Module 15Learning

Classical Conditioning

Amusing little comic…

So, what is learning??

• Relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.

• Classical Conditioning: A type of learning where a stimulus gains the power to cause a response because it predicts another stimulus that already produces the response.

Shower Scenario

• You share a bathroom with your siblings.• Every day while you’re showering, your

brother/sister flushes the toilet. At first, you would get scalded by the water.

• After a couple of times, you learned through conditioning that when someone flushed you jumped out of the way to avoid the hot water.

Stimulus

• Anything in the environment that one can respond to.

• Example: when you hear the toilet flush, that would be your stimulus to move out of the way…

– Unless you’re in the movie “Two weeks Notice” where Hugh Grant’s brother never learned.

Sorry…. Howard

Response

• Any behavior or action

• Example: You moving out of the way immediately to avoid the water.

John Watson and Behaviorism

• John Watson: Founder of Behaviorism

• Behaviorism: View that psychology should restrict its efforts to studying observable behavior.– Why is Ms. Brady’s dog

peeing on the floor? We only need to notice the action and behavior not why she’s doing it.

Bailee

Cognition

• Mental Processes– All the mental activities associated with thinking,

knowing, and remembering.– Also known as learning

Components of Classical Conditioning

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): triggers a response reflexively or automatically.– Hot Water.– Classical conditioning cannot happen without this.

• Unconditioned response (UCR): The response to an unconditioned stimulus.– Jumping out of the way– Relationship is Reflexive, not learned

Components Continued

• Conditioned Stimulus:– Originally neutral– Through conditioning gains the power to cause a response

» The word flush was a neutral stimulus because at first you did not put them together.

» Now, through conditioning it became the conditioned stimulus. You jump before the hot water burns you!

• Conditioned Response:– Developed learned response of the conditioned stimulus.

» If I have learned to jump when someone yells Flush!, my jumping is a conditioned response.

What are the three basic processes of classical conditioning?

• Acquisition• Extinction• Spontaneous Recovery

Acquisition

• The process of developing a learned response.• Most basic process• Occurs when a neutral stimulus is repeatedly

paired with a Unconditioned Stimulus» You acquire the new Conditioned response when a

stimulus (“Flush!”) was repeatedly paired with the Unconditioned Stimulus of hot water.

Extinction

• Diminishing of a learned response• When a unconditioned stimulus does not follow a

conditioned stimulus.» If as a prank I kept repeatedly saying “Flush!” but hot

water never happened, then the word eventually will have weakened and died.

» The boy who cried wolf….

Spontaneous Recovery

• The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response.– After a rest period– Tend to linger– Weak than the original

– If I returned to the same dorm after summer, chances are that I would jump, slightly, if someone yelled flush! The renewed jump would be evidence of the recovery.

Spontaneous Recovery

Ivan Pavlov

• Russian Psychologist• Study of digestion and salivation

• Inserted a shunt into a dog’s mouth to collect salivation.• Introduced the bell with the meat powder

• Nobel prize in 1904

Here’s how it works

What was the unconditioned stimulus?

Meat Powder

Produces salivation response without prior learning

What was the unconditioned response?

Salivation

Salivation is the response to the UCS of meat powder. Notice that no learning has yet to taken place. The ability of meat to make a hungry dog drool is reflexive, not learned.

What was the Neutral Stimulus?

Sound of the tuning fork before the dog has been conditioned

This dog did not produce a salivation response

What was the conditioned stimulus?

Sound of the tuning fork AFTER the dog has been conditioned

The tone now produces the response of salivation.It serves as the neutral stimulus and the

conditioned stimulus at different times during the process.

What is the conditioned response?

Salivation

Salivation is now the response to the sound of the tuning fork.

Generalization

• Process in which an organism produces the same response to two similar stimuli

• Pavlov actually lost the original tuning fork…• What do you think happened?!

• Even though it was not exact (but similar), the dog did respond by salivating.• He used other examples. The closer the sound was to

the original, the more the dog salivated

Discrimination

• A process in which an organism produces different responses to two similar stimuli

• Let’s assume the dog could hear the difference.» The sound would be extinguished because it would not lead

to food!

» Kind of like Ms. Brady. My mom and dad have to win me over with food….

• My dad asks me to wash his truck, then he feeds me.

• My mom asks me to wash her car, I know there’s no food involved.

• I’m discriminating against my mom

Buzzy Bee Example

• A little girl develops a classically conditioned fear of buzzing insects. The sting paired pain- an Unconditioned Response that naturally produces fear, with the buzzy bee. Through this association, the buzzy bee became the Conditioned Stimulus for the Conditioned Response of Fear. This fear then generalized to all buzzing insects. Later she began to make the discriminations between painful buzzers and just really annoying ones like mosquitoes.

Classical Conditioning in Every Day Life

• It does not explain all things, but it explains SOME THINGS very well.

• Psychologists can predict and control classically conditioned responses with great accuracy.

Little Albert

• John Watson• Worked with Rosalie

Rayner• Wanted to demonstrate

that phobias (fears) could be explained by classical conditioning.

• Fear of Rats in an 11-month-old boy known as Little Albert.

The Actual Experiment

• Albert initially was not afraid of the “tame, white lab rat.” (What kind of Stimulus is the White rat)

• Did not respond with crying.• Watson and Rayner

changed that• Snuck up behind him

banging a steel bar to make a starling noise whenever Albert was in the presence of the rat.

Stimulus’ and Responses

• UCS: Noise• UCR: Fear (crying)• CS: Rat because it produced the same……• CR: Fear (crying)

Little Albert and Generalization/Discrimination

• Also showed fear of a furry, white rabbit (Generalization)

• Did not show fear to dissimilar toys. (Discrimination)

• Mother ended up taking him out of the experiment, before they could extinguish the phobia.

Classical Conditioning and Business

• Advertisers– Cool refreshing swimming pools with Nestea

Instant Iced Tea.– UCS: POOLS TO PRODUCE A FEELING OF BEING COOL AND

REFRESHED.– CS: NESTEA instant iced tea. (after repeated views)

• Marlboro (rugged macho image), Mountain Dew (youthful image)• They use it to sell products

Comfort and Classical Conditioning

• Say you had a long weekend of work. Now you have a day off. You want to comfortable, but you might have to go somewhere later. What do you reach for when getting dressed?

• Sweatshirts, old shoes, t-shirts, old jeans, etc.

Why?

• Because many pleasant events may be associated with their use, old clothes and shoes often become conditioned stimuli that produce a relaxed, comforting response.

• New clothes may be stylish, but they don’t have the ability to unwind.

John Garcia and Taste Aversion

• Psychologist who worked with Robert Koelling showed how classically conditioned taste aversion could develop.

• Avoidance of certain tastes.

• Began when they noticed rats not drinking from water bottles in radiation chambers.

So, what did they do?

• Used a nausea-producing drug as a UCS to condition an aversion response to a particular taste.

• Paired with the drug that produced nausea, a particular food or drink became a Conditioned Stimulus that also produced the feelings of nausea.

Have you guys ever felt sick shortly after eating a certain food?

Mine…. Chicken Marsala….

Cognition and Biological Predispositions

Robert Rescorla

• Began to think outside the box!

• Certain aspects of classical conditioning situations could not be explained without reference to cognition– His theory emphasized the

importance of cognition.

• Subjects had to think if whether the Conditioned Stimulus was a predictor of the Unconditioned Stimulus.

Ms. Brady’s Chicken Marsala…

I won’t order the marsala, but I still eat at Olive Garden…