chapt 6.2: classical conditioning

Through his experiments, Pavlov realized that an organism has 2 types of responses to its environment:

1. unconditioned (unlearned) responses/reflexes 2. conditioned (learned) responses

In stark contrast with ______, who considered the reasons for behavior to be hidden in the unconscious, Watson championed the idea that all behavior can be studied as a simple stimulus -response reaction without regard for internal processes.

Freud

Describe Moisha's example with chemotherapy and nausea.

Moisha was diagnosed with cancer. When she received her first chemotherapy treatment, she vomited shortly after the chemicals were injected. In fact, every trip to the doctor for chemotherapy treatment shortly after the drugs were injected, she vomited. Moisha's treatment was a success, and her cancer went into remission. Now, when she visits her oncologist's office every 6 months for a checkup, she becomes nauseous. In this case, the chemotherapy drugs are the unconditioned stimulus, vomiting is the unconditioned response, the doctor's office is the conditioned stimulus after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus, and the nausea is the conditioned response.

Watson argued that in order for psych to become a legitimate science, it must shift its concerns away from internal mental processes because mental processes cannot be _____ or _____. Instead he asserted that psych must focus on outward _____ behavior that can be measured.

seen; measured observable

What is the Rescorla-Wagner model?

Rescorla along with his colleague at Yale University, Alan Wagner developed a mathematical formula that could be used to calculate the probability of that an association would be learned given the ability of a conditioned stimulus to predict the occurrence of an unconditioned stimulus and other factors.

What is stimulus generalization?

When an organism demonstrates the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimuli. The more similar a stimulus is to the conditioned stimulus, the more likely the organism is to give the conditioned response.

What is stimulus discrimination?

When an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar. The organism demonstrates the conditioned response only to the conditioned stimulus

Was Pavlov's conclusion about how learning occurs intentional or accidental?

completely accidental

The behavior caused by the conditioned stimulus is called the _______

conditioned response

According to Watson, human behavior, just like animal behavior is primarily the result of ____________.

conditioned responses

Tone (_______) ---> salivation (________)

conditioned stimulus --> conditioned response

What did Robert Rescorta?

demonstrated how powerfully an organism can learn to predict the unconditioned from the conditioned stimulus.

What did Pavlov do to explore "psychic secretion"?

designed a series of carefully controlled experiments to see which stimuli would cause the dogs to salivate.

What was Pavlov's area of interest?

digestive system

Research into taste aversion suggests that this response may be an _________ designed to help organisms quickly learn to avoid harmful foods. May contribute to species survival via ___________.

evolutionary adaption natural selection

What is spontaneous recovery?

the return of a previously extinguished conditioned response following a rest period

Dog's don't naturally salivate to: Pavlov called it the dog's ______________.

the sight of an empty bowl or the sound of footsteps. "psychic secretions"

What is higher-order conditioning?

An established conditioned stimulus is paired with a new neutral stimulus (the second-order stimulus), so that eventually the new stimulus also elicits the conditioned response, without the initial conditioned stimulus being presented.

What is an example of Robert Rescorla's idea? (dinner time)

Ari's dad always has diner on the table every day at 6:00. Soraya's mom switches it up so that some days they eat dinner at 6:00, some days they eat at 5:00, and other days they eat at 7:00. For Ari, 6:00, even if he's had a late snack. Soraya, on the other hand, will be less likely to associate 6:00 with dinner, since 6:00 does not always predict that dinner is coming.

What is an example of how taste aversion works?

Between classes, you and a friend grab a quick lunch from a food cart on campus. You share a dish of chicken curry and head off to your next class. A few hours later, you feel nauseous and become ill. Although your friend is fine and you determined that you have intestinal flu (the food is not the culprit), you've developed a taste aversion. The next time you are at a restaurant and someone orders curry, you immediately feel ill. While the chicken dish is not what made you sick, you are experiencing taste aversion.

Is it easy or hard to achieve anything above second-order conditioning? What is an example in relation to Moisha's scenario?

Hard if someone rang a bell every time Moisha received a syringe injection of chemotherapy drugs in the doctor's office, Moisha likely will never get sick in response to the bell.

What was Pavlov able to accomplish from his series of experiments with dogs?

He was able to train the dogs to salivate in response to stimuli that clearly had nothing to do with food, such as the sound of a bell, a light, and a touch on the leg.

What is an example of stimulus generalization? (can opener for cat+ electric mixer)

If the electric mixer sounds very similar to the electric can opener, cat may come running after hearing its sound. But if you do not feed her following the electric mixer sound, and you continue to feed her consistently after the electric can opener sound, she will quickly learn to discriminate between the two sounds (provided they are sufficiently dissimilar that she can tell them apart).

Who is considered to be the father of behaviorism?

John B. Watson

Watson's ideas were influenced by who's work?

Pavlov's

What is an example of stimulus discrimination? (Pavlov's dogs)

Pavlov's dogs discriminated between the basic tone that sounded before they were fed and other tones (e.g doorbell) because the other sounds did not predict the arrival of food.

What was the Little Albert experiment?

Watson and Rayner taught a little boy to fear white rats by pairing their presence with a loud noise. unethical in today's standards

Salivating to food is a _______, so no learning is involved.

reflexive

Who is Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)?

a Russian scientist, performed extensive research on dogs and is best known for his experiments in classical conditioning.

Let's assume that the chemotherapy drugs that Moisha takes are given through a syringe injection. After entering the doctor's office, Moisha sees a syringe, and then gets her medication. In addition to the doctor's office, Moisha will learn to associate the syringe with the medication and will respond to syringes with nausea. What is this an example of?

a higher-order (second-order) conditioning, when the conditioned stimulus (the doctor's office) serves to condition another stimulus (the syringe).

What is an unconditioned response?

a natural (unlearned) reaction to a given stimulus

What is classical conditioning?

a process by which we learn to associate stimuli and, consequently, to anticipate events

What is behaviorism?

a school of thought that arose during the first part of the 20th century and incorporates elements of Pavlov's classical conditioning.

What is a neutral stimulus?

a stimulus that does not naturally elicit a response

What is an unconditioned stimulus?

a stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism

What is a conditioned stimulus?

a stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus.

What is taste aversion?

a type of conditioning in which an interval of several hours may pass between the conditioned stimulus (something ingested) and the unconditioned stimulus (nausea or illness)

In classical conditioning, the initial period of learning is known as what?

acquisition

typically, there should only be a _____ interval between presentation of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus. depending on what is being conditioned, sometimes this interval is as little as _______, or up to _______.

brief 5 seconds; several hours

Acquisition and extinction involve the strengthening and weakening, respectively, of a _______________________.

learned association

the sound of the bell was the ______ stimulus

neutral

sound (______) + meat powder (________) ---> salivation (______)

neutral stimulus; unconditioned stimulus ----> unconditioned response

In classical conditioning, a ______ stimulus is presented ______ before an unconditioned stimulus. How did Pavlov execute this in his experiment?

neutral; immediately Pavlov would sound a bell then give the dogs the meat powder

During acquisition, the ______ stimulus begins to elicit the conditioned response, and eventually the _____ stimulus becomes a ______ stimulus capable of eliciting the conditioned response by itself.

neutral; neutral; conditioned

Pavlov was a _________ not a psychologist.

physiologist

Pavlov conditioned ____ while Watson believed the same principles could be extended to the conditioning of human ______.

reflexes; emotions

What was the Garcia and Koelling experiment? (rats w/ taste aversion)

showed not only that taste aversions could be conditioned, but also that there were biological constraints to learning. In their study, separate groups of rats were conditioned to associate either a flavor with illness, or lights and sounds with illness. Results showed that all rats exposed to flavor-illness pairings learned to avoid the flavor, but none of the rats exposed to lights and sounds with illness learned to avoid lights or sounds. This added evidence to the idea that classical conditioning could contribute to species survival by helping organisms learn to avoid stimuli that posed real dangers to health and welfare.

What are the two learning processes?

stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalization are involved in determining which stimuli will trigger learned responses.

What is a physiologist?

study the life processes of organisms, from the molecular level to the level of cells, organ systems, and entire organisms

In Pavlov's study with dogs what did he measure?

the amount of saliva produced in response to various foods.

What is extinction?

the decrease in the conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with the conditioned stimulus. Gradual weakening and disappearance of the conditioned response

Over time, what did Pavlov observe in the dogs?

the dogs began to salivate not only at the taste of food, but also at the sight of food, at the sight of an empty food bowl, and even at the sound of the lab assistant's footsteps.

When Pavlov paired the tone with the meat powder over and over again, the previously neutral stimulus (the tone) also began to elicit salivation from the dogs. What does this mean?

the neutral stimulus became the conditioned stimulus.

Eventually, the dogs began to salivate to ________ , just as they previously had salivated at the sound of the assistant's footsteps.

the tone alone

What is an important factor for conditioning to occur?

timing

In Pavlov's experiments, the dogs salivated each time meat powder was presented to them. the meat powder was an ____________ the dogs salivation was an _______________

unconditioned stimulus (UCS) unconditioned response (UCR)

Before conditioning: meat powder (_______) ----> salivation (________)

unconditioned stimulus ---> unconditioned response

Before conditioning, an _______ (food) produced an _______ (salivation), and a ______ (bell) does not produce a response. During conditioning the ______ (food) is presented repeatedly just after the presentation of the _______ (bell). After conditioning, the ______ (bell) alone produces a _______ (salivation), thus becoming a ________.

unconditioned stimulus; unconditioned response; neutral stimulus unconditioned stimulus; neutral stimulus neutral stimulus; conditioned response; conditioned stimulus.

What is acquisition?

when an organism learns to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.

What does it mean when you have experienced taste aversion?

you've been conditioned to be adverse to food after a dingle bad experience.