AP Psychology: Modules 26 & 27

• A stimulus simply refers to any event or situation that evokes a response.

  • Respondent Behavior refers to behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

  • Operant Behavior is behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.

• Learning is the process of acquiring, through experience, new and relatively enduring information or behaviors.

  • It is a long-lasting change in behavior due to experience.

  • The emphasis here is on the word “enduring,” so learning is therefore very different from cramming.

    • To truly learn you must own the target knowledge, skill, or idea.

• Associative learning refers to learning that certain events occur together.

  • These events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (as in operant conditioning.

• Classical Conditioning: we learn or expect and prepare for significant events such as food or pain.

• Operant Conditioning: we learn to repeat acts that bring rewards and avoid acts that bring unwanted results.

• Cognitive Learning: we learn things by observing events, watching others, or through language.

• Observational Learning: we learn by observing events and people.

• The Salivating Dogs:

  • Ivan Pavolv’s experiment regarding classical conditioning.

  • Dogs naturally salivate because of food, which is what Pavlov discovered in his experiment when the dogs salivated before they received food due to the trigger of a stimulus.

    • He would introduce food with a sound to the dogs, and after so many times the dogs would start to salivate when they only heard the bell because they expected food to come after it. This is therefore the prime, first example of Pavlovian conditioning (classical conditioning).

  • Food is associated with being an unconditioned stimulus for the dogs.

  • Natural salivation to food was the unconditioned response

  • The bell started off as the neutral stimulus and then became the conditioned stimulus, which in turn made salivation at the sound of the bell the conditioned response.

• Classical conditioning can be referred to as passive learning, meaning the learner does not have to think

• Unconditional Stimulus (UCS/US) is something that elicits a natural, reflexive response.

• Unconditional response (UCR/UR) is the response to the UCS.

• Neutral stimulus (NS), in classical conditioning, is a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.

• Habituation is decreasing responsiveness with repeated exposure to a particular stimulus.

• Behaviorism: the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes.

  • Researchers mostly agree with the first part of this (that psychology should be an objective science)

• 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, it is the strengthening of a reinforced response.

• Higher-order conditioning: a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning response is paired with a new neutral behavior, 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.

• Extinction: the diminishing of a conditioned response, which occurs in classical conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced

  • The moment when the CS is no longer associated with the UCS

• Spontaneous recovery refers to the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.

• Generalization is the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned response to elicit similar responses.

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

  • Something is so similar to the CS that you get a CR

• Discrimination, in classical conditioning, is the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned response.

  • In operant conditioning, discrimination is the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced.

  • Something so different to the CS so you do not get a CR

Activity:

• Part A:

  • Motor Neurons: the motor neurons helped Ashley to be able to press the gas at the correct pressure, as she could feel the speed of the car when you are drying. Also, it helps her to use the steering wheel.

  • Retinal Disparity: the concept of retinal disparity could have helped her stay the correct distance from the car in front of her so that she would not crash into it.

• Part B:

  • Circadian Rhythm: this concept can make her feel drowsy behind the wheel because she is doing a cross-country road trip, which can affect her sleeping.

  • Conditioned Response: this concept pertains because when she starts to drift off the road, she gets frightened.

  • Inattentional Blindness: this pertains because she was paying attention to her parents on the phone rather than to the stimuli on the road.

• B.F. Skinner was known as the “godfather of operant conditioning.”

  • Nurture > nature

  • Used a Skinner Box (operant conditioning chamber) to prove his concepts of learning.

• Law of effect: this is Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.

  • He called the whole process instrumental learning.

• Operant chamber: in operant conditioning, a chamber (also known as a Skinner Box) containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer.

  • The attached devices record the animal’s rate of bar pressing or key pecking.

• In operant conditioning, reinforcement is any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.

• Shaping: an operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.

• Discriminative Stimulus: in operant conditioning, a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement.

  • In contrast to related stimuli not associated with the reinforcement.

• A reinforcer is anything that increases behavior.

• Positive reinforcement: increasing behaviors by the addition of something pleasant.

  • A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.

• Negative reinforcement: increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing aversive stimuli

  • A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens a response.

  • Negative does not mean bad!

  • If he could change something about his work, he would call this “omission reinforcement” instead.

• A primary reinforcer is an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need — innately rewarding things

  • Water, food, shelter, sleep, sex, and touch.

• A conditioned reinforcer is a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power and value through its association with a primary reinforcer — things we have learned to value

  • Also known as a secondary reinforcer.

  • Money is a general reinforcer because it can be traded for just about anything we want.

• Reinforcement schedules: a pattern that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced.

• Continuous reinforcement schedule: reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.

  • Usually done when the subject is first learning to make the association

  • Acquisition comes really fast, but so does extinction

• Partial (intermittent) reinforcement schedule: reinforcing a response only some of the times it is exhibited.

  • The acquisition comes more slowly

  • More resistant to extinction

  • There are four types of partial reinforcement schedules.

• Delayed reinforcers: unlike most animals, humans respond to delayed reinforcers.

  • Kids who were able to delay gratification and wait 15 minutes without eating the marshmallow were found, later in life, to:

    • have higher SAT and IQ scores

    • Lower levels of substance abuse

    • Lower rates of obesity

    • Better response to stress

    • better social skills

• Fixed-ratio Schedule: in operant conditioning, a reinforcement after a set number of responses

• Variable-ratio Schedule: in operant conditioning, it provides reinforcement after a random number of responses.

• Fixed-interval Schedule: in operant conditioning, reinforcement is given when a set amount of time has elapsed.

• Variable-interval Schedule: in operant conditioning, a reinforcement that is given after a random amount of time has elapsed.

  • Very hard to get acquisition but also very resistant to extinction.

• Punishment is an event that focuses on decreasing behavior.

  • Negative punishment: removal of something pleasant; operant training

  • Positive punishment: addition of something unpleasant

• Punishment works best when it is immediately done after behavior and if it is harsh!

• The following are the drawbacks of physical punishment:

  • Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten; this temporary state may negatively reinforce parents’ punishing behavior.

  • Punishment teaches discrimination in situations.

  • Punishment can teach fear.

  • Physical punishment may increase aggression by modeling violence as a way to cope with problems.

• A reinforcement is meant to increase a behavior

  • It is any consequence that strengthens behavior.

• A punishment is meant to decrease a behavior

Positive reinforcement increases behavior by the addition (+) of something pleasant.

Negative reinforcement increases a behavior by the removal (-) of something unpleasant

Positive punishment decreases a behavior by the addition (+) of something unpleasant

Negative punishment decreases a behavior by the removal (-) of something pleasant.