General Psychology - Lecture 9

Classical Conditioning

Learning to respond to a new stimulus that has been associated with another stimulus that normally produces the response

Operant Conditioning

Learning behaviors due to experiences with their consequences

Observational Learning

Learning via observation and imitation

Unconditional Stimulus (US)

Stimulus that automatically elicits response without prior conditioning

Unconditional Response (UR)

Innate response to unconditioned stimulus

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

Previously neutral stimulus that now elicits a conditioned response due to its association with a unconditioned stimulus

Conditioned Response (CR)

Learned response to a stimulus that did not originally elicit the response

Acquisition

Stage of conditioning in which the association between the 2 stimuli (US and CS) is being learned

Generalization

Conditioned response to stimuli that are not the conditioned stimulus (but are similar to the CS)

Discrimination

Conditioned response occurs only to a specific stimulus

Extinction

Failure to exhibit the CR to the CS (because the CS no longer predicts the US)

Spontaneous Recovery

Reappearance of the CR to the original after the extinction 

Tend to be short-lived

Second-order (higher order) Conditioning

New neutral stimulus becomes associated with previously conditioned stimulus - becomes new CS

Tend to be weaker than first-order conditioning

Conditioned Aversion

Classically conditioned association between CS and US that causes an unpleasant response

Counterconditioning

Replacing unwanted CR with wanted response (Mary Cover Jones)

Purpose - to eliminate unwanted response