pavlov research a01

What is classical conditioing?

Learning through association

What is pavlova research?

What problem did he experience

What did he find would triggger response

(What is stimulus generalisation/ discrimination/ time contiguity)

Salivation reflex

Pavlov experienced problem - dogs starting to salivate when saw asssistant

Dogs associated other stimuli with food

Then evaluated different ways dogs associate one thing to another

Found that similar stimuli would trigger response (stimulus generalisation)

If stimulus is too different from original - wont trigger response (stimulus discrimination)

Stimulus and neutral stimulus must occur at same time or remarkably close together (time contiguity)

What did B.Fsuggest

Learning is not passive

Instead its active whereby humans and animals operate on their environment

What are the 3 types of consequences that operant conditioning is shaped by?

Positive reinforcement - receiving a reward

Negative r. - avoiding something unpleasant to have a positive experience

E.g a rat learning that pressing a lever leads to avoidance of an electric shock

Punishment - unpleasant consequence of behaviour - negative experience

What increases and decreases likelihood of a behaviour

Positive and negative reinforcement - increases likelihood

Punishment reduces it

What animals did skinner use in his experiments

Rats and pigeons

What happened every time the rat pressed the lever and what would the animal do after

Rewarded with a food pellet and the animal would repeat the behaviour

What else did skinner perform with the animals

Skinner shows how rats and pigeons could be conditioned to perform the same behaviour to avoid an unpleasant stimulus for example an electric shock

What was the Skinner box heavily dependent reliant on and what dos Skinner box include

Type of animal enclosed within it and experimental variables

Includes at minimum at least one lever that an animal can manipulate.

Reinforcer + tracker + lights + sounds + a floor of the chamber may be electrified

What is the designs f the Skinner box invented to do and what does this allow?

Keep an animal from experiencing other stimuli - allows researchers to carefully study behaviour in a very controlled environment

Allows to Determine which schedule of reinforcement or relation of rewards and punishment to the reinforcer - leads to the highest rate of response in the animal being studied

What is the reinforcer

Naturally provides reinforcement for an action

For instance - a lever may provide a pellet of food when pressed a certain number of times

Lever is the reinforcer

What is the tracker/ quantified

Provides quantitative data regarding the reinforcer

Number of times lever is pressed or number of electric shocks given

What else did skinner find in terms of reinforcement schedules

Different reinforcement schedules produced differnt amounts of conditioning and changed how permanent the learning was

What are 2 most important reinforcement schedules?

Continuous reinforcement - animal rewarded every time

Led to learning but was also quickly extinguished (animal would unlearn as soon as rewards stopped happening)

VARIABLE RATIO - animal is rewarded randomly. Consolidates learning to be more permanent because the rat would expect th reward to come at some point - resists extinction

What ha the behaviourism from the reinforcements (continuous and variable) been used to apply to real humans

Gambling Addiction

Not knowing when your going to get the money but will get it at some point keeps the behaviour going and making it more permanent