Behavioral Psychology: Conditioning and Learning

• Behavioral psychology explores how experiences shape behavior, including learned associations, habits, and fears.

Core Concepts

• Classical conditioning explains associative learning, where a stimulus producing an innate reflex associates with a neutral stimulus, which then elicits the same response.
• Operant conditioning involves how consequences of behavior, such as rewards and punishments, influence the probability of the behavior reoccurring.
• Cognitive psychology states some forms of learning require explanation as changes in mental processes instead of just changes in behavior.

Learning and Human Nurture

• Environment weighs more than heredity in determining behavior.
• Behaviorist B. F. Skinner’s novel Walden Two promotes better living through behavioral psychology.
• Environmental engineering rewards people for beneficial choices with happy, fulfilling lives.
• Cognitive psychology grew in prominence, reducing behaviorism's influence, but behaviorism left theories for behavioral learning and tools for treating learned disorders like fears and phobias.

Defining Learning Broadly

• Psychologists broadly define learning as a process where experience produces a lasting change in behavior or mental processes, including "flight training" like golf lessons or reading a text.
• Learning involves lasting change, such as wincing at the sight of a needle, but not simple reflexive reactions like jumping at loud noises.
• Learning impacts behavior or mental processes.

Behavioral vs. Cognitive Learning

• Behaviorists believe psychology should only focus on observable stimuli and responses, disregarding subjective mental processes to be a true science.
• Cognitive psychologists argue against the limiting behavioral view, stating understanding learning requires inferences about hidden mental processes.

Learning vs. Instincts

• Learning involves actively doing things like working, playing, and interacting; without it, we'd lack language, recognition of family, memory, and goals and rely on simple reflexes and innate instincts.
• Instinctive behavior is heavily influenced by genetic programming in animals.
• Learning provides human's flexibility to quickly adapt to changing situations/environments, representing an evolutionary advance over instincts.

Simple and Complex Forms of Learning

• Simple learning forms, like habituation, include ignoring the sound of traffic if living near a busy street, occurring in animals with nervous systems.
• Habituation helps focus on important stimuli while ignoring stimuli needing no attention like chair feel or AC sounds.
• The mere exposure effect, a relatively simple learning form, helps us develop a general preference for familiar stimuli as opposed to novel ones, regardless of awareness/association.
• The mere-exposure effect accounts for advertising effectiveness and attraction to familiar people/songs.
• More complex learning includes connections between two stimuli or actions with rewarding/punishing consequences like reprimands or good grades.
• Complex learning involves studying internal mental processes by looking at "flashes of insight" and imitative behavior.
• Cognitive learning aims to explain concept acquisition, the most complex learning form.

Classical Conditioning Explained

• Classical conditioning accounts for likes/dislikes
• A stimulus producing innate reflex associates with a previously neutral stimulus, which gains the power to elicit the same response.
• Ivan Pavlov studied classical conditioning.

Essentials of Classical Conditioning

• Pavlov's work focused on manipulating simple, automatic responses (reflexes) like salivation/eye blinks triggered by biologically significant stimuli.
• Pavlov found dogs could associate reflexes with new, previously neutral stimuli, learning the connection between a reflex and the new stimulus.
• Pavlov taught a dog to salivate upon a certain sound.
• Neutral stimulus (tone/light) paired with a natural reflex-producing stimulus (food) will elicit a learned response (salivation) similar to the original reflex.
• Classical conditioning associates romance with flowers or chocolate.
• Pavlov's team placed an untrained dog in a harness with vial for saliva.

Acquisition

• Classical conditioning involves an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that automatically triggers a reflexive response known as an unconditioned response (UCR).
• Pavlov used food (UCS) to produce salivation (UCR).
• The UCS-UCR connection is "wired in", so it involves no learning.
• Acquisition, the initial learning stage, pairs a new stimulus (neutral/NS) with the UCS.
• After several trials, the NS will trigger the same response as the UCS, becoming a conditioned stimulus (CS).
• The response from the CS is a conditioned response (CR) and occurs from conditioning or learning.

Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery

• Conditioned responses do not remain permanent and can be eliminated through extinction, where the CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS, weakening the conditioned response.
• After extinction, the conditioned response makes a spontaneous recovery, reappearing after a period without the CS.
• With spontaneous recovery, the CR nearly always reappears at lower intensity, possibly requiring new extinction sessions.

Generalization

• Stimulus generalization: extending the conditioned response to similar stimuli.
• In stimulus generalization people acquire fears because of traumatic events.

Discrimination Learning

• Stimulus discrimination occurs when one learns to distinguish between similar stimuli and only respond to one.
• Pavlov taught dogs to distinguish between tones of different frequencies, where one tone was followed by food, and the other was not.

Higher-Order Conditioning

• Higher-order conditioning is when responses learned through classical conditioning lead to creating a "ladder" of new stimuli that elicit the response.
• An already-conditioned stimulus is added to a new stimulus.

Applications of Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning explains responses from cravings to aversions and preferences/attitudes and eliminates unwanted behaviors.

Conditioned Fears

• Watson & Rayner demonstrated conditioned fear by conditioning an infant to react fearfully to a rat.
• The fear response by Watson rapidly diminished over time, needing constant reconditioning.
• Some fears from stressful conditions can persist, as in the reaction of combat veterans 15 years post-war to battle station calls.
• Classical conditioning informs post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• One strategy to eliminate fears uses extinction with counterconditioning, pairing the CS with a stimulus that is relaxing.

Conditioned Food Aversions

• Taste aversions serve survival value.
• Humans/animals readily associate illness and food, but not between illness and a nonfood stimulus.

Biological Predispositions: A Challenge to Pavlov

• CS-UCS connection can be selective, forming more readily when survival cues are present.
• Garcia and Koelling found rats exposed to radiation wouldn't drink from water bottles in chambers where they’d received exposure.
• Rats couldn't associate flavored water with electric shock.
• Organisms have inborn preparedness to associate natural stimuli with consequences.
• Conditioned aversions results from nature and nurture.
• Taste aversions develop over hours, unlike Pavlov's experiments showing only seconds.
• Psychologists believe common fears and phobias include genetic preparedness, which learn fears of harmful objects.

Wildlife Management

• Conditioned taste aversion helps manage predators, where prey meat is laced with a nausea-inducing substance.
• Researchers manage predators using humane strategies like conditioned aversion rather than traditional killing methods.

Classical Conditioning in Advertising

• Evaluative conditioning is classical conditioning influencing preferences.
• Appealing unconditioned stimulus (UCS) creates a UCS of liking accompanied by emotion.
• Pairing the UCS with a neutral stimulus means positive feelings towards the UCS transfer to the NS.
• Luncheon technique study showed people liked slogans that they had read during a pleasant meal more.
• Celebrity endorsements and product placement are other ways to influence customer choices.

Harnessing The Power of Classical Conditioning

• Associating positive stimuli with sleeping or studying helps create an association.
• When attempting to go to the gym, listening to favorite music only while working out helps the connection.
• To condition, it depends on the relationship between stimuli/responses plus how an organism is genetically attuned to stimuli in its environment.
• Conditioning tremendously influences attitudes/preferences, notably when there isn't attention being paid.

Operant Conditioning Explained

• Voluntary behaviors are controlled by rewards and punishments.
• Rewards and punishments has no role in classical conditioning,

Skinner's Radical Behaviorism

• The founding father of OC, B. F. Skinner, based his career on the most powerful influences on behavior being its consequences.
• Thorndike demonstrated how hungry animals would learn to solve a problem by trial and error for food.
• Animals behavior leads to results and influence whether animal repeats it
• Skinner got rid of subjective speculation with feelings or goals.

Power of Reinforcement

• Reinforcers objectively strengthen a response rather than implying pleasure (reward)

Continencies of Reinforcement

• Frequency of reinforcement is key
• Grades aren't enough but exams & assignments are better

Continuous v Intermittent Reinforcement

• Reward w every correct response is continuous
• Help when new
• Important component is the reinforcer
• Should be immediate

Schedules of Reinforcement

• (1) Ratio schedule- rewards after certain responses
• (2) interval schedule- reinforces after set interval

Reinforcement across Cultures

• Law of operant learning applies to creatures w brain
• reinforcement varied

Puzzle of Punishment

• Meant to weaken and occurs w 2 forms
• (1) POS: adding a stimulus like hotplate
• (2) Neg: removing reinforcer

Uses and abuse

• Doesn't work v well
• Have too many issues

Does IT ever work

• Yes, works as needed for limited circumstance/self destruction
• works if logical and combined

Modifying Operant Behavior

• ID desired behavior- if you are an ass
• Use Neg Reinforce
• Extinction: Guarantees the solution/give in
• Punishments damages the relationship

Operant versus Classical Comparing

• Classical: Stim leads to response
• Operant: Behavior follows
• Classic: No reward/punishment
• Operant: typically involves them

cognitive Psychology

• Koehler- had them solve with past experiences combined
• tolman-cognitive map was only way to expalin rat
• bandura-rewards and punishments modify someone

How and why

• (2) factors, both bio
• (1) long term potentitation to strengthin
• (2) Cerebullum

Application

• Extinction by blocking momories
• Can treat combat experiences

Fear of Flying

• Conditioning and learned ways can change you