Transcript Classical Conditioning PPT

Classical Conditioning
Chapter 6 Psychology
Learning
 Learning: some kind of change in behavior or
knowledge that is long-lasting due to an increase
in one’s experience
 Experience is key to the learning process.
 Humans learn best through association - our
minds naturally connect events that occur in
sequence
 Called Associative Learning
Behaviorism
 John B. Watson (1913)
 Founder of the Behaviorist view of
psychology
 Urged colleagues to discard reference to
inner thoughts and feelings and focus on
observable behavior
 “The theoretical goal [of Behaviorism] is
the prediction and control of behavior.
Introspection forms no essential part of its
methods.”
Classical Conditioning
 A type of learning in which a stimulus
acquires the capacity to evoke a response
that was originally evoked by another
stimulus.
 Sometimes called Pavlovian Conditioning
after its first pioneer - Ivan Pavlov
Who was Ivan Pavlov?
 Nobel Prize-winning
work on digestion
 Studied the role of
saliva in the digestive
process of dogs
 Stumbled onto
“psychic reflexes”
 Discoveries were
purely accidental
 Psychologists for
years have modified
and replicated
Pavlov’s findings
Pavlov’s Accidental Findings
 Subjects: dogs; restrained in harnesses in an
experimental chamber
 Saliva collected through a surgically implanted
tube in the salivary gland
 Pavlov would present meat powder to the dog
and collect the resulting saliva
 Noticed that dogs accustomed to the
procedure would salivate before the meat
powder was presented
Experimental Chamber
Further Studies
 To investigate further, Pavlov paired the
presentation of meat powder with various stimuli
that would stand out (tone, bell)
 After the tone and meat powder were
presented together a number of times, then the
tone was presented alone
 Even with the tone alone, the dogs responded
by salivating
Terminology
 Neutral Stimulus: stimulus that elicits no
response prior to conditioning
 Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): in classical
conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally naturally and automatically - triggers a response
 Unconditioned Response (UCR): in classical
conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occuring
response to the UCS
Terminology
 Conditioned Stimulus (CS): in classical
conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus
that, after association with an UCS, comes to
trigger a conditioned response
 Conditioned Response (CR): in classical
conditioning, the learned response to a
previously neutral conditioned stimulus
Classical Conditioning in Daily
Life!
 Conditioned Fears Phobias are a good
example of this.
Many irrational fears
can be traced back to
experiences
 Other Emotional
Responses advertisers use their
products with
UCSs that elicit
pleasant emotions
(attractive persons,
enjoyable
surroundings)
Classical Conditioning in Daily
Life!
 Physiological
Responses - Immune
system functioning;
when an infectious
agent invades your
body, your immune
system triggers the
release of antibodies
to fight the invasion
 Immunosuppression a decrease in the
production of
antibodies
 Many studies have
been done using this
concept with animals
Other Important Terms!
 Acquisition: the initial stange of learning
something
 Extinction: the gradual weakening and
disappearance of a conditioned response
tendency
 Spontaneous recovery: the reappearance of
an extinguished response after a period of
nonexposure to the conditioned stimulus
 Generalization: occurs when an organism that
has learned a response to a specific stimulus
responds in the same way to new stimuli that are
similar to the original stimuli
More Important Terms!
 Discrimination: occurs when an organism
that has learned a response to a specific
stimulus does not respond in the same way
to new stimuli that are similar to the
original stimulus
 High Order Conditioning: a conditioned
stimulus functions as if it were an
unconditioned stimulus
Little Albert
 Experiment conducted by John B. Watson
 Studied “Little Albert” an 11-month old boy
 Initially the child was unafraid of a little white rat
(live)
 Then Watson paired the presentation of the
rat with a loud, startling sound (striking gong
with hammer)
 Little Albert showed fear to loud noise
Little Albert
 After several pairings, the rat was
established as a CS - eliciting a fear
response
 Watson then exposed the boy to other
similar stimuli - white and furry (rabbit, dog,
fur coat, and a Santa Clause mask)
 Little Albert’s fear response was
generalized to the variety of stimuli