Classical Conditioning and Pavlov's Dogs

• Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge due to past experience.
• Conditioning is the process of learning associations between environmental events and behavioral responses.

Going to the Dogs

• Ivan Pavlov initially studied the role of salvia in digestion, but became interested in learning.
• Pavlov's interest in dogs displaying a reflexive response eventually led to what is known now as classical conditioning.

Responses

• If you touch something hot, you will reflexively withdraw your hand.
• Withdrawing your hand is an unconditioned response (UCR).
• Repeatedly pairing the sound of a bell with food being placed in a dog's mouth will make the dog salivate to the sound of a bell alone.
• The dog's salivation to the sound of the bell is a conditioned response (CR).
• A young child may associate a nurse's white uniform with the pain of getting an injection.
• This can lead to a fear of any white jacket. This is stimulus generalization.
• Spontaneous recovery suggests that a conditioned response that is extinguished may not be completely eliminated.

Watson and Rayner

• Behaviorism, founded by John B. Watson, was an early approach to psychology.
• The "Little Albert" study from John Watson and Rosalie Rayner showed that an emotional reaction could be conditioned to a previously neutral stimulus.
• After "Little Albert" was conditioned to fear a tame white rat, stimulus generalization occurred when they responded with fear to other furry animals and fuzzy objects.
• The ethics are questionable because they intentionally induced a lasting fear in an infant and did not attempt to extinguish it when the experiment was over.

Perspectives

• Classical conditioning principles can be applied to advertising, such as using a sexy model with Brand X.
• The cognitive perspective in learning theory emphasizes the role of mental processes.
• Most common phobias, such as fear of spiders, snakes, and heights, are explained by the evolutionary perspective.

B.F. Skinner

• An operant can also be defined as a voluntary action.
• The term operant was coined by Skinner to describe active behaviors that operate on the environment to generate consequences.
• Conditioned reinforcers can be used, such as stickers to reward students who sit in their seats and work quietly.
• Punishment by application works as a deterrent, such as Rachel no longer touching cacti plants after getting stuck by needles.
• Environmental factors determine a person's behavior, as per B.F Skinner.
• Shaping involves reinforcing successively closer approximations of a behavior until the desired behavior is displayed.
• Superstitious behaviors are the result of accidental reinforcement, according to B.F Skinner.
• Applying learning principles to help people learn adaptive behaviors is called behavior modification.

Edward C. Tolman

• Reinforcement is not necessary for learning to occur, as studies with rates in mazes have dictated.

Learning

• Learned helplessness can occur when someone stops trying due to repeated failure ex. Roy's response to studying for his Calculus test.
• Capacity to learn is essential to the survival of humans and nonhuman animals.

Memory

• Memory is the mental process that enable us to acquire, retain, and retrieve information.

Memory Processing

• Encoding transforms information so that it can be entered and retained.
• Storage is the process of retaining information in memory for later use.
• Retrieval accesses information stored in long-term memory.
• Short term memory can also be referred to as working memory.
• Information will only be stored in short term memory for around 30 seconds.
• Auditory sensory memory lasts longer than visual sensory memory.
• When information is not further processed or rehearsed in short term memory, it will decay.
• Around 7 items can be held in short term memory.
• Long term can hold a seemingly limitless amount of information.
• Group related words when recalling a list of words, like harp, flute, and piano this is known as clustering.
• Information is organized and connected in relatively logical ways in long-term memory, which becomes clear when you experience tip-of-the-tongue moments.
• Flashbulb memories have been found to function just like ordinary memories.
• A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge and information about an object, event, situation, or concept.
• Eyewitness misidentification proved to be the largest factor in wrongful convictions.
• Encoding failure is most likely the reason you can't remember what United States president is pictured on the $5 bill.
• Interference is most likely when information in two memories is very similar.
• Repressed memories remain unconscious but can still influence behavior and personality, according to Freud.
• Decay theory says that we forget memories because we don't use them and they just simply fade away over time as a matter of normal brain processes.
• Retrograde amnesia is most likely to be produced by head injuries from automobile and motorcycle accidents.
• If a monkey has its amygdala removed, it will lose its fear of snakes and other natural predators.
• Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of senile dementia.
• Sleep is the best way to consolidate new memories.

Thinking

• Thinking is the psychological process that involves manipulating mental representations of information in order to draw inferences and conclusions.

Concepts

• Concepts are the mental categories that group objects, events, or situations that share similar features or characteristics.

Problem Solving

• Thinking and behavior directed towards attaining a goal that is not readily available is called problem solving.
• Functional Fixedness is when you view objects as only functioning in their usual or customary way.
• The sudden realization of how a problem can be solved it called insight.
• Creativity refers to a group of cognitive processes used to generate useful, original, and novel ideas or solutions.

Bias

• A strong tendency to search for information that confirms what you already believe is confirmatory bias. No effort is made to search for info that disproves the belief.

Language

• A system that Combines arbitrary symbols to produce an infinite number of meaningful statements.
• Intelligence is the abilty to gain knowledge and learn from experience.

Alfred Binet

• The first systematic intelligence test was developed by Alfred Binet.
• Mental age is the measurement of intelligence in which an individual's level is expressed in terms of a given age.
• Intelligence quotient (IQ) is derived by comparing an individual's score of scores of other of the sample age group.

David Wechsler

• The WAIS intelligence tests were developed by David Wechsler.
• Wechsler's Intelligence test was designed to test adults rather than children.

Testing

• An achievement test is a test designed to measure a person's level of knowledge, skill, or accomplishment in a particular area.
• An aptitude test accesses a person's capacity to benefit from education or training.
• Standardization requires that the test be given under uniform conditions to a Representative sample to establish norms.
• Scores in a normal distribution should cluster around the average score.
• A reliable test will produce consistent results when administered on repeated occasions under similar condtions.
• A test is said to be valid when it has the abiltiy to measure what it is intend to measure.
• Around 1 percent of the population is likely to score above 145 or below 55 on an intelligence test.
• Heredity and environment are both important in determining intelligence level.
• Any differences between identical twins, who share the same genes, is due to environmental factors rather than hereditary differences.

Motivation and Instinct

• Motivation is forces that act on or within an organism to initiate and direct behavior.
• During the late 1800s, the newly founded science of psychology initially embrances instinct theories to explain motivation.

Drive

• Behavior is motivated by the desire to reduce internal tension caused by unmet biological needs according to drive theories of motivation.
• Sensation seekers are people who are motivated to experience high levels of arousal associated with varied and novel activities.

Weight

• The cafeteria diet effect is when people eat more than they need because of the wide variety of food selections in a buffet.
• The body mass index is a number reflecting a person's weight in relation to their height.
• Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder in which the individual refuses to maintain a minimally normal body weight, is extremely afraid of gaining weight or becoming fat, and has a distorted perception about the size of his or her body.
• Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder in which a normal weight person engages in binge eating and then purges the excessive food by self-induced vomiting.
• The primary difference between anorexia and bulimia is that the person with anorexia is very underweight, while the person with bulimia is or normal weight or even slightly overweight.

Abraham Maslow

• When someone is only struggling to make enough money for his rent and buy food, they are attempting to meet their basic needs according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Additional Information

• Achievement motivation in individualistic cultures tends to emphasize personal success, especially in competitive tasks.
• Display rules can make it more acceptable for women than men to cry in public in the United States.

Drugs

• Alcohol is classified as a depressant.
• Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive drug.
• Prolonged use of cocaine results in conditions like schizophrenic-like symptoms, including bizarre paranoid ideas and hallucinatons.
• THC is the active ingredient in marijuana.