How do we Learn & Classical Conditioning. 

By learning, humans are able to adapt to our environments. We learn to expect and prepare for significant events such as food or pain @@(classical conditioning)@@. We learn to repeat rewarding acts, avoid acts that bring unwanted results.

Learning: The process of acquiring and relatively enduring information or behaviors. Specifically ones that bring reward.

Habituates: An organisms decreasing response to a stimulus with a repeated exposure to it.

Learning Ways

Associative Learning: Certain events go together, the events may two stimuli or a response and its consequences.

Operant Learning: Learn to associate a response and its consequence.

Cognitive Learning: The acquisition of mental info whether by observing the events, by watching others, or through language.

Observational Learning: Lets us learn from other’s experience. Form of cognitive learning.

Classical Learning: One learns to link 2 or more stimuli and anticipate events.

Cool Little Table To Organize

• $By learning, humans are able to adapt to our environments. We learn to expect and prepare for significant events such as food or pain, classical conditioning. We learn to repeat rewarding acts and avoid acts that bring unwanted results.$

$Learning is the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information/behaviors.$

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Respondent Behavior: Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

• Stimulus: Any event or situation that evokes a response.

<<John B. Watson (1913) urged his colleagues to discard reference to inner thoughts, feelings, and motives. Watson claimed the science of psychology should instead study how organisms respond to stimuli in their environments.<<

• <<Watson called this view of psychology “behaviorism”<<

<<Behaviorism: Psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes.<<

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Neutral Stimulus (NS): In classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.

• Dogs do not learn to salivate in response to food in its mouth. Rather, food in the mouth automatically, unconditionally, triggers a dogs saliva reflex.

%%Unconditioned Response (UR): Naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus.%%

%%Unconditioned Stimulus (US): A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response.%%

%%Conditioned Response (CR): Learned response to a previously neutral, but now continued, stimulus.%%

%%Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.%%

Table of UR,US,CR,CS.

Acquisition: When one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering that conditioned response.

High-Order Processing: The conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second conditioned stimulus.

• For example, an animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that a light predicts this tone and begin responding to the light alone.

]]Extinction: The diminishing of a conditioned response.]]

• ]]Occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced.]]

]]Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.]]

• ]]Suggested to Pavlov that extinction was suppressing the conditioned response (CR) rather than eliminating it.]]
  • ]]Conditioned Response (CR) is the learned response to a previously neutral, but now continued, stimulus.]]

Generalization: The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.

• In operant conditioning, generalization occurs when responses learned in one situation occur in other, similar situations.

Discrimination: The learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.

Applications of Classical Conditioning

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Classical Conditioning: A type of learning in which we link two or more stimuli ; as a result, to illustrate with Pavlov’s classic experiment. First stimulus comes to elicit behavior in anticipation of the second stimulus.

$**The Larger Lesson:**$ Conditioning helps an animal survive and reproduce -- by responding to cues that help it gain food, avoid dangers, locate mates, and produce offspring.

Applications Table

Learning is Important

Adaptability: Our capacity to learn new behaviors that help us cope with our changing world

• What is learnable, we can teach.
• What is learned we can potentially change.

Parts of the brain that are most active when learning.

• Cerebral Cortex
• Cerebellum
• Brain Stem
• Pituitary Gland
• Thalamus
• Cerebrum
• Spinal Cord
• Hippocampus

Change

• Decrease in Behavior
• Increase in Behavior

Behavior

• Action
  • Internal or External
• Observable
• Measure
  • Heart rate
  • Sweat

Experience (Process). Experience alone is not learning

• Not always long lasting
• Interaction with the environment
  • Person

Associative Learning

We learn by association when a stimulus and a response is linked together in space and time.

Association:

• Paired
• Connection

Stimulus:

• Noun
• Person
• Place
• Object

Response:

• Reaction
• Behavior
  • Anxiousness (Measurable by Heart Rate) (Sweat)
• Measurable

Components of Classical Conditioning

==Stimulus== --- ^^Response^^

When a bee ==stings== you feel ^^pain^^.

When it’s ==hot== you ^^sweat^^.

These are situations where an unconditioned stimulus yields an unconditioned response.

}}Unconditioned is a not learned, natural, automatic response.}}

A Neutral Stimulus is neutral therefore it yields no response.

Hearing a song for the first time…

A Random Bell…

Example of Classical Conditioning

If you pair the neutral stimulus (NS) with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) enough times eventually the neutral stimulus (NS) takes on the value of unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and YIELDS the unconditional response (UCR).

The neutral stimulus becomes the trained or conditioned. So the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus. And the unconditioned response becomes the trained or conditioned response (CR).

While George was having a cavity filled by his dentist, the drill hit a nerve that had not been dulled by anesthetic, a couple of times. Each time he cringed in pain. George now flinches each time he sees the dentist.

• Neutral Stimulus was the Dentist

• The Drill hitting a nerve was the Unconditioned Stimuli

• George cringing in pain was the unconditioned response.

• George Now Flinching each time is the conditioned response

• The Dentist is now the conditioned stimuli.

What We Learned From Watson

In the little Albert experiment, they took the ideas of Pavlov and applied them to this.

$Worrying about falling from a high place is not from person experience evolution, we have learned from our ancestors to fear this and it is engraved into our brain.$

Little Albert was scared of loud noises, but he wasn’t scared of rats. He actually enjoyed playing with rats.

The researchers made loud noises when the white rat was put into the room, this caused Little Albert to cry. When taking away the loud noise, the rat started to make him cry because he associated the rat with this response and loud noise.

• Generalization was also studied here. The researchers tested his generalization by putting a bunny, which looks similar to a rat, in the room with Little Albert.