classical conditioning

Psychology:

From Inquiry to Understanding

1/e

Scott O. Lilienfeld

Steven Jay Lynn

Laura Namy

Nancy J. Woolf

Prepared by Jennifer Sage

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Bell ringer for Dec. 9, 2010

 Reflect back on your childhood memories.

What was your favorite Christmas? What made it so special?



Place in your journal. (NO! I haven’t graded the other….it’s on the top of my to-do list this weekend  )

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Chapter 6:

Learning

How Nurture Changes Us


Lecture Preview

 Discuss classical conditioning and how complex behaviors can arise from it

 Distinguish classical from operant conditioning, and the principles of reinforcement

 Explore the basis of observational and insight learning

 Discuss biological influences on learning

 Evaluate learning fads


True or False?

Once you reach adulthood, the brain is basically fixed and does not change.

False.

Recent evidence suggests that new neurons grow even in the adult brain, especially areas of the brain involved in learning.


Basic Terminology

 Learning change in an organism’s behavior or thought as a result of experience

 Habituation - process by which we respond less strongly over time to repeated stimuli

 Sensitization - process by which we respond more strongly over time (especially for dangerous, irritating stimuli)

 Eric Kandel earned the Nobel prize for his studies of habituation and sensitization in Aplysia (the sea slug)


Aplysia: A Model for Habituation and

Sensitization


Classical Conditioning

 British associationists - believed that we acquire virtually all of our knowledge by connecting one stimulus with another

(e.g., mother’s face and voice)

 Ivan Pavlov - studied digestion in dogs, noted associative conditioning between neutral stimuli and meat powder

(Pavlovian conditioning)



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Pavlov described classical conditioning , involving:

 UCS unconditioned stimulus - biologically significant stimulus that produces automatic response

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UCR unconditioned response - automatic response to a UCS that occurs without learning

CS conditioned stimulus - initially neutral stimulus, becomes associated with the UCS through conditioning

CR conditioned response - learned response

By virtue of CS-UCS pairing, the CS comes to elicit the

CR, a response closely related, but not identical, to the UR


Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Model



 Aversive conditioning - classical conditioning to an unpleasant UCS

 Avoidance response

 Classical conditioning is adaptive in preparing the organism for the impending

US

 Psychopathic personalities - indifferent to signals of threat



 Acquisition - learning phase during which a CR is established

 Extinction - gradual decrease and elimination of the CR when the CS is presented repeatedly without the UCS


Acquisition and Extinction



 Spontaneous recovery - sudden reemergence of an extinguished CR after a delay

 Renewal effect - tendency of an extinguished CR to return when revisiting the original conditioning environment

 Phobias intense and irrational fears

 Some acquired via classical conditioning

 Subject to spontaneous recovery and renewal



 Stimulus generalization - elicitation of a

CR to stimuli that are highly similar to, but not identical to, the CS

 Generalization gradient - the more similar to the original CS the new CS is, the stronger will be the CR

 Stimulus discrimination - opposite of stimulus generalization; occurs when we exhibit a CR to certain CSs, but not others


Generalization Gradient



 Higher-order conditioning - process by which organisms develop classically conditioned responses to CSs associated with the original CS

 Second-order conditioning

(e.g., thirst when hear “Coke” on a hot day)

 Occasion setters: setting in which CS occurs


Applications of Classical

Conditioning to Daily Life

1) Advertising - pairing positive USs with product CSs

 Latent inhibition when we’ve experienced a CS alone many times, it’s difficult to classically condition it to another stimulus

(e.g., highly known vs. novel brands)




2) Acquisition of fears: Little Albert

 Watson & Reyner (1920) sought to disprove the

Freudian view of phobia, reflecting deep-seated unconscious conflict

 They recruited an infant, Albert, and paired a white rat (CS) with a loud clanging metal noise (UCS)

 Five days later, Albert exhibited fear of the rat, and similar stimuli, including a rabbit, dog, furry coat, and Santa Claus mask (generalization of phobia)


Applications of Classical Conditioning to Daily Life

:

Little Albert

 Led to the conditioning model of phobias

 Classical conditioning also offers a way to get rid of phobia

 Mary Clover Jones (1924) successfully treated three-year-old Peter, who had a phobia of rabbits, by slowly introducing a rabbit paired with candies

 Similar exposure therapy is still the main behavioral treatment for irrational fears




3) Acquisition of fetishes

 Fetishism - experiencing sexual attraction to nonliving things

 Domjan (2004) paired a white terrycloth cylinder with a receptive female quail

 After 30 trials, about half the male quail tried to mate with the cylinder alone

 Suggests that pairing neutral objects with sex could lead to fetishes




4) Disgust reactions in most cases, a product of classical conditioning because CSs associated with disgusting UCSs come to elicit disgust themselves

 Rozin (1986) subjects show a great reluctance to eat a piece of fudge shaped like dog feces

 Subjects show a great reluctance to drink a sucrose solution labeled poison, even when they put the meaningless label on there (“better safe than sorry” heuristic)


Psychomythology: Transfer of

Learning in Planaria by Cannabalism

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McConnell (1955) gave light-shock (CS-UCS) pairings to planaria flatworms

Then fed those flatworms to other flatworms

Those that ate the shocked planaria learned faster, and McConnell became convinced he could transfer learning (but pseudoconditioning ?)

The results could not be replicated and McConnell closed his lab at University of Michigan, but had a normal career otherwise

Was targeted by the Unabomber he didn’t like the idea of memory pills to transfer ideas into people’s heads


Operant Conditioning

 Or instrumental conditioning acquiring behaviors as a result of the outcome or consequence of those behaviors

 The organism gets something out of the response or “operates” on its environment

(e.g., using biscuits as a treat, a trainer teaches a dog to sit)


Differences Between Operant and


Response

Elicited by UCS or CS

Reward

Classical

Independent of what the animal does

Operant

Organism emits response in a seemingly voluntary fashion

Organism must make response

Body

System

Often involves autonomic nervous system


Often involves the skeletal muscles

Law of Effect

 E. L. Thorndike (1898) studied cats in puzzle boxes, which led to the law of effect :

If a response, in the presence of a stimulus, is followed by a satisfying state of affairs, the bond between stimulus and response will be strengthened

 According to Thorndike and others, learning involves an association between a stimulus and response (S-

R), with the reward stamping in this connection

• Lack of insight in cats


Thorndike’s Puzzle Box


B. F. Skinner and Reinforcement

 Skinner developed a highly efficient conditioning chamber ( Skinner box ) that allows for conditioning and automated behavior measurement

 Typically contains bar that delivers food when pressed, food dispenser, and light that signals when reward is forthcoming


Rat in Skinner Box and Electronic Device for Recording the Rat’s Behavior


Terminology in Operant

Conditioning

 Positive reinforcement pleasant stimulus is given to increase the probability of a response

(e.g., cell phone for good grades)

 Negative reinforcement - unpleasant stimulus is removed to increase the probability of a response

(e.g., Aidan’s mother’s nagging stops when he picks up his room)

 Punishment unpleasant stimulus is given, or pleasant stimulus is taken away, to decrease the probability of a response (e.g., cell phone taken away for breaking curfew)


Punishment tends to be ineffective

 It tells the organism what not to do, rather than what to do

 Creates anxiety that can interfere with future learning

 Encourages subversive behavior

(sneakiness)

 Provides a model for aggressive behavior

 Physical punishment is associated with aggression in adulthood: but what about the role of genetics?


Conditioning Terminology

 Discriminant stimulus ( S d

) - stimulus associated with the presence of reinforcement

(e.g., whistle for dog, gets treat when approaches)

 Acquisition , extinction , spontaneous recovery , stimulus generalization , and stimulus discrimination are concepts common to both classical and operant conditioning


Principles of

Reinforcement

 Partial reinforcement behaviors that we reinforce only occasionally are slower to extinguish than those we reinforce continuously

 Schedules of reinforcement - pattern of reinforcing a behavior

 Fixed Ratio - after regular number of responses

 Variable Ratio - after specific number of responses, on average

 Fixed Interval - after specific amount of time

 Variable Interval - after an average time interval


Four Major Reinforcement Schedules


Typical Response Patterns for the Four

Reinforcement Patterns


Applications of Operant

Conditioning

 Shaping by successive reinforcement reinforcing behaviors that aren’t quite the target behavior but that are progressively closer versions of it

 Chaining linking a number of interrelated behaviors to form a longer series

 Premack principle - a less frequently performed behavior can be increased by reinforcing it with a more frequent behavior

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Grandma’s rule - vegetables before dessert


Applications of Operant

Conditioning

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Superstitious behavior - behavior linked to reinforcement by sheer coincidence (e.g., lucky charm effect)

 Pigeons, athletes, etc.

Token economies mental hospital staff can reinforce patients who behave in a desired fashion using tokens, chips, points, or other secondary reinforcers

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Secondary reinforcers - neutral objects that patients can later trade in for…

Primary reinforcers items or outcomes that are naturally pleasurable, such as a favorite food or drink


Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA)

 ABA - a set of techniques, pioneered by Ivar

Lovaas at UCLA, and based on operant conditioning principles, that relies on the careful measurement of behavior before and after implementing interventions

 Shaping techniques with primary reinforcers

 Children with autism treated with ABA show significant progress in language and intellectual skills

 Before Lovaas, many of these children would have been institutionalized


Two-Process Theory: Putting Classical and Operant Conditioning Together

 Classical and operant conditioning are distinct in many ways, including underlying brain systems, but how they interact is called two-process theory

 People acquire phobias via classical conditioning, then avoid their feared stimulus

(e.g., avoiding dogs after dog bite)

 This avoidance produces negative reinforcement, via anxiety reduction, maintaining the phobic response

 So phobias may involve classically conditioned fear AND operant avoidance


Apply Your Thinking

 Sarah is afraid of flying. She prides herself on not taking any pills. What are some ways she may be able to enjoy flying more?

 Exposure therapy and extinction

 Positive reinforcement


Radical Behaviorism and

Cognitive Psychology

 Skinner was a radical behaviorist : said thinking, emotion, and observable behavior are all dictated by operant and classical conditioning; viewed cognitive psychology as a pseudoscience

 Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theorists focus on how the organism interprets the stimulus before generating a response

 They contend that behavior is not automatic or inflexible, rather, classical and operant conditioned responses usually depend on thinking


Other Forms of Learning

 Latent learning learning that isn’t directly observable; we learn many things without showing them

 Emphasizes the difference between competence (what we know) and performance (showing what we know)

 Challenge to radical behaviorism, implies reinforcement isn’t necessary


Tolman and Honzik Maze Trials:

Learning All Along…



 Observational learning - learning by watching others (models), without instruction or reinforcement

 Brain basis? Perhaps mirror neurons

 Aggressive behavior: Bandura (1963) had children watch an adult ignoring or punching a

Bobo doll and shouting things like “Kick him”

 Children who watched the aggressive adult model were aggressive to the Bobo doll later


Media Violence Leads to

Real-World Aggression?

 Scores of investigators have proposed that violent TV programs promote aggressiveness in children

 Correlation or causation?

 Longitudinal designs

 Laboratory experiments

 Field studies (e.g., examining aggression in a town with no

TV)

 From these studies - media violence contributes to aggression in some circumstances


Longitudinal Study of Individuals Who

Watched Violent TV as Children


Apply Your Thinking

 A school teacher is having trouble with Audrey hitting her classmates. He notifies the father, who spanks

Audrey. The next day Audrey hits another classmate.

When an adult angrily approaches her, she cowers in fear. What happened and what should the teacher do?

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Audrey demonstrated observational learning/modeling.

Audrey shows classical conditioning of fear.

 The father should be taught that modeling good behavior and using reinforcement-based strategies will be more effective than punishment.



 Kohler (1925) studied apes solving problems, in one case, reaching bananas by putting together two sticks that were not long enough individually

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Seemed evidence for “Aha!” phenomenon

 Insight learning - when subjects suddenly

“get” the solution to a problem, and from there on get it right almost every time


Other Forms of Learning:

Insight Learning


Biological Influences on Learning

 Conditioned taste aversion - classical conditioning can lead us to develop avoidance reactions to the taste of food

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Requires only one trial

CS-UCS delay can be 6 – 8 hours

 Very specific with little stimulus generalization

 Challenges the concept of equipotentiality

(e.g., don’t develop CTAs to sounds)

 Belongingness suggests that certain stimuli are more likely to go with certain responses


Conditioned Taste Aversion Paradigm


Biological Influences on Learning

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Preparedness regarding phobias suggests that we’re evolutionarily predisposed to fear certain stimuli more than others

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Monkeys are predisposed to become afraid of things such as toy snakes and alligators, but not toy flowers or rabbits

About half of dog phobics have never had direct negative experience with a dog

Classical conditioning does not account for all phobias

Tendency for animals to return to innate behaviors following repeated reinforcement: instinctive drift

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Breland’s “coin washing” raccoons


Learning Fads:

Do They Work?

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Sleep-assisted learning listening to audio tapes while you sleep

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Learn Morse code quicker?

Better controlled studies suggested that the tapes awoke the subjects, they were not really asleep

Accelerated learning - SALTT

Discovery learning giving students experimental materials and asking them to figure out scientific principles on their own

 Klahr (2004) - 3rd, 4th graders asked to figure out variables affecting how quickly a ball rolls down a ramp

• Only 23% learned the principles using discovery learning, but

77% did with direct instruction


Learning Styles:

Fact or Fictional Fad?

 Do all individuals have their own distinctive learning styles?

 Analytical or spatial or verbal learners?

 Findings not reliable

 Studies show tailoring learning methods to a particular style doesn’t result in enhanced learning

 Most of us use a mixture of styles


Apply Your Thinking

 One treatment for alcoholism is a drug (pill) called Antabuse

® – it makes you very sick when you drink alcohol. Should this treatment work?

Based on the principles we’ve discussed, why or why not?

 Yes, via conditioned taste aversion

 No, avoidance and noncompliance


classical conditioning

Psychology:

From Inquiry to Understanding

Bell ringer for Dec. 9, 2010

Chapter 6:

Learning

Lecture Preview

True or False?

Basic Terminology

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Acquisition and Extinction

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Generalization Gradient

Classical Conditioning

Applications of Classical

Conditioning to Daily Life

Applications of Classical

Conditioning to Daily Life

:

Applications of Classical

Conditioning to Daily Life

Applications of Classical

Conditioning to Daily Life

Psychomythology: Transfer of

Learning in Planaria by Cannabalism

Operant Conditioning

Differences Between Operant and

Classical Conditioning

Law of Effect

Thorndike’s Puzzle Box

B. F. Skinner and Reinforcement

Terminology in Operant

Conditioning

Punishment tends to be ineffective

Conditioning Terminology

Principles of

Reinforcement

Applications of Operant

Conditioning

Applications of Operant

Conditioning

Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA)

Apply Your Thinking

Radical Behaviorism and

Cognitive Psychology

Other Forms of Learning

Other Forms of Learning

Media Violence Leads to

Real-World Aggression?

Apply Your Thinking

Other Forms of Learning

Biological Influences on Learning

Biological Influences on Learning

Learning Fads:

Do They Work?

Learning Styles:

Fact or Fictional Fad?

Apply Your Thinking

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