Unit 3: Classical Conditioning

Taste aversion

A learned avoidance of a good after it has been paired with nausea/sickenss

EX: you eat something and later get kicked ur brain links it’s taste with feeling ill even if the sickness wasn’t from the food

Continuous reinforcement schedule

Reinforcing behavior every single time it occurs

EX: a rat gets food everytime it press a lever

Delayed reinforcement scheduled

Reinforcement is given after a delay following the behavior.

EX:

• studying now and getting a good grade weeks later

• Working all month and getting paid at the end

Backwards reinforcement schedule

Reinforcement is delivered before the desired behavior occurs

EX:

• giving a child candy before they can clean their room

• Paying someone before they do the join

Primary reinforcer

A reinforcer is naturally rewarding because it satisfies a biological need

YOU DONT HAVE TO LEARN TO WANT IT

EX: food, water, sleep, warmth

Secondary reinforcer

A reinforced that has no biological value on its own but becomes rewarding through learning or association with primary reinforcers

you LEARN it’s value and it gets power by being linked to primary reinforcers

EX: money, grades, praise, tokens, stickers

Reinforcer

Anything that increased the likelihood that a behavior will happen again

• if something makes you more likely to repeat a behavior, it’s a reinforced

Study → get good grade → study more

Habituation

When you stop responding strongly to a stimulus after repeated exposure and ur brain learns that the stimulus is harmless or unimportant, so you ignore over time

Latent learning

learning that happens without any obvious reinforcement and isn’t immediately demonstrated until it’s needed

• you learn something, but you don’t show it right away

• It becomes apparent only when there’s a reason to use it.

intrinsic motivation

Motivation that’s comes from WITHIN yourself, driven by personal enjoyment or I retest in the task. EX: reading because you love learning

Extrinsic motivation

Motivation that comes from outside rewards or pressures, like money, grades or approval. EX; working a job for a paycheck

Internal locus of control

Believing that you control your own life, outcomes, and successes through actions and efforts EX: “I studied so hard, I earned an A”

YOU are in charge of what happens to you

External locus of control

Believing that your life is controlled by outside forces, luck, fate, or other people. EX: I failed the test because the teacher is unfair

Problem-focused coping

Coping by taking direct action to solve the problem causing stress

• attacking the problem itself to reduce stress EX: studying harder to improve a bad grade

Emotion-focused coping

Coping by managing your emotional respond to the stressor rather than changing the problem itself

• you change how you feel about the problem instead of actually changing the problem EX: meditation or exercising to reduce stress

Tyranny of choice

When having too many options makes decision-making harder and can lead to stress, regret, and dissatisfaction

EX: choosing a movie on netflix → scrolling 30 mins and still being unsatisfied with choice

Overestimation effect

Occurs when giving an external reward for a behavior that someone already enjoys causes them to lose intrinsic motivation for that behavior EX: you start doo by something for the reward rather than the enjoyment

• child loves to draw → start paying them → now only draw for money not fun

Law of effect

States that behavior followed by positive outcomes are more likely to be repeated, while behaviors followed by negative outcomes are less likely to be repeated

• strengthened by rewards, weakened by punishments

• Cat presses a lever → gets food → presses more often

Biological predispositions

An animals capacity for conditioning is constrained by its biology to learn certain behaviors to developed certain traits more easily than others

Intransitive drift

When an animals natural, instinctive behaviors interfere with or replace a learned behavior.

= natural instincts “drift” back in

Acquisition

The initial stage of learning when a response is first established and gradually strengthened

• phase where organism is learning to associate a stimulus with a response

Spontaneous recovery

The reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a rest period

• even after a learned behavior is presumed “gone” it can suddenly return without new training showing learning is not completely erased

Cognitive processes

Mental activities involved in acquiring, storing, and using knowledge.