Transcript Conditioning

Conditioning
Ivan Pavlov
• Russian scientist – he wanted to learn about
the relationship between digestion and the
nervous system
• Accidentally discovered the principles of
Classical Conditioning
• Stimulus – something that produces a reaction
or response.
• Unconditioned stimulus
• Unconditioned response
• Neutral stimulus
• Conditioned stimulus
• Taste Aversion – 1970’s John Garcia discovered
that if a negative experience took place with
found within several hours of consumption,
people would develop an aversion to that
food or taste.
Little Albert
• J.B. Watson used little children
• Paired a nice fuzzy white rat with a loud noise to
frighten the children
• Children became frightened of the rats even
without the noise, conditioning had occurred
• They became frightened of other fuzzy animals,
even stuffed animals – this is called generalization
• Sometimes the child would respond differently to
a dog than the mouse – this is called
discrimination
• Extinction – when a Conditioned Stimulus no
longer brings about a Conditioned Response
(bell without food)
• Spontaneous Recovery – after extinction has
occurred, CS is done again and it brings about
the CR (often happens with music)
Applications of the Extinction Principle
• Flooding
• Systematic Desensitization
•
http://understandingshyness.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/systematic-desensitization-therapy/
Other Conditioning treatments
• Counter-conditioning – 1924 Mary Jones
– You can counter-condition fears by pleasant
stimuli
• Bell and Pad Method
Operant Conditioning
• The idea that people (or animals) learn to do
and not to do things by the result that they
get.
B.F. Skinner
• Reinforcement
– Primary Reinforcers
– Secondary Reinforcers
– Skinner Box
Reinforcers
• Primary Reinforcers
– Due to biological makeup of organism
– food, warmth, water
• Secondary Reinforcers
– must be learned
– money, social approval
– sometimes functions through long lines of
association (i.e. grades)
Types of Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement
– desires to increase the frequency of a behavior
– Food, fun activities, social approval
– Disadvantages: only works if the reinforcer is
desired
• Negative Reinforcement
– also desires to increase the frequency of a
behavior
– behavior reinforced because something unwanted
stops happening (i.e. your tired, you go to bed)
– Disadvantage: just like positive reinforcement
• Rewards
– fairly interchangeable with Positive Reinforcement
• Punishment
– seeks to decrease the frequency of a behavior
– behavior decreases or stops upon the application
of punishment
Disadvantages of Punishment
• Does not necessarily teach acceptable
behavior.
• only works when guaranteed
• severe punishments may cause a person to
simply leave the situation
• Context must always be apparent
• sometimes is accompanied by unseen benefits
that make the behavior increase rather than
decrease
On the other hand…
• “Spare the rod and spoil
the child”
Schedules of Reinforcement
• Continuous reinforcement
– rein. applied every time behavior occurs
– quickest way to reinforce but if reinforcement
stops behavior quickly stops as well
• Partial reinforcement
– Interval Schedules
– Ratio Schedules
Interval Schedules
• Has to do with time
• Fixed
– reinforcement available only after a fixed amount
of time has passed
• Variable
– reinforcement available only after time has passed
but time is variable
Ratio Schedules
• Has to do with number of time behavior
occurs in relation to reinforcement
• Continuous
– 1:1
• Fixed
– x:1
x is constant
• Variable
– x:1,
x is variable