Behaviourism and SLT - Difficult things from individual differences

Classical conditioning definition

the process whereby a previously neutral stimulus becomes associated with unconditioned stimulus and starts to evoke a response

Delayed conditioning

conditioned stimulus occurs shortly before unconditioned stimulus and both stimuli last together

Trace conditioning

conditioned stimulus occurs and ends before unconditioned stimulus. Thus, unconditioned stimulus may be associated only with a memory trace of conditioned stimulus. There is no overlap as they don’t happen together

Backwards conditioning

conditioned stimulus occurs after unconditioned stimulus (it doesn’t work)

Simultaneous conditioning

both conditioned and unconditioned stimuli occur at the same time (not as effective)

Garcia studied rats

rats avoid drinking water from plastic leads to nausea

Extinction

if CS occurs but the UCS does not.

Spontaneous recovery

after responding had been extinguished, the conditioned reaction would suddenly reappear after conditioned stimulus

Discrimination

involves learning the difference between stimuli

Aversion therapy

 a form of psychological therapy that is designed to eliminate

Counter-conditioning

pairing the stimulus (CS) that elicits fear with a stimulus (US) that elicits positive emotion (UR)

Difference between reinforcement and punishment

• Reinforcement is a consequence that causes a behaviour to occur with greater frequency whilst punishment is a consequence that causes a behaviour to occur with less frequency

Continuous reinforcement

desired response is reinforced every time it occurs

partial reinforcement

desired response is reinforced on a ratio or interval schedule

How do we create a habit?

1. initial Drive stimulates the person to act

2. cue to act

3. response

4.  reinforcement

Sometimes people fustrated in their attempts to satisfy their drives - Dollard & Miller describes 4 types of conflicts situations that we can face on our way to satisfy the drives:

1. Approach- Approach conflict

2. Avoidance- Avoidance conflict

3. Approach-avodance conflict

4. Double approach-avoidance conflict

Bandura’s theory - triadic reciprocal determination

personal, behavioural and environmental factors

Bandura argues

people represent external events symbolically and later use verbal/ imaginal representations to guide our behaviour

Gergely, Bekkering & Kiraly (2002)

• If the models hands were free to turn the light on, 69% of infants copied his behaviour

• When his hands were not free - only 21% copied the behaviour

Competent functioning

requires not only skills but the judgement of self-efficacy to permit their effective use

Efficacy expectations

influence peoples choice of activities and determine how much effort people will expend on these activities and how long they will persist of challenging tasks in the face of aversive experiences