Chapter 6.

1
Face Perception, Learning and Behavior
Study Q: Give a real life example (Not from lecture or the textbook) of a
classically conditioned response. What is the UCS, the CS and the UCR in
your example?
Face Recognition (Cont.)
- Prosopagnosia: Cant recognize faces
- Visual Agnosia : Cant recognize objects
- Associative Agnosia: Problem is putting the parts of the object together in
order to recognize it
Feature detectors and perception
Neural Mechanisms
> Fusiform Gyrus (Right Hemisphere)
Responds most strongly to upright faces
Damaged = prosopagnosia
We are programmed to see faces
- Paeidolla : Seeing faces in things that arent there
The behavioral study of learning
Habituation: Learning not to respond to an unimportant stimulus
- The simplest learning
- Doesnt result in a new response just doesnt stimulate a
response.
Classical Conditioning
> Ivan Pavlov
- Collected dogs saliva from different food
- Dogs started salivating before food was presented
> Before conditioning :
- Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): Elicits a response without any prior
learning
- Unconditioned Response (UCR) : Does not have to be learned
> UCS: Food
> UCR: Salivation
> Neutral Stimulus: Tone (bell)
Neutral Stimulus: Only elicits an orientated response
> After conditioning
- Conditioned Stimulus (CS) : Elicits a response only after learning has
taken place
- Conditioned Response (CR): A learned response to a neutral stimulus
Factors affecting acquisition of CR

- Timing
- Intensity ( More intense UCS = stronger CR)
- Reliability ( CS must predict UCR)
Extinction and spontaneous recovery
- A weakening of the CR following repeated exposure to the CS without
the UCS
Generalization
- Condition a dog to salivate to a 1000Hz tone
- Present a 90Hz tone
- Generalizations: Similar stimuli to a CS can elicit a CR
Discrimination
- Only present UCS to 1000Hz (but not 900HZ)
- Discrimination: Differentiating between 2 similar stimuli when only
one is associated
with the UCS
Second order conditioning
- Present a second NS along with the CS
- Secondary stimulus is conditioned to elicit the CR
Phobias: An unreasonable fear of specifics objects or stimulus
> Conditioning emotional responses
> Classical conditioning explanation for phobias : fear is associated
with an object
Behavioral approach to treating phobias
- Flooding: Forced exposure to CS in a safe environment to extinguish CR
- Counter Conditioning: Extinguishing CR (fear) to an object by pairing it with
an incompatible response
- Systematic desensitization: Based on flooding and counter conditioning, the
patient is exposed to progressively stronger CS