinforcement that acts as a consequence stimulus coming after a response that ultimately controls a behavior Any behavior under control of reinforcement is called an operant but that s for later Right now we are only interested in the beginnings of a behavioral psychology so focus squarely on the S R process by S R we mean CS CR Dr Methe s Advice in Parting My strongest advice to you is to ensure that you understand Pavlov s basic ideas and the model I described above Generate plenty of examples and don t move on in any of your readings until you are clear that you get his ideas Why Most of what you need to know is a variation on Pavlov s major themes For example all conditioning paradigms discuss different mixtures of the stimulus and response Be sure you re really confident and strong with Pavlov before you move on Remember all behavioral learning theories are interested in conditions or factors that change modify or elaborate on Pavlov s basic learning model Challenge What chapters or readings have you done on Pavlovian conditioning Can you relate what you already know to anything in this study guide Email me at smethe gmail com to get a response for free to these questions and I ll answer up to 2 questions for you just for buying this study guide Here s a good question How is a dog in a lab related to any kind of learning that you ve done Guided Notes 1 unconditioned 2 unconditioned 3 unconditioned 4 unconditioned 5 unconditioned 6 conditioned learned 7 conditioned learned 8 conditioned learned 2015 Scott Methe and LuvoLearning com
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