Learning is defined as: A relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.
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Learning refers not just to the skills acquired in school,
but also to relatively permanent changes in behavior
that occur because of experience.
Associations
Associations-linking two events that occur
close together
For example: If a rat presses a lever to get food he
must make the association between the lever and
food so he knows that when he gets hungry he must
press the lever.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
Classical Conditioning – The process by which a neutral stimulus acquires the
capacity to elicit a response through association with a stimulus that already
elicits a similar or related response.
- Also called Pavlovian or respondent conditioning
- Ex: If you rang a bell every time you were going to feed your dog, after a
certain amount of time, the dog would begin salivating in expectation on
receiving food upon hearing the bell instead of actually seeing the food.
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Did experiments on dogs and took observations on their salivation
Won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1904
Originally studied the Physiology of Digestion
Pavlov Dog Experiment
Definition- The stimulus prior
to conditioning that triggers an
unconditioned response.
The food is the
unconditioned stimulus,
and triggers the
unconditioned response,
which is salivation.
Unconditioned Response(UCR)
The classical-conditioning term for a reflexive
response elected by a stimulus in the absence of
learning.
Conditioned Stimulus: The classical-conditioning term for an initially neutral
stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response after being associated with
an unconditioned stimulus
Conditioned Response: in classical conditioning,
the learned response to a previously neutral
conditioned stimulus
Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
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Extinction- After Conditioning, if a conditioned stimulus is given without an
unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response disappears.
Example: If you train a dog to salivate at the sound of a
bell, but then you ring the bell every five minutes an
don’t bring food, then the dog will salivate less and less
until it stops.
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Spontaneous Recovery- After a response disappears it may
spontaneously reappear.
Example: However if you ring the
bell the next day the dog might
salivate.