3.7a - Classical Conditioning: Basic concepts

Learning: the process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information or behaviors.

Learned associations feed our habitual behaviors

Habits can form when we repeat behaviors in a given context → As behavior becomes linked with the context, our next experience of that context will evoke our habitual response

Sensory adaptation: when one of your sensory systems stops registering the presence of an unchanging stimulus

Sensory habituation: diminished response to a stimulus

Forms of learning because you learn to ADAPT to the stimulus and you get used to eliminating the reaction from another

Associative learning: learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and consequence (as in operant conditioning).

classical conditioning: learning to associate two stimuli and thus to anticipate events. We associate stimuli that we do not control, and we respond automatically → respondent behavior: behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

operant conditioning: learning to associate a response (our behavior) and its consequence. Thus, we learn to repeat acts that are followed by good results and avoid acts that are followed by bad results → operant behaviors: behavior that operates on the environment, producing a consequence.

Respondent conditioning addresses emotional and physiological responses, while operant conditioning focuses on changing behavior through consequences

Cognitive learning: the acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language.

Observational learning: a form of cognitive learning, that lets us learn from others’ experiences

Behaviorism: the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).

Created by John B. Watson

Pavlov’s research on dogs’ digestive systems

Incidental observation: Without fail, putting food in a dog’s mouth caused the animal to salivate.

Classical Conditioning Principles:

Unconditioned stimulus: In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers an unconditioned response (UCR).

Unconditioned response UCR: in classical conditioning, an unlearned, naturally occurring response (such as salivation) to an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) (such as food in the mouth).

Conditioned stimulus: in classical conditioning, an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR).

Conditioned response: in classical conditioning, a learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS).

Acquisition: in classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.

Higher-order conditioning: a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus. For example, an animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone. (Also called second-order conditioning.)

Although this higher-order conditioning tends to be weaker than first-order conditioning, it influences our everyday lives. If a dog bites you, just the sound of a barking dog may later make you feel afraid.

Pavlov extinguished the conditioned response in his dogs by making the tone sound again and again, but with no food appearing → The dogs salivated less and less

Spontaneous recovery: the reappearance, after a pause, of a weakened conditioned response

In Pavlov’s dogs, extinction was suppressing the CR, rather than truly eliminating it.

Generalization: the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses. (In operant conditioning, when responses learned in one situation occur in other, similar situations.)

Discrimination: the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that have not been associated with a conditioned stimulus. (In operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced.)

Why Pavlov's work is so important:

Many other responses to many other stimuli can be classically conditioned in many other organisms

Pavlov showed us how a process such as learning can be studied objectively.