Psych Chapter 5
Extinction and spontaneous
Pavlov later discovered that conditioned responses could eventually be weakened. If the conditioned stimulus (a ringing bell for example) was repeatedly presented without being paired with the unconditioned stimulus (food, for example) the conditioned response seemed to gradually disappear.
Taste Aversion
A classically conditioned dislike for a particular food that develops when an organism becomes ill after eating the food. One night, Tony made he and his wife steak covered with spices and herbs. An hour after they had each gone to bed, they both woke up with a painful stomach ache, and came down with a virus, throwing up every day for the next week. They each developed a taste aversion, in that whenever they now go near steak or those specific spices/herbs they grow uneasy.
cognitive map*******
EX: A rat removed the cover of the maze, scales the maze, removes itself from the maze, and scurrie to get some food. Tolman concluded such reports revealed these rats learned more than the actions and responses needed to acquire food. Tolman invested his thoughts in the idea that the rats intelligence created, through intense and repeated experience, a cognitive map of the maze; a mental version of the physical map.
Law of effect*******
Edward L. Thorndike was the first psychologist to systematically investigate animal learning and how voluntary behaviors are influenced by their consequences. Thorndike focused on the issue of if animals, like humans, use reasoning to solve problems. In an important series of experiments, he put hungry cats in specially constructed cages that he called "puzzle boxes." A cat could escape the cage by a simple act, such as pulling a loop. A plate of food was put outside the cage, where the cat could see and smell it. Thorndike found that when the cat was first put into the puzzle box, it would engage in many different, random behaviors to escape. However, the cat later accidentally pulled on the loop or whatever else was made to open the cage, thus allowing it to open. After several trials in the same puzzle box, a cat could get the cage door open very quickly. These observations allowed Thorndike to create the Law of Effect, which states that responses followed by a satisfying effect become strengthened and more likely to recur in a particular situation. However, responses that were followed by dissatisfying effects were weakened and become less likely to occur in that situation.
Stimulus generalization vs. stimulus discrimination
After conditioning a dog to salivate to a specific stimulus, Pavlov noticed that a new stimulus, similar to the original, could also bring forth the salivary response, and this is stimulus generalization. A learned response not only to the original stimulus but to other, similar stimuli as well. As a dog has the ability to respond the same way to two similar stimuli, it can also learn to distinguish between similar stimuli, and this is stimulus generalization. An example of stimulus generalization can be seen when Pavlov conditioned a dog to salivate to a low-pitched tone. When he sounded a slightly higher-pitched tone, the conditioned salivary response would also be elicited. An example of stimulus discrimination, however, can be seen when Pavlov repeatedly gave a dog food following a high-pitched tone but did not give the dog any food following a low-pitched tone. The dog learned to distinguish between the two tones, salivating to the high-pitched tone but not to the low-pitched tone.
Little Albert Study**********
Around the same time as Pavlov's studies, a young psychologist named John B. Watson was attracting attention in the United States. Watson, like Pavlov, believed that psychology, was following the wrong path by focusing on the study of subjective mental processes. In 1920, Watson and a graduate student named Rosalie Rayner set out to demonstrate that classical conditioning could be used to deliberately establish a conditioned emotional response in a human subject. Their subject was a baby, whom they called "Albert B," but who is now more popularly known as "Little Albert." Watson and Rayner first assessed Little Albert when he was 9 months old. Little Albert was a healthy, calm baby who showed no fear when presented with a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey. He was also unafraid of cotton, masks, and even burning newspapers. But, as with other infants whom Watson had studied, fear could be triggered in Little Albert by a sudden loud sound-clanging a steel bar behind his head. In this case, the sudden clanging noise is the unconditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned response is fear. Two months after their initial assessment, Watson and Rayner attempted to condition Little Albert to fear the tame white rat. Watson stood behind Little Albert. When Little Albert reached toward the rat, Watson clanged the steel bar with a hammer. The unexpected loud clang startled and scared Little Albert. During the first conditioning session, Little Albert experienced two pairings of the white rat with the loud clanging sound. A week later, he experienced five more pairings of the two stimuli. After only these seven pairings of the loud noise and the white rate, the white rat alone triggered fear They found that stimulus generalization had occurred. Along with fearing the rat, Little Albert was now afraid of other furry animals, including a dog and a rabbit.
aggression study
Bandura's early observational learning studies showing young children mirroring an adults movie movement and destroying a Bobo doll, provided a great and powerfil model to study the effects of "entertainment" violence and action. Bandura discovered that observed actions were more likely to be repeated when: the ideal model is attractive, popular/famous, and/ or a dominant member of the viewer's social group, the model is rewarded for his or her behavior, the model is not punished for his or her actions. Over the past four decades, more than 1,000 studies have investigated a correlation of media depictions of gore and increase in violence in the world as we know it. How prevalent is violence on American Television? Violence and action are socially accepted and are normal on American Television. National Television Violence Study, a major research project, measured the amount of violence in more than 8,000 hours of cable and network programming; the results were mind boggling. Their discoveries: 60% of television programs incorperate violence, 55% have violent interactions did that not include expression of pain, 80% have violent programs that did not show any long-term negative consequences of the violence, 58% show violent scenes in which aggression is not punished, 40% show violent scenes started by the stereotypical"good guys" in their roles as heroes. A normal preschooler would annually witness 10,000 watching two hours of cartoons a day for a year. One large mea-analysis combined the conclusive data of upwards of 200 studies on the effects of violent media on people. The meta-analysis discovered a positive correlation of +.31 between media violence, and violent behavior. In conclusion, it could be stated if exposed to an extensive amount of media violence, then behavior could be altered in a more aggressive tone. Children who view a ton violence are more likely to look to violence when settling conflicts, and are more likely to assume that violence an accepted and ok behavior. Furthermore, looking upon violence also can lead to emotional desensitization in the real world, which can lower the chances that victimized people will be aided when attacked in a violent manner. Are there long term effects? Results of experiments reveal that men who viewed inconsiderately violent shows and scenes were most likely to physically abuse their spouse(push, shove, strangle, etc.), and respond to threats or problems with aggressive behavior. Surprisingly, they were three times more likely to be convicted of a crime.
learned helplessness******
Cognitive factors, especially factors such as expectation, are included in a major learning movement called learned helplessness. The discovery of learned helplessness was not on purpose. Some psychologists were testing to discover if classically conditioned responses would alter the affair of operant conditioning in K-9s. The experimental dogs had harnesses attached to them and then were exposed to a tone paired with an uncomfortable and confining but benign electric shock, which brought fear. After conditioning, the tone alone elicited the conditioned response of fear. The mild dogs were deposited in a shuttle box and one part became electrified, the dogs decided and did not attempt to remove themselves from the situation they were in. Rather than escape and remove themselves from the situation they were in, the dogs just layed and cried. Why did they do this? For Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier, a duo of blossoming psychology graduate at the time of their discovery, the cause of the dogs' weird and odd behavior seemed obvious. In the duration of the tone-shock pairings in the classical conditioning setup, the dogs had forcefully discovered that shocks could not be escaped. Nothing that they could possibly do would allow the dogs to escape the tone-shock pairings. In a different format, the dogs had been taught, or "learned" to be helpless: They gained the cognitive expectation that their behavior could not help them resolve the situation they were in. Seligman and Maier constructed a simple experiment to test this concept. Dogs were placed in groups of three. The first dog got shocks that it could possibly flee by pushing a panel with its nose. The succeeding dog was confined to the first and collected the same amount of shocks. Furthermore, the only way for the shocks to halt for both dogs, was for the first dog to press the panel with his nose. While this is happening, the third dog received no shocks for it was the control dog. After base "training" the dogs were transferred to a shuttle box. As Maier and Seligman had guessed, dogs one and three decided to jump over the barrier when the floor became electrified. The second dog did nothing, for it realized the shocks would continue no matter what they actions they took. Since the dog had made the cognitive expectation the measures it took to escape the shocks would have no effect on the environment, it became passive. The title of this "phenomenon" is learned helplessness; a phenomenon in which exposure to inescapable and uncontrollable aversive events produces passive behavior.
Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement circles around an operant as well as a reinforcing stimulus. In these situations, response toughens because something is added or presented. Common instances of this in action are easy to identify. EX: A backhand stroke in tennis(the operant) is low and fast, and your tennis coach exclaims "superb!" (the reinforcing stimulus). In this specific instance, the positive stimulus has the consequence of you to consistently repeat the process in similar instances; then positive reinforcement has occ
punishment
Procedure where a behavior is succeeded by aversive consequences that lower the probability that a behavior is repeated. It is common to mix up negative reinforcement and punishment, but each different process has a different effect and outcome on behavior as a generalized subject. On one hand, punishment reduces the future behavior of an operant. Negative reinforcement is the opposite; it increases the chance a behavior will be used consistently in the future. EX: A worker puts on jeans for work (the operant) and gets scolded by his supervisor disobeying the strict dress code (the punishing stimulus).
mirror neurons
Psychologists are currently making progress on the understanding of neural underpinnings of the human ability to imitate behavior. The first step in this unruly progress was in a lab in Palermo, Italy, in the mid-1990s. Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues were researching and developing neurons in the premotor cortex of macaque monkeys. He noticed something odd, something not normal. As one of the wired monkeys witnessed a lab assistant pick up a peanut, a neuron exploded and fired in the monkey's brain. It happened to be the exact same neuron that exploded and fired when the monkey picked up a peanut on his own. First, the researches believed the monkey was creating tiny muscle movements; they then concluded that these muscle movements were responsible for the motor neuron activity. But the monkey was relaxed,sitting perfectly still, not doing anything at all. They then concluded that they had accidentally discovered a new class of specialized neurons which they named mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when an action is performed and when the action is simply perceived. In effect, these neurons "mirror" the observed action as though they observer were actually carrying out the complete action Brain imaging studies have supplied shaky and indirect evidence of mirror neurons in the human anatomy; specifically the brain. New studies reveal the existence of mirror neurons in humans.
shaping
Set of actions redefining successively closer estimations of a goal behavior until the goal behavior is shown and accomplished. EX: Researcher can harness the concept of shaping to instruct a rat to press a lever during experiments (rats are not conceived with the instinct or knowledge to perform this given task in an experiment). At the beginning a researcher can gift a rat when it makes any progressions to the task at hand; maybe moving towards the lever. For this, the rat must enhance toward the lever to deserve and attain a reward. Then, must proceed to the lever to get a reward (it must make a more decisive move moving to the lever to get a reward);only pressing the lever will vest the rat with a reward. This rat's behavior is molded and"shaped" to teach it how to press this lever.
Biological Preparedness
The idea that an organism is innately predisposed to form associations between certain stimuli and responses. An example of this can be seen when animals become biologically prepared to fear predators. Behaviors that they are biologically prepared to learn increase their ability to survive attacks from predators and ultimately, reproduce.
UCR vs. CR
The unconditioned response, or UCR, is the unlearned and reflexive response that is brought forth by an unconditioned stimulus. The CR, or conditioned response, is the learned ad reflexive response to a conditioned stimulus. Let's use the previous example of the bell which is being used to signify when the dog is going to be fed. At the beginning, when the dog is given the food, the salivation of the dog as a response is the UCR because this is an unlearned response. However, once the dog learns the meaning of the bell being rung, when he hears it and begins to salivate as a result, before being given food, we now see the CR, which is the dog salivating.
UCS vs. CS
The unconditioned stimulus, or UCS, is the natural stimulus that brings forth a response without prior learning being required. Conditioned stimulus, or CS, however, is a formerly neutral stimulus that gains the ability to bring forth a reflexive response. An example of UCS would be when a bell is rung repeatedly to alert a dog of when he is about to be fed. At the beginning the mere ringing of the bell does not cause the dog to salivate, for at first, this is only done by the UCS, or the food in the dog's mouth. The CS in this case, however, would be he bell after the dog has learned that the ringing of the bell now signifies that he will be fed. Now, when the bell is rung, the dog reacts with a conditioned reflex and begins salivating, despite the lack of food.
Negative reinforcement
This encompasses an operant that gets escorted by the removal of an aversive stimulus. In these specific situations, response it fortified because something is being subtracted or removed. EX: You take a dose of aspirin(the operant) to aid with a bulging headache (the aversive stimulus). Within a short amount of time, the headache disappears. After this event if you would turn to aspirin for body aches, than negative reinforcement has occurred.
Classical Conditioning*************
To get a dog to produce saliva, Ivan Pavlov(one of the major contributors to the study of learning, Russian physiologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on digestion) put food on the dog's tongue. After he had worked with the same dog for several days in a row, Pavlov noticed something curious. The dog began salivating before Pavlov put the food on its tongue. In fact, the dog began salivating when Pavlov entered the room or even at the sound of his approaching footsteps. What he discovered is that dogs have learned to anticipate food in association with some signal. This process of conditioning was the first to be studied extensively and given the title classical conditioning. It deals with behaviors that are brought forth by some stimulus automatically. It always involves some form of reflexive behavior and is essentially a process of learning an association between two stimuli.
