Conditioning and Learning

Classical Conditioning

A learning process where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a conditioned response.

Unconditioned Stimulus

Any stimulus that will always and naturally elicit a response.

Unconditioned Response

Any response that always and naturally occurs with an unconditioned stimulus.

Neutral Stimulus

Any stimulus that does not naturally elicit a response.

Conditioned Stimulus

Any stimulus that will, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, cause a conditioned response when presented by itself.

Conditioned Response

Any response that occurs upon the presentation of the conditioned stimulus.

Spontaneous Recovery

Reappearance of conditioned response after a period of extinction or diminished response.

Generalization

Responding the same way to a stimulus.

Discrimination

Responding differently to similar stimuli.

Higher-order Conditioning

A conditioned stimulus can be used as a new unconditioned stimulus to produce the original conditioned response.

Emotional Response

Positive or negative emotion when experiencing a stimulus accompanied by a pleasant or painful event.

Counterconditioning

A therapeutic intervention for many mental disorders.

Taste Aversions

The intense dislike and/or avoidance of particular foods that have been associated with nausea or discomfort

Biological Preparedness

Animals are predisposed to learn stimulus-response pairings.

Habituation

Organisms grow accustomed to and exhibit a diminished response to a repeated or enduring stimulus.

Behaviorism

The behavioral perspective that focuses on observable behavior and excludes the role of mental processes.

Environmental Determinism

The belief that anyone can be trained to do anything based on the environment and experience.

John Locke's Tabula Rasa

The idea that everything an individual becomes is the result of experience.

Ivan Pavlov

The psychologist who inadvertently discovered classical conditioning through his experiments with dogs.

Acquisition

Learning the association involves a series of steps that demonstrate the principle of associative learning.

Stimulus Response Learning

Based on the thought that behavior can be modified/learned through stimuli.

Extinction

A process that gradually weakens and eventually stops a CR to a CS by repeatedly presenting the CS without the UCS.

Little Albert

An experiment by John Watson to see if people could be classically conditioned using a 9-month-old infant.

Habituation is a behavioral process when there is a decrease in perceptual experience while sensory adaptation is a physiological process related to sensation at the biological level.

What is the difference between habituation and sensory adaptation?

Operant Conditioning

Voluntary behaviors modified by consequences and strengthened by reinforcement or diminished by punishment.

Law of Effect

Behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely and behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.

Thorndike's Puzzle Box

Cats escaped a box after multiple trials and errors, demonstrating learning and problem solving through trial and error.

Classical conditioning requires making associations and behavior is a result of that, while operant conditioning is learning from the consequences of our behavior.

What is the main difference between classical and operant conditioning?

Instinctive Drift

Research shows that only certain behaviors can be shaped through reinforcement.

Reinforcing Stimulus

A consequence that increases the likelihood of a behavior occurring.

Punishing Stimulus

A consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behavior occurring.

Primary Reinforcement

An innately valued reinforcing stimulus such as food, water, or biological drives.

Secondary Reinforcement

Conditioned, learned through association, such as money.

Positive Reinforcement

Adds a pleasant stimulus that increases the likelihood of repeating desired behaviors.

Negative Reinforcement

Removes an unpleasant stimulus to increase behaviors.

Positive Punishment

Adding an unpleasant stimulus to reduce behavior, such as a shock collar on dogs.

Negative Punishment

Removal of a pleasant stimulus to decrease or eliminate a specific behavior, such as taking away the phone.

Shaping

a technique using a series of positive reinforcements to create more complex behavior

Chaining

can be used to combine learned behaviors, where each behavior may have been taught separately but are combined later

Superstitious behavior

occurs when consequences reinforce unrelated behavior

Learned Helplessness

occurs when people believe that they have little to no control over their experience of adverse or unwanted consequences in a given situation

Schedule of Reinforcement

a set of principles developed by Skinner that determine the strength of the association between the consequence and the response

Continuous Reinforcement

deliver reinforcement for each and every correct behavior

Partial Reinforcement

focuses on whether reinforcement is delivered on a time-based schedule or for the number of behaviors at either a fixed or variable ratio

Social Learning Theory

proposes that learning can occur by observation and does not have to involve personal experience with a consequence

Vicarious learning

learning can occur by copying the behavior of models

Insight Learning

occurs when the solution to a problem happens without any association, consequence, or modeling being present

preperation, incubation, insight, verification

What are the four steps of insight learning?

Latent Learning

occurs when information is learned without reinforcement but is not immediately evident

Cognitive maps

demonstrate latent learning by showing that we don't even know that we are learning

Bobo Doll Experiment

demonstrated social learning where children witness an adult model becoming frustrated and then take their frustration out on the doll

observation, memory, opportunity, and reinforcement

What are the four steps of social learning?