Psychology Chapter 6: Habituation and Learning

Learning and Conditioning

• Habituation: a simple form of learning where the strength of a reflex response decreases after repeated presentations of the stimulus.
• Learning: an enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience.

Classical Conditioning

• Reflex: a behaviour that is elicited automatically by an environmental stimulus.
• Classical Conditioning: a type of learning discovered by Ivan Pavlov, where a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that naturally elicits a response.
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that naturally elicits a response.
• Unconditioned Response (UCR): a natural response to an unconditioned stimulus.
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): a neutral stimulus that is paired with a UCS to elicit a response.
• Conditioned Response (CR): a response to a conditioned stimulus.
• Law of Contiguity: a law proposed by Aristotle, which states that two events will be associated if they are experienced close together in time.
• Conditioned Taste Aversions: a type of classical conditioning where an organism associates a taste with nausea or other unpleasant visceral experiences.

Key Factors in Classical Conditioning

• Temporal Order: the CS must precede the UCS for maximal conditioning.
• Extinction: the process of a conditioned response decreasing in strength when the CS is presented without the UCS.
• Latent Inhibition: the phenomenon where a familiar stimulus is less likely to produce a conditioned response.
• Rescorla and Wagner's Law of Prediction: a law that suggests classical conditioning involves more than automatic connections between stimuli, but rather an organism's ability to make predictions about the environment.

Operant Conditioning

• Operant Conditioning: a type of learning discovered by B.F. Skinner, where behaviour is modified by its consequences.
• Reinforcement: an environmental event that increases the probability of a response.
• Positive Reinforcement: a stimulus that follows a response and increases the probability of the response.
• Negative Reinforcement: the removal of an aversive stimulus that increases the probability of a response.
• Punishment: a stimulus that follows a response and decreases the probability of the response.

Schedules of Reinforcement

• Fixed-Ratio Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after a fixed number of responses.
• Variable-Ratio Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses.
• Fixed-Interval Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after a fixed period of time.
• Variable-Interval Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after an unpredictable period of time.

Social Learning and Cognitive Theory

• Social Learning: the process of learning through observation and imitation of others.

• Cognitive Theory: a theory that proposes that learning is influenced by an individual's expectations, attributions, and cognitions.

• Generalized Expectancies: expectancies that influence a wide range of behaviours.

• Radical Behaviourism: a theory that focuses on observable behaviours and rejects the role of mental processes and motivations.### Classical Conditioning

• Natural selection has favored organisms that associate stimuli related to survival or reproduction.

• Classical conditioning involves more than simple contiguity, as the order of presentation of the CS and UCS matters.

Conditioning and Learning

• Paradoxical conditioning occurs when the CR is the body's attempt to counteract the effects of a stimulus, such as conditioned tolerance to a drug.
• Classical conditioning allows us to learn that two events are related.
• Conditioned taste aversions result from associating a taste with nausea and are crucial for survival, especially for foraging animals.

Watson's Experiment and Little Albert

• Watson's experiment involved teaching Little Albert to fear a furry white rat by frightening him with a loud noise each time he reached out to touch the rat.
• The purpose of the experiment was to determine if emotional responses can be learned.
• Little Albert's fear response would have extinguished if he had been exposed repeatedly to the white rat without the noise.

Stimulus Generalisation and Discrimination

• Stimulus generalisation occurs when an animal shows the same CR to stimuli that resemble a CS, such as Little Albert's fear of white sheep and other white furry objects.
• Stimulus discrimination is the learned tendency to respond to a restricted range of stimuli or only to the stimulus used during training.

Phobias and Irrational Fears

• Many people display severe negative emotional reactions to hypodermic needles due to exposure to injections in childhood, which can be explained in terms of classical conditioning.
• Classical conditioning is an explanation for some human irrational fears of specific objects and situations.

Factors Influencing Classical Conditioning

• Several factors influence the extent to which classical conditioning will occur, including the interstimulus interval, the individual's learning history, and the individual's preparedness to learn.
• The temporal order of the CS and the UCS is crucial, with maximal conditioning occurring when the CS precedes the UCS (forward conditioning).