Historical Influences – Learning
(continued)
Lecture 3
Pavlov
Pavlov set out to discover how learning occurred (empirical)
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INVOLVES LEARNING WHAT EVENTS IN
ENVIRONMENT “GO TOGETHER”
IS LEARNING OF “ASSOCIATIONS”
LEARNED BY HAVING EVENTS PAIRED WITH
ONE ANOTHER
E1  E2 or S  S learning (NS  UCS)
Pavlov
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING IN ACTION
(A RELEVANT COLLEGE EXAMPLE)
What would happen to your emotions right now
if I were to say the following:
BLUE BOOKS! POP QUIZ!
FINAL EXAM! TAX AUDIT!
Why do we respond this way?
Use Classical Conditioning to explain behavior:
Scenarios (group discussions)
1. Sound of drill, dentist visit
2. Hospital smell, visiting the hospital
3. Round band aids, visiting the doctor
4. Examples of Second order conditioning &
Counter conditioning
Neutral Stimulus (NS)
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)
Unconditioned Response (UCR)
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
Conditioned Response (CR)
Pavlovian
Conditioning
Just Reflexes?
Does this work in
Humans?
Does classical
conditioning go beyond
basic responses?
Founder of Behaviorism:
Only study behavior…not concerned with the
mind…focus on relationship between environment
and behavior
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, wellformed, and my own specialized world to
bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take
any one at random and train him to become
any type of specialist I might select – doctor,
lawyer, artist, merchant chief and yes, even
beggarman and thief, regardless of his
talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations and race of his ancestors.”
VH1 “Behind the Science”
-Born South Carolina
-Wild & impulsive
-Trouble with law
-16 yrs – to college
-21 yrs – masters
-Supported himself totally
through college
-4th year turned in a paper back to front – “F”
-Grad school – Univ. of Chicago
-Ph.D. in 3 years
-1907 offered position - Johns Hopkins $2500
-1915 APA President (37 yrs)
“Little Albert” – first CC in humans
“Little Albert”
“Analysis of a Phobia in a Five Year Old Boy” S. Freud (1909)
- “Little Hans” – White horses with black mouth
- Father sent letters to Freud
- “proud, very white, trotted away”
- Dad away boy slept with Mom  Oedipus Complex
- Displacement (unconscious conflict)
- Watson…I don’t think so! – Phobia due to conditioning
- Watson set out to show for the first time emotion
could undergo classical conditioning
Little Albert B.
• Emotionally and physically healthy 9-month old male
raised in a hospital environment
“No one had ever seen him in a state of fear and rage. The
infant practically never cried… His stability was one of the principle
reasons for using him as a subject in this test. We felt that we could
do him relatively little harm by carrying out such experiments.”
Little Albert B.
• Actual conditioning started at 11-months
• Albert was conditioned to cry (fear) a rat
“The instant the rat was shown the baby began to cry. Almost
instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on left side, raised
himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he
was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.”
Watson & Rosalie Rayner
“Little Albert”
9 mo old boy
UCS: Sound of steel bar & hammer = UCR: crying
NS: RAT
1. 2 trials with NS + UCS = CRY (“Fretted”)
2. 2 days later CS alone = no touch
3. 5 more trials of CS+UCS
4. 8th trial …bingo… CS  CRY
Conditioned Emotional REACTIONS!
What the?
Watson & Rosalie Rayner (1920)
“Little Albert”
Generalized: responding to a
stimulus as a result of training
with another stimulus (5 days
later)
- Rabbit
- Dog
- Seal Coat
- Santa Claus (beard)
“transfer or spread”
Watson
Anybody have issues with his
experiment…
Methodology?
Ethics?
Data?
Watson’s
Contributions
• One of the First American Psychologist to
apply Pavlov’s work to humans (emotions)
• Brought the study of behavior (Psych) into a
more “scientific” and observable discipline
• Little Albert in every Psych Textbook
•Convinced other Psychologist that there was an
alternative to Freudian Psychoanalysis
•Neurotic symptoms (Phobias could be controlled
via CC)…Major applied significance
Contributions to Psychology
• Generalization of
fears
• Showed that
emotions can be
learned
VH1 “Behind the Science”
John B. Watson
Physiological Aspects of Sexual
Arousal
Attach electrode on subjects
during sex
Wife – “NO”
RA – “YES”
Resigned from Johns Hopkins
Never Published again…Private Industry
Real-Life Examples of Classical Conditioning
Mowrer & Mowrer (1938) Treatment for enuresis (bed-wetting)
-Child sleeps on a pad (a wire mesh that is connected to a bell has been sewn)
- Child wets the bed  electrical circuit causes bell to ring (UCS)
-Child wakes up (UCR)
After several repetitions of this cycle (bed-wetting causes him to
be awakened by the bell), the child begins to associate the
sensation of pressure in his bladder (a previously neutral stimulus)
with waking up
-In a short time, the need to urinate (now a CS) becomes
sufficient in itself to awaken the child (now a CR) so he or she can
get up and go to the bathroom - no need for PAD with Bell
Real-Life Examples of Classical Conditioning
Gustavson and Gustavson (1985) – Conditioned Taste Aversion
Coyotes killing sheep – problem to sheep farmers
Study conditioned coyotes not to eat the sheep
Sheep meat (CS) sprinkled with a chemical (UCS) that
would produce a stomachache (UCR)
After coyotes ate the treated meat,
they avoided the live sheep (CR)
This humane application of conditioned taste aversion
might be used to control other predators as well
Real-Life Examples of Classical Conditioning
Metalmikov & Chorine (1926, 1928) – Immune System
Injected Guinea Pigs with Foreign agents (non lethal)
 antibodies  boost their immune system
Then paired injections with Lights
Lights + Injections = better immunity
Lights alone = better immunity
Later Injected Cholera: animals with prior conditioning
better survival vs controls with no conditioning
In A Clockwork Orange, a brutal sociopath, a
mass murderer, is strapped to a chair and
forced to watch violent movies while he is
injected with a drug that nauseates him. So he
sits and gags and retches as he watches the
movies. After hundreds of repetitions of this,
he associates violence with nausea, and it limits
his ability to be violent.
Real-Life Examples of Classical Conditioning
•Drug Tolerance -- Drug Overdose
•drug users become increasingly less responsive
to the effects of the drug
•tolerance is specific to specific environments
(e.g. bedroom)
•familiar environment becomes associated with
a compensatory response (Physiology)
•taking drug in unfamiliar environment leads to
lack of tolerance  drug overdose