Intro Psych Learning Curve 7a

What is Learning?

The acquisition, from experience, of new knowledge, skills, or responses that results in a relatively permanent change in the state of the learner.

What are the three key ideas of learning?

1. Learning is based on experience

2. Learning produces changes in the organism

3. These changes are relatively permanent

What is Habituation?

A general process in which repeated or prolonged exposure to a stimulus results in a gradual reduction in responding.

What is sensitization?

When the presentation of a stimulus leads to an increase response to a later stimulus.

What did John B. Watson do?

• Kickstarted the behaviorist movement

• Believed that psych should never include terms like

  • consciousness

  • mental states

  • mind

  • content

  • introspectively verifiable

  • imagry

  • the like

What did Ivan Pavlov do?

He studied the digestive processes of laboratory animals and accidentally discovered classical conditioning.

He also embarked on a systematic investigation of the mechanisms of classical conditioning.

What is classical conditioning?

A type of learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus produces a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally produces a response.

What is an unconditioned stimulus?

Something that reliably produces a naturally occurring reaction in an organism.

What is an unconditioned response?

A reflexive reaction that is reliably produced by an unconditoned stimulus.

What is a conditioned response?

A reaction that resembles an unconditioned response but is produced by a conditioned stimulus.

What is second-order conditioning?

A type of learning in which a conditioned stimulus is paired with a stimulus that became associated with the unconditioned response in an earlier procedure.

What is acquisition?

The phase of classical conditioning when the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus are presented together.

What happens after learning?

The conditioned stimulus itself will reliably elicit the conditioned response

What is extinction?

The gradual elimination of a learned response that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

What is spontaneous recovery?

The tendency of a learned behavior to recover from extinction after a rest period.

It takes place without additional associations between conditioned and unconditioned stimulus.

Does extinction completely erase learning?

No it does not.

What is generalization?

The Conditioned response is observed even though the conditioned stimulus is slightly different from the conditioned stimulus used during acquisition.

Is it true that the more a stimulus changes from the original, the lower the conditioned responding is observed?

Yes it is!

What is discrimination?

The capacity to distinguish between similar but distinct stimuli

Are discrimination and generalization 2 sides of the same coin?

Yes, they are two sides of the same coin.

What did John Watson believe any behavior could be developed by?

A general explanation for any behavior of any organism could be developed on classical conditioning principles.

What was John Watsons question?

Could a child be classically conditioned to experience a strong emotional reaction (fear)?

What was John Watson doing while showing albert rats?

Banging loud metal.

What is a conditioned stimulus?

A previously neutral stimulus that produces a reliable response in an organism after being paired with an unconditioned stimulus.

What was John Watsons unconditioned stimulus?

Loud metal banging.

What was John Watson’s conditioned stimulus?

The rat.

What was John Watson’s unconditioned response?

Albert feeling fear from the loud banging.

What was John Watson’s conditioned response?

Albert feeling fear when being presented with the rat.

What were Watson’s goals for his controversial experiment?

1. relatively complex reaction could be condtiioned using pavlovian techniques

2. Emotional responses (fear & anxiety) could be produced by clasical conditionign (fears could be learned)

3. Confirm that condtioning could be applied to humans as well as other animals

Is there a kind of therapy that helps with dealing with trauma-induced fears? What does it do specifically?

• It is based on classical conditioning principles

• Individuals are repeatedly exposed to conditioned stimuli associated with trauma, in a safe setting, in an attempt to extinguish the conditioned fear response.

Why didn’t Pavlov himself become a conditioned stimulus to the dogs?

It was because he wasn’t reliable or wasn’t a reliable indicator.

What did Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner theorize about classical conditioning?

They believed that classical conditioning occurs when an animal has learned to set up an expectation.

What is the Rescorla-Wagner model?

That classical conditioning is quite sophisticated and incorporates a significant cognitive element.

Conditioning would be easier when the conditioned stimulus was a unfamiliar event then familiar (already expectations associated with)

What did Richard Thompson discover?

When a tone was followed by a puff of air directed into the eye, rabbits started to blink when hearing the tone.

People with lesions to the cerebellum showed impaired eyeblink conditioning, and healthy young adults showed activation in the cerebellum during eyeblink conditioning.

What can they conclude about the cerebellum in regards to learning?

That it is a part of the hindbrain and plays an important role in motor skills and learning.

What is the amygdala critical for?

It is critical for emotional conditioning.

What does amygdala damage disrupt?

Damage to this disrupts fear conditioning.

is it true that strong food aversions develop with stimuli that have a distinct taste and smell?

yes, they are more likely to develop with these factors.

how is food aversion used for radiation and chemo therapy?

they make the patient eat something right before treatment so they are more likely to have an aversion to that rather than more general common foods.

What is biological preparedness?

A propensity for learning particular kinds of associations over other kinds.

Did pavlov leave cognitive processes out of classical condtioning?

Yes he did NO cognitive processes with this guy.