Class notes psychology 1000

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Psych Chapter 7

Psych Ch 7

Modules 35-36

Learning- a lasting change caused by experience that has to be inferred from behaviour and not directly
observed.

2 types of learning-
Associative learning- learning that involves forming associations between stimuli. Cringing at the sound
of a dental drill because you associate the sound of the drill with pain. This is the majority of learning
that we experience.
Non-associative learning- learning that does not involve forming associations and is learning from
repeated exposure to a stimulus or event.This is the simplest form of learning.

2 types of non-associative learning-

Habituation- when repeated presentation of a stimulus leads to a reduction in response. There is also
dishabituation where there is a recovery of attention to a stimulus after habituating to it due to a new
experience.
Sensitization- when a strong stimulus results in an exaggerated response to the subsequent presentation
of a weaker stimuli.

2 types of associative learning-

Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning

Classical conditioning- A form of associative learning between two previously unrelated stimuli that
results in a learned experience. Ex. Cringing at the sound of thunder when you first hear it, but after
many sounds cringing at the sight of lightning because you associate the sight of lightning with the sound
of thunder. Pavlov discovered this with his experiments on salivating dogs.

Conditioning- the association of events in the environment.

Natural reflex- an automatic involuntary response that typically occurs without learning.

How does classical conditioning work?

You first observed the unconditioned stimulus and the unconditioned response.
Then you couple the unconditioned stimulus with the conditioned stimulus. (Couple the food with
ringing the assistant entering). Then you observe the unconditioned stimulus.
Finally you present only the conditioned stimulus which is the lab assistant entering to observe the
conditioned stimulus.
Stimulus generalization- what occurs when stimuli similar to the original conditioned stimulus trigger the
same conditioned response. Ex.Any reptile resembling a snake causes fear not just one specific type of
snake.

Stimulus discrimination- what occurs when an organism learns to emit a specific behaviour in the
presence of a conditioned stimulus, but not in stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus. Ex. A rat knows
he gets a shock at a certain high tone noise, but doesn't anticipate it with lower tone noises so they can
thus discriminate pitch.

Higher order conditioning- what occurs when a previously conditioned stimulus functions as if it were an
unconditioned stimulus for further conditioning. Ex. Adding a bell to when the lab assistant comes in.
The bell becomes the conditioned stimulus while the lab assistant entering becomes the unconditioned
stimulus.

Extinction- a reduction of a conditioned response after repeated presentations of the conditioned

stimulus alone.

Spontaneous recovery- re-emergence of a conditioned response sometime after extinction has occured.
Ex. If the lab assistant hasn't been there when the dog gets food for a week but then comes back, the
conditioning hasn't been unlearned, it has just been dormant before recovery. The recovery is with the
pairing of the US-CS.

Classical conditioning and fear- Watson did the Little Albert experiment that taught the baby to fear rats
by associating them to a harmful scary sound. Super unethical.

Classical conditioning and drug dependency- In talking about heroin, Siegel described how drug
tolerance could be overcome by the classical conditioning of the high being associated to the injection
and not the drug itself and so the body and mind would compensate for the physical tolerance with
psychological addiction so the injection (CS) would show the conditioned response.

Systematic desensitization- a process used to condition extinction of phobias through gradual exposure
to the feared object or situation.

Conditioned taste aversion- a form of classical conditioning where a previously neutral smell or taste
elicits an aversive reaction after it is paired with illness like nausea.

Garcia effect- says that we are biologically ready to associate illness and taste to know what to eat. From
that, he can produce a taste aversion by having a nausea injection along with a certain taste so that they
are averted from the taste.

Operant conditioning- a form of associative learning whereby a behaviour is modified depending on its
consequences.
Where does the term operant come from?
It is because of the way organisms learn by operating on the environment and associating their acts with
the consequences.

Law of effect- behaviours leading to rewards are more likely to occur again, while behaviours producing
unpleasantness are likely to occur again. Proposed by Thorndike.
How was operant conditioning developed?
In the beginning, behaviorism was the big theory to follow. Then B.F Skinner’s research showed that they
agentically did something to the environment and associated that act to the consequences.