Extending Classical Conditioning

J.B. Watson + Rosalie Rayner

first to apply classical conditioning to people — “Dozen Children”

• coined the term “behaviorism”

• little albert — conditioning fear

J.B Watson

• named chair of psych dept. at John’s Hopkins in 1908

• credited with coining the term “behaviorism” and the behaviorist manifesto

• elected president of the APA in 1915

J.B. Watson’s “Behaviorist Manifesto”

1. psych should focused on studying behavior

2. research methods should be objective rather than introspective

3. the goal of psych should be the “prediction and control of behavior” rather than understanding mental events

what happened with little albert?

• albert generalized his fear of the white rat or other furry/fuzzy items like Santa’s beard and a fur coat

• Little albert (+ fam) moved away before JBW could “uncondition” the fear…but mostly psychologists agree that more than likely little albert did not remain afraid of furry things

why did this happen to little albert?

extinction!

• if JBW did not continue to strengthen the response (CR) by presenting the UCS, it most likely went away overtime

what have we learned from JBW’s research?

counterconditioning

counterconditioning

teaches patients to respond in a relaxed manner to the CS…until eventually the CR is extinct; used for phobias and anxiety disorders

• led to research in taste aversion, and much of what we know about making associations

cognitive influences

early behaviorists believed that behaviors of various animals could be reduced to mindless mechanisms

• Robert Rescorla believed that behavior involves thinking about associations

Robert Rescorla’s Contingency Model of Classical Conditioning (pt. 1)

• A is contingent upon B when A depends upon B and vise versa…in other words, the presence of the CS (NS) must predict the presence of the UCS

  • RR proposed that for learning to take place, a stimuli MUST provide the subject w/ info. about the likelihood that certain events will occur

Robert Rescorla’s Contingency Model of Classical Conditioning (pt. 2)

• An individual’s response to a stimulus is based on his expectations of what he thinks will happen, rather than just a “knee-jerk” reaction to that stimulus

  • cognition is involved

  • one event must reliably predict another

extending Pavlov’s work

• Pav. and JBW considered consciousness or the mind not fit for scientific study of psych.

• however, they underestimated the importance cognitive processes and biological constraints upon learning