1. Learning

2. Adaptation to the Environment
Learning—any process through which experience at one time can alter an individual’s behavior at a future time
A relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience
What is experience: environmental effects filtered through the individual’s perceptions.
Behavior at a future time.
What is behavior?

3. Behaviorism
The view that psychology should restrict its efforts to studying observable behaviors, not mental processes.
Founded by John Watson
Thought that all human behavior is a result of conditioning or due to past experience and environmental influences.
Claimed he could take any child and train him to become any type of specialist.

4. Classical Conditioning
A type of learning where a stimulus gains the power to cause a response because it predicts another stimulus that already produces that response
OR to put it simply: When an animal learns to do a natural reflexive response to something that it would normally not do the response to.
Form of learning by association

5. Stimulus-Response
Stimulus - anything in the environment that one can respond to
Response – any behavior or action

6. Stimulus-Response Relationship

7. Stimulus-Response Relationship

8. DiscPsy p. 166
Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936)

9. Pavlov’s Dogs Digestive reflexes and salivation Psychic secretion
Hockenbury slides (Schulman)
Russian physiologist who may have first studied classical conditioning in animals.
most famous research on classical conditioning
received a Nobel Prize for his studies of the reflexes involved in digestion
initial discovery of what is now called classical conditioning emerged from his earlier studies of digestive reflexes of dogs.
Using permanently implanted tubes to collect salivary and stomach juices from dogs he found that a dog salivates differently when different kinds of food are placed in his mouth. Encountered a problem: dogs that had been given food of previous occasions in his experiments would begin to salivate before receiving food. Apparently , signals that regularly preceded food, such as sight of the food or the sound associated with its delivery, alerted the dogs to the upcoming stimulation and caused them to salivate. He called this psychic secretions and at first thought it was simply a source of experimental error but later decided to study it physiologically.

10. Pavlov’s Research Apparatus

11. Ivan Pavlov
Watch “Pavlov’s Discovery of Classical Conditioning” Video #6 from Worth’s Digital Media Archive for Psychology.
Click on link below to view.

12. Classical Conditioning
UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS
REFLEX ACTION
will
elicit a
NEUTRAL STIMULUS
CONDITIONED STIMULUS
CONDITIONED
RESPONSE
elicit
NO REACTION
Unconditioned
Response
Hockenbury slides (Schulman)
A neutral stimulus, a bell did not elicit the unconditioned response--salivating.
An unconditioned stimulus, food, did elicit the unconditioned response--salivating.
By pairing the neutral stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus a number of times, the dog became conditioned to elicit a conditioned response with only the presentation of the now conditioned stimulus--the bell.
Unconditioned
Response

13. Neutral Stimulus—Bell
Does not normally elicit (cause) a response or reflex action by itself
a bell ringing
a color
a furry object

14. Unconditioned Stimulus—Food
Always elicits a reflex action: an unconditioned (unlearned) response
food
blast of air
noise

15. Unconditioned Response —Salivation
The automatic response to the unconditioned stimulus
A response to an unconditioned stimulus—naturally occurring & not learned
Salivation at smell of food
Eye blinks at blast of air
Startle reaction in babies

16. Conditioned (Learned) Stimulus — Bell
The stimulus that was originally neutral becomes conditioned after it has been paired with the unconditioned stimulus
Will eventually cause the unconditioned response by itself

17. Conditioned (Learned) Response - Salivation
The original unconditioned response becomes conditioned after it has been caused by the neutral stimulus
Usually the same behavior as the UCR

18. Pavlov’s Experiment

19. Pavlov’s Experiment

20. Pavlov’s Experiment

21. DiscPsy Figure 5.1 p. 167

22. Classical Conditioning Terms
Aquisition
Extinction
Spontaneous recovery
Generalization
Discrimination training
Extinction- lack of reinforcement of the response and the resulting decline in response rate
-an operantly conditioned response declines in rate and eventually disappears if it no longer results in a reinforcer
ex: rats quit pressing levers if food pellets no longer appear
Extinction is not true “unlearning” of the response but rather a learned inhibition of responding
The mere passage of time following extinction can partially renew the conditioned reflex; called spontaneous recovery
Generalization-phenomenon in which , after conditioning, stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus will elicit the conditioned response even though they themselves were never paired with
the unconditioned response.
Discrimination training can abolish generalization between two stimuli. By not linking the unconditioned stimulus to the neutral stimulus that has been generalized to, the animal will discriminate.

23. Acquisition The process of developing a learned response
The initial learning that takes place in the during stage of conditioning when the animal starts to associate the NS with the US.

24. Acquisition

25. Extinction The diminishing of a learned response
When the CS is continually presented without the UCS then the CR will eventually begin to disappear.

26. Extinction

27. Spontaneous Recovery
The reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response
After a period of time if the CS is presented, the CR returns.
Learning may disappear but is not eliminated.

28. Spontaneous Recovery

29. Generalization
Process in which an organism produces the same CR to two similar stimuli (CS)
The more similar the substitute stimulus is to the original used in conditioning, the stronger the generalized response

30. Generalization

31. Discrimination
Ability of an animal to not respond to a new CS that is too different from the original CS.
The subject learns that one stimuli predicts the UCS and the other does not.

32. John B. Watson and Little Albert
11-month-old infant
Watson and his assistant, Rosalie Rayner, classically conditioned Albert to be frightened of white rats
Led to questions about experimental ethics
To Watch a Short Video on Watson and the Little Albert experiment click HERE. (4 min)

33. Little Albert – Before Conditioning

34. Little Albert – During Conditioning

35. Little Albert – After Conditioning

36. Little Albert - Generalization

37. DiscPsy Fig5.2b p170

38. Could Little Albert’s Fear Have Been Undone?
YES!!! Through Counter Conditioning!
Must pair the conditioned stimulus (Rat) with something that is incompatible with fear (Candy).
BEFORE:
Rat
Fear
Candy
Happy
CS = CR UCS = UCR
CS + UCS = UCR
CS = New CR
DURING:
Rat
Candy
Happy
AFTER:
Rat
Not Scared

39. Classical Conditioning & Drug Use

40. Responses Similar to the Drug’s Effect: Classically Conditioned Drug Effect
Drugs that are regularly used to restore normal functioning produce a conditioned response (CR) similar to the drug’s effect. (see diagram below)
This can result in a Placebo Response – a psychological & physiological reaction to a fake treatment or drug.
You feel more alert after drinking decaffeinated coffee

41. Responses OPPOSITE to the Drug’s Effect: Classically Conditioned Compensatory Response
Drugs that are regularly used to disrupt normal functioning produce a conditioned compensatory response (CCR) opposite to the drug’s effect.
This is caused by your body naturally trying to compensate and restore normal functioning.
Eventually, stimuli that reliably precede the administration of a drug cause a physiological reaction that is opposite to the drug’s effects.
May be one explanation for the characteristics of withdrawal and tolerance

42. The Conditioned Compensatory Response

43. Siegel’s CCR Studies
If a drug abuser does their drug in an unfamiliar setting they will run the risk of overdose because they will not have the CCR effect before they take the drug.
Spontaneous recovery is a reason people relapse when they find themselves in a similar situation to the one in which they regularly used the drug.

44. Siegel’s Rat Study
Over the course of a month, rats gradually developed tolerance to increasing amounts of heroin.
Then, they were injected with an overdose of almost twice as much heroin as they had become accustomed to receiving.
Rats that were injected with the heroin overdose in the same setting in which they had previously received heroin were twice as likely to survive as were rats that were injected in a different setting.
Almost all the rats in the control group that had not previously been exposed to heroin died.

45. CCR & Drug Overdose
Some heroin addicts have died after injecting their usual amount of heroin in an unfamiliar environment. Why?

46. Cognition and Biological Predispositions: Does Classical Conditioning change what the animal knows as well as its behavior?

47. Robert Rescorla ( )
Developed a theory emphasizing the importance of cognitive/mental processes in classical conditioning
Pointed out that subjects had to determine (think) whether the NS/CS was a reliable predictor of the UCS
The Bell was a reliable predictor that Food would follow.

48. Rescorla’s Experiment
Group 1 found the tone to be a reliable predictor of the shock and as a result their heart rates increased each time they heard it.
Group 2 experienced 20 random shocks with no tone in addition to the original 20 shocks with a tone. They had a much smaller fear response to the tone because it was not a reliable predictor of the shock.(pg )

49. Evolutionary Perspective

50. Biological Preparedness & Phobias Martin Seligman
We are biologically predisposed to learn things that affect our survival.
We are predisposed to avoid threats our ancestors faced--food that made us sick, storms, heights, snakes, etc.
People more easily acquire conditioned fear responses to pictures of snakes & spiders when paired with electric shocks than they do with flowers and mushrooms.
Monkeys will learn a fear response to snakes & crocodiles but not to flowers and toy rabbits.
But not modern-day threats—knives, stoves, cars, water pollution, etc.
Recent studies showed that children like Little Albert could NOT be classically conditioned to fear things like wooden blocks & curtains.

51. Taste Aversion
Rats drank flavored water (NS) and hours later were given a shot with a drug (UCS) that made them sick (UCR). The rats refused to drink the flavored water again.
Subjects become classically conditioned to avoid specific tastes, because the tastes are associated with nausea.
John Garcia ( )
**Differs from other Classical Conditioning in that:
It did NOT require repeated pairings of a NS and UCS.
The time span between the two was a few hours.
Rats were conditioned to taste and not anything else that occurred in the hours between when they drank the flavored water and got sick.

52. How Taste Aversion Works:
BEFORE
NS = No Response UCS = UCR
DURING:
NS + UCS = UCR
AFTER:
CS = CR
Flavored Water
Drug
Nausea
Flavored Water
Drug
Nausea
Flavored Water
Avoidance