Thinking About Psychology
The Science of Mind and Behavior 3e
Charles T. Blair-Broeker & Randal M. Ernst
PowerPoint Presentation Slides
by Kent Korek
Germantown High School
Worth Publishers, © 2012
Development and Learning Domain
Learning
• A relatively permanent change in
behavior caused by experience.
• Experience
• Practice
• Adapt
• Associate
• Sequence
Module 14
Classical Conditioning
A strategy for remembering…
Unconditioned = Natural
Conditional = Learned
Classical Conditioning
• A type of learning in which a stimulus
gains the power to cause a response.
• The stimulus predicts another stimulus
that already produces that response
• Form of learning by association
Stimulus-Response
• Stimulus - anything in the
environment that one can respond to.
• Response – any behavior or action.
Stimulus-Response Relationship
Stimulus-Response Relationship
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
• Russian physiologist and learning
theorist famous for discovery of
classical conditioning, in which
learning occurs through association.
Pavlov’s Research Apparatus
Pavlov’s Experiment
Acquisition
• The process of developing a learned
response.
• The subject learns a new response (CR)
to a previously neutral stimulus (CS)
Generalization
• Producing the same
response to two similar
stimuli.
• The more similar the
substitute stimulus is to
the original used in
conditioning, the stronger
the generalized response
Extinction
• In classical conditioning, the
diminishing of a learned response after
repeated presentation of the
conditioned stimulus alone.
• In classical conditioning, the continual
presentation of the CS without the UCS
Discrimination
• The ability to distinguish between two
signals or stimuli and produce
different responses.
• The subject learns that one stimuli
predicts the UCS and the other does not.
John Watson
• Founder of behaviorism,
• the theory that psychology should restrict
its efforts to studying observable
behaviors,
• not mental processes
Little Albert
• 11-month-old infant
• Watson and Rosalie Rayner, conditioned
Albert to be frightened of white
rats..PHOBIA?
• Led to questions about experimental ethics
Little Albert – Before Conditioning
Little Albert – During Conditioning
Little Albert – After Conditioning
Little Albert - Generalization
Can you reverse conditioned
fear?
Mary Cover Jones
Systematic Desensitization
What happened to little Albert?
Little Albert was really Douglas Merritte
Child of Arvilla Irons
Died of brain disorder (Hydrocephalus)
when he was six-years old
For more information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIc9ijXuk
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Module 14: Classical Conditioning
Cognition and Biological
Predispositions
Cognition
• All mental processes associated with
thinking, knowing, and remembering.
• What effect does cognition have on
learning?
Robert Rescorla (1940-
)
• a theory that emphasized the importance
of cognitive processes in
classical conditioning.
• Pointed out that subjects had
to determine (think) whether
the CS was a reliable
predictor of the UCS
Martin Seligman
Learned
Helplessness?
The inability to learn new responses
Taste Aversion
• Subjects become
classically conditioned to
avoid specific tastes,
because the tastes are
associated with nausea.
• John Garcia (1917- )
• Limitations of classical
conditioning?