ABA 526 MIDTERM

LEARNING

IS ENDURING, RELATIVELY PERMANENT CHANGE IN MECHANISMS OF BEHAVIOR INVOLVING SPECIFIC STIMULI AND OR RESPONSES THAT RESULTS FROM PRIOR EXPERIENCE WITH THOSE STIMULI AND RESPONSES

BEHAVIOR

ANY ACTIVITY THAT PASSES THE DEAD MAN’S TEST;EVERYTHING AN ORGANISM DOES; ALSO CALLED A RESPONSE

REPERTOIRE

SET OF ALL RESPONSES YOU CAN DO

ANTECEDENT

BEING IN A PARTICULAR SITUATION,SETTING,ENVIRONMENT OR IN THE PRESENCE OF A PARTICULAR CUE OR SIGNAL

CONSEQUENCE

FEEDBACK,OUTCOME ; MAKES THE LIKELIHOOD OF A PARTICULAR BEHAVIOR HAPPEN AGAIN STRONGER OR WEAKER

BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

LOOKS TO FIND THE PRINCIPLES AS TO HOW BOTH ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES AFFECT OUR BEHAVIOR; DONE WITH BOTH ANIMAL AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND BOTH NORMAL AND ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR; IS DONE BY CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS (ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES) IN A SYSTEMATIC AND OBJECTIVE WAY

How do we do this analysis? (behavior analysis)

use scientific method, specifically experimental procedures

behavior analysis also…

1. examines the CAUSE of behavior change

2. assumes it is due to PRIOR experience (and current circumstances)

3. causes of behavior change can only be inferred from experimental manipulation

EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR

1. SEEKS TO FIND COMMON OR GENERAL LAWS/PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING

2. NEEDS TO BE CAREFUL THAT LEARNING, AND NOT ANY OTHER REASON, IS THE CAUSE BEHIND BEHAVIOR CHANGE

APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

HAS SAME GOALS AS EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR EXCEPT THAT IR FOCUSES ON SOCIALLY SIGNFICANT BEHAVIOR

Types of conditioning

1. respondent learning

2. operant learning

Respondent learning

when a new antecedent stimulus elicits (brings about) the same response as an odd antecedent stimulus because it has been paired with the old stimulus

Assumptions made by behavior analysts

1. private events (thinking, feeling, etc.) do not cause what you do.

2. thoughts are commentary about what you are doing in a given situation and feelings are elicited by respondent conditioning

3. your past learning history (and to some degree your genetics), and your current circumstances, determines what you are likely to do.

4. free will means we have choices in what we can learn to do, when to doit, and that we can alter our own environments to make us more or less likely to do certain things.

Functional Approach

1. behavior analysis approach

2. asks: what is the function (purpose) of the behavior?

3. asks:why is the behavior occurring?

Structural Approach

1. cognitive psychology’s approach

2. assumes that thinking determines behavior

3. major flaw: assuming a thought is cause of behavior, then where does the thought come from?

4. asks: what does the thought process look like?

Elicited

respondent behavior is _______ by an antecedent event

Emitted

operant behavior is _______ in the presence of an antecedent event because, in the past, the behavior produced a particular consequence

evoked

umbrella term over both emit and elicit

response class

is a group of responses that serve a similar, common function (produce a similar outcome or. occur in the presence of a particular antecedent.

respondent response class

all the behaviors that you do when someone yells duck, those are elicited behaviors

operant response class

could be all the things you do to get to your baby to smile at you (are emitted behaviors in the presence of your baby)

stimulus class

is a group of stimuli that have a common effect on behavior on (can be antecedents or consequences)

motivating operations

says that the functional relationship between what we do and the effects of the environment we are in depends on the context

types of motivating operations

1. establishing operations

2. abolishing operations

establishing operations

makes a reinforcer/punisher MOR effective (example: deprivation)

abolishing operation

makes a reinforcer/punisher LESS effective (example:satiation)

tactics of behavioral research

1. science is a certain way of knowing about events ,such as causes of our BEHAVIOR, based on OBJECTIVE observations or experience

2. “objective” means everyone can measure or see what you are seeing because you’ve AGREED on what you are measuring and how to measure it by spelling out its operational definition

experimental

means that rather than just observing things, you MANIPULATE something to see if that “something” CAUSES something else to happen

variable

1. some property of an event that can be measured

2. this property can change invalue or take on different characteristics

independent variable (“cause”)

what you manipulate as a researcher, teacher, therapist or parent to bring about a change in some other event (a person’s behavior)

dependent variable (“effect”)

what changed (a person’s behavior) as a result of that manipulated variable (the IV)

internal validity

1. whether the conclusion drawn about CAUSE and EFFECT relationship between two variables (IV and DV) is correct

2. validity=truth=accurate depiction

confounds

1. threats to internal validity

2. what really caused the behavior to change is NOT what you manipulated but was something else

3. when the effects of one or more variables interferes with your ability to determine the cause and effect relationship between IV and DV

Confound types

1. history

2. maturation

3. instrument decay

History

some other variable was applied to the person without your knowleddge

maturation

person’s behavior changed because of physical aging

instrument decay

how you are measuring the behavior is accidentally getting more strict or more lax

external validity

1. refers to the extent that. experimental findings generalize to other behaviors, settings, reinforcers, and populations.

2. does the cause-and-effect relationship found in an experiment occur at different times and places when the original conditions are in effect?

single-case experimental designs

1. allows us to study how manipulation affects a single person (as opposed to group studies which only give averages over a group of people

2. useful in applied clinical settings

How to conduct a single-case experimental design

1. first measure how often behavior in question is occurring over a period of time (called baseline) for a single person

2. THEN introduce the IV and measure behavior over a period of time (called a treatment, experimental condition, or intervention)

3. called an A-B design

reversal design

1. A-B-A (also called)

2. after the behavior changes during treatment, you can reverse back to baseline over a period of time

reflex

1. behavior automatically elicited by some environmental event (antecedent stimulus)

2. NOT learned; NOT a behavior you have learned to do “without thinking”

3. is “phylogenetic”

respondent

1. also behavior automatically elicited by some environmental event (antecedent stimulus) but… is LEARNED through association with some other stimulus that already elicits a similar response

unconditioned stimulus

1. antecedent that ELICITS the behavior

2. antecedent event that has its eliciting effect on a behavior with no learning needed

unconditioned response

1. the elicited behavior part of the reflex

2. e.g.) startle, attention, fight or flight, blink, sneeze, shiver, GSR, cry

primary laws of reflexes

1. law of threshold

2. law of intensity

3. law of latency

law of threshold

there is a “trigger point” for each US; below this point and it won’t elicit the UR

law of intensity-magnitude

the stronger the US the stronger the UR

Law of latency

the more intense the US the shorter the latency of the UR

Habituation

1. the more you present the US uninterrupted, the less and less the UR will be

2. believed to occur because of our phylogeny (genetics)

3. nerve impulse of reflex weakens

ontogeny

your learning history

Respondent Learning

you learn something about one stimulus predicting another’s occurrence through experience and this changes your behavior

classical conditioning

process in which organisms learn about relationships between stimuli and adjust their behavior

little albert experiment (respondent learning)

Respondent learning in action in a baby

1. at first baby sees needle and is not upset (sight of needle is “neutral” or “not meaningful’)

2. after getting a shot (US), baby gets upset (this UR occurs naturally without learning - unconditioned response)

3. baby now “associates” the needle with the pain (she learned they “go together’)

4. this results in responding to needle as something to be avoided (needle is now a learned or conditioned stimulus

Respondent Acquisition

1. we learn our associations between stimuli bit by bit

2. the more pairings, the more we learn they go together

3. first pairing between a US and CS teaches us the most

4. each additional pairing teaches us a little less and a little less

respondent extinction

1. repeatedly presenting the CS without the US

2. the person learns that they no longer “go together”

what is ‘extinguished”?

1. the association between the stimuli

2. the evidence of extinction is the reduction in the CR

spontaneous recovery of respondent behavior

observation of an increase in the CR after respondent extinction has occured

why does spontaneous recovery happen?

probably because there is some other stimulus present that was originally present when the association was first learned

respondent stimulus generaization

occurs when a target response is strengthened and other similar response increase in a frequency

respondent stimulus discrimination

we present stimuli that are different from the CS, then we should expect a person to not respond (not CR) to those stimuli

learning that is very adaptive

1. respondent stimulus generalization

2. respondent stimulus discrimination

temporal relations

refers to how CS and US are arranged (presented) with respect to one another as a function of time and order of presentation

short-delayed conditioning

1. CS comes on just before US and is still on when US comes on (most effective way to learn association)

2. CS ___________- - - - - - _______

3. US ______________- - - - - -________

simultaneous conditioning

1. CS comes on at same time as US (not as effective as short-delay conditioning because CS no longer predicts the US)

2. CS_____- - - - - _____

3. US_____- - - - - _____

Trace conditioning

1. CS goes off before the onset of the US ( even LESS effective for learning associations)

2. CS _____- - - - -_____

3. US _____________- - - - -_______

Backward conditioning

1. US comes on BEFORE the CS

2. rarely produces an association

3. CS _____- - - - _____

4. US ___- - - - _______

First order Respondent Conditioning

a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus

Second-order Respondent Conditioning

pairing a neutral stimulus with an existing CS, rather than pairing a neutral stimulus and US

Why is second-order respondent conditioning important?

because it means you can associate a REMOT stimulus with some other prior US

Process of Second Order Conditioning

1. CS1 paired with US

2. Then CS1 elicits the CR

3. IF CS2 then paired with CS1

4. Then CS2 ALSO elicits CR

(used in advertising)

biological preparedness

degree to which certain neutral stimuli become associated with certain US (is evidence that certain stimuli pair better than others)

Applications of Respondent Learning

1. Neuropsychoimmunology

2. Systematic Desensitization

3. Aversive counterconditioning

Systematic Desensitization

1. technique based on respondent conditioning

2. used to treat phobias

3. two major components: deep muscle relaxation and fear hierarchy

First step for systematic desensitization

1. the first step is to teach the client deep muscle relaxation

The Fear Hierarchy

1. it is constructed after a client learns to relax

2. once the situation of maximum fear is identified, a series of verbal stimuli are arranged that describe settings that progressively evoke less and less fear

3. once it has been constructed, systematic desensitization can begin

Compound Stimuli

two (or more) stimuli (tone and light) are presented together; we can determine whether one part or the other elicits a response under different contexts

example of compound stimuli

1. overshadowing

2. blocking

Overshadowing

when a compound stimulus is used as the CS in a conditioning experiment

blocking

1. a CS associated with a US blocks a subsequent association between the US and a new CS

2. a CS is paired with a US until the conditioned response reaches maximum strength. Following this conditioning, a second stimulus is presented at the same time as the original CS, and both are paired with the unconditioned stimulus

conditioned suppression

1. a previously neutral stimulus is paired with an aversive US such as an electric shock

2. after several pairings, the originally neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned aversive stimulus (CS).

3. This CS is said to evoke a conditioned emotional response (CER) that is commonly called anxiety or fear.

4. this fear also suppresses (shuts down) lots of other behavior the organism normally does

blocking plus conditioned suppression

using a conditioned-suppression procedure, discovered the phenomenon of blocking

sensory preconditioning

1. another example of stimulus control by compound events

2. two stimuli such as light and tone are repeatedly presented together without the occurrence of a known US (preconditioning)

3. later, one of this stimuli is paired with an unconditioned stimulus and the other stimulus is tested for conditioning.

4. although the second stimulus was never directly associated with the US, it comes to evoke a conditioned response.

CS-US Correlations

1. contiguity - temporal relationship

2. contingency - correlation

Rescolar-Wagner Model of Conditioning

1. CS acquires a limited amount of associative strength on each trial

2. provides a set of elegant mathematical predictions on how much conditioning will occur to a simple (or compound) CS overall and on each trial

Associative Strength

1. magnitude of elicited CR

2. describes the relation between the CS and the magnitude of the CR

3. in general, it increases with each conditioning trial and reaches some maximum, asymptotic level (it gets stronger each time but by less and less amount each time)

Graph with Associative Strength

Types of Behavior Analysis

1. respondent conditioning

2. operant conditioning

Respondent conditioning

organism does NOT control presentation of stimuli but only responds to them

Operant Conditioning

1. more “active” and goal-directed

2. involves learning what to do based on consequences of prior “doing”

3. learned by having behaviors followed by particular consequences

Contingency

1. is an IF-THEN relationship

2. usually describes how reinforcement and punishment are arranged

3. IF behavior X occurs in a particular setting, THEN consequence Y will follow

The 3-term Contingency

is the ABC relationship of antecedent-behavior-consequence

Operant Conditioning Types

1. reinforcement

2. punishment

Reinforcement

a consequence that increases the chance that the behavior will be made again

Punishment

a consequence that decreases the chance that the behavior will be made again

Positive Reinforcement

1. presenting something such as hugs, praise, kisses, tokens, access to TV or video games, stars, stickers

2. as a consequence adding something to the environment that INCREASES the chance that the behavior will be made again

Negative Reinforcement

taking something away such as pain, hunger, fear, annoyances, wet diaper, resulting in a chance of that behavior increasing in the future

Positive punishment

presenting something such as yell, loud noise, frown, pain, restraint, that decreases the chance that the behavior will be made again

Negative Punishment

1. taking something away such as access to TV or video games, privileges, access to dessert that decreases the chance that the behavior will be made again

2. also called response cost or time out