Critical Thinking Exercise

 

�    What is the most important thing you have learned outside of a classroom?� Why?

 

 

 

 

 

Learning

 

�    Any relatively permanent _____________ in behavior brought about by experience.

�  Classical Conditioning

�  Operant Conditioning

�  Cognitive Learning

�  Observational Learning

 

Classical Conditioning

 

�    Learning to make a ___________ response to a stimulus other than the original, natural stimulus that normally produces the reflex.

 

Ivan Pavlov

 

�    Russian physiologist (person who studies the workings of the body) who discovered __________________ through his work on digestion in dogs.

 

Pavlov�s Observation (1926)

 

�    Studied digestion in dogs

�  Presented meat powder and measured salivation

�  Dogs started salivating ____________ food was presented

�  Why?

 

Pavlov�s Experiment: Phase 1

 

�    Food (US): salivation (UR)

�  Reflexive response

�    Tone: nothing

 

Pavlov�s Experiment: Phase 2

 

�    CS is repeatedly paired with the US

�  A tone is sounded before the food is presented

�  Acquisition

 

Pavlov�s Experiment: Phase 3

 

�    Eventually, the CS elicits a new CR

�  Classical conditioning is complete when hearing the tone by itself causes salivation

 

Classical Conditioning Concepts

 

�    Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) - a _______________________ stimulus that leads to an involuntary response.

�  Unconditioned means �______________� or �naturally occurring.�

�    Unconditioned response (UCR) - an __________________ response to a naturally occurring or _______________ stimulus.

�    Conditioned stimulus (CS) - stimulus that becomes able to produce a learned reflex response by _________________________ the original unconditioned stimulus.

�    Conditioned response (CR) - learned ________________ response to a conditioned stimulus.

�  The CR behavior is always the _________ behavior as the UR.� What distinguishes them is what they occur _____________ to (US vs. CS).

 

Classical Conditioning: A More Relevant Example
(College Spring Break)

 

�    Unconditioned Stimulus =

�    Unconditioned Response =

�    Conditioned Stimulus =

�    Conditioned Response =

 

��Conditions� for Classical Conditioning

 

�    The CS must come _____________ the UCS.

�    The CS and UCS must come _________________________ in time�ideally, only several seconds apart.

�    The neutral stimulus must be paired with the UCS _____________ times, often many times, before conditioning can take place.

�    The CS is usually some stimulus that is _______________ or stands out from other competing stimuli.

 

Classical Conditioning Concepts

 

�    Stimulus generalization - the tendency to respond to a stimulus that is only _________________ to the original conditioned stimulus with the conditioned response.

�    Stimulus discrimination - the tendency to stop making a _____________ response to a stimulus that is _____________ to the original conditioned stimulus because the similar stimulus is never paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

�    Extinction - the ________________ or weakening of a learned response following the removal or absence of the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or the removal of a reinforcer (in operant conditioning).

�    Spontaneous recovery � the _________________ of a learned response after extinction has occurred.

�  Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior.

�    Higher-order conditioning - occurs when a strong conditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus, causing the neutral stimulus to become a _______________ conditioned stimulus.

 

Conditioned Emotional Response

 

�    Conditioned emotional response (CER) - emotional response that has become _____________________________ to occur to learned stimuli, such as a fear of dogs or the emotional reaction that occurs when seeing an attractive person.

�  CERs may lead to phobias � irrational ___________ responses.

 

The Case of �Little Albert�

 

�    �Little Albert� was conditioned to fear a _________________ and other similar stimuli (Watson & Rayner, 1920)

 

Other Conditioned Responses

 

�    Vicarious conditioning - classical conditioning of a reflex response or emotion by watching the ______________ of another person (Bandura & Rosenthal, 1966).

�    Conditioned taste aversion - development of a ___________________ or aversive response to a particular taste because that taste was followed by a nausea reaction, occurring after only one association (Garcia & Koelling, 1966).

�  Biological Preparedness - tendency of animals to learn certain associations, such as taste and nausea, with only one or few pairings due to the ___________________ of learning (Gustavson et al., 1976)

 

Operant Conditioning

 

�    Operant conditioning - the learning of _______________ behavior through the effects of pleasant and unpleasant ___________________ to responses (Skinner, 1938).

�    Thorndike�s Law of Effect - law stating that if a response is followed by a pleasurable consequence, it will tend to be ___________________, and if followed by an _________________ consequence, it will tend not to be repeated (Thorndike, 1911).

 

B.F. Skinner�s Contribution

 

�    Behaviorist; wanted to study only _____________, measurable behavior.

�    Gave �operant conditioning� its name.

�  Operant - any behavior that is _______________.

�    Learning depends on what happens ____________ the response � the consequence.

 

Skinner�s Rats

 

Operant Conditioning Concepts

 

Reinforcement

 

�    Reinforcement - any event or stimulus, that when following a response, __________________ the probability that the response will occur again.

�  Positive reinforcement - the reinforcement of a response by the addition or experiencing of a __________________ stimulus.

�  Negative reinforcement - the reinforcement of a response by the removal, escape from, or avoidance of an ______________ stimulus.

 

�Types of Reinforcers

 

�    Primary reinforcer - any reinforcer that is ______________ reinforcing by meeting a basic biological need, such as hunger, thirst, or touch.

�    Secondary reinforcer - any reinforcer that becomes reinforcing after being paired with a _____________________, such as praise, tokens, or gold stars.

 

Punishment

 

�    Punishment - any event or object that, when following a response, makes that response _____________________ to happen again.

�  Punishment by application - the punishment of a response by the addition or experiencing of an ________________ stimulus.

�  Punishment by removal - the punishment of a response by the removal of a ________________ stimulus.

 

How to Make Punishment More Effective

 

�         Punishment should ________________________ the behavior it is meant to punish.

�         Punishment should be ________________.

�         Punishment should be _________________ aversive.

�         Punishment of the wrong behavior should be paired, whenever possible, with reinforcement of the ____________________.

 

Negative Reinforcement vs. Punishment

 

�    Negative reinforcement ________________ the likelihood of a behavior, whereas punishment _________________ the likelihood of a behavior.

 

Other Operant Conditioning Concepts

 

�    Shaping - the reinforcement of ___________________ in behavior that lead to a desired, more complex behavior.

�  Successive approximations - small steps in behavior, one after the other, that lead to a particular goal behavior.

�    Extinction � occurs if the behavior (response) is not _______________.

�    Operantly conditioned responses also can be generalized to stimuli that are only ______________ to the original stimulus.

�    Spontaneous recovery (reoccurrence of a once ___________ response) also happens in classical conditioning.

 

Schedules of Reinforcement

 

�    Fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement - schedule of reinforcement in which the number of ________________ required for reinforcement is always the same.

�    Variable ratio schedule of reinforcement - schedule of reinforcement in which the number of responses required for reinforcement is _________________ for each trial or event.

�    Fixed interval schedule of reinforcement - schedule of reinforcement in which the interval of time that must pass before reinforcement becomes possible is always the ______________.

�    Variable interval schedule of reinforcement - schedule of reinforcement in which the interval of ____________ that must pass before reinforcement becomes possible is different for each trial or event.

 

Behavior Modification

 

�    Behavior modification - the use of _____________________ techniques to bring about desired changes in behavior.

�    Token economy - type of behavior modification in which desired behavior is _________________ with tokens.

�    Time-out - a form of _______________________ by removal in which a misbehaving animal, child, or adult is placed in a special area away from the attention of others.

�    Applied behavior analysis (ABA) � modern term for a form of behavior modification that uses ________________ techniques to mold a desired behavior or response (Lovaas, 1964).

 

Cognitive Learning

 

Cognitive Learning Theory

 

�    Early days of learning � focus was on _______________.

�    1950s and more intensely in the 1960s, many psychologists were becoming aware that ______________, the mental events that take place inside a person�s mind while behaving, could no longer be ignored (Kendler, 1985).

 

Latent Learning

 

�    Edward Tolman�s best-known experiments in learning involved teaching three groups of rats the same maze, one at a time (Tolman & Honzik, 1930).

�  Group 1 � rewarded each time at end of maze.

�  Learned maze quickly.

�  Group 2 � in maze every day; only rewarded on 10^th day.

�  Demonstrated learning of maze almost immediately after receiving reward.

�  Group 3 � never rewarded.

�  Did not learn maze well.

�    Latent learning - learning that remains ____________ until its application becomes useful.

 

Learned Helplessness

 

�    Learned helplessness - the tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated ________________ in the past (Seligman, 1975).

 

Insight

 

�    Insight - the _______________ perception of relationships among various parts of a problem, allowing the solution to the problem to come quickly (Kohler, 1925).

�  Cannot be gained through trial-and-error learning alone.

�  �__________� moment.

 

Observational Learning

 

�    Observational learning - learning new behavior by watching a _________ perform that behavior.

�    Learning/performance distinction - referring to the observation that learning can take place without actual ________________ of the learned behavior.

 

Albert Bandura�s Famous BoBo Doll Experiment (1961)

 

�    Two Groups

�  Group 1: models played nonaggressively

�  Group 2: models played aggressively

�    Children _________________ the actions of the model they saw

 

Four Elements of Observational Learning

 

�     ATTENTION - To learn anything through _______________, the learner must first pay attention to the model.

�     MEMORY - The learner must also be able to ______________________ of what was done, such as remembering the steps in preparing a dish that was first seen on a cooking show.

�     IMITATION - The learner must be capable of ___________________, or imitating, the actions of the model.

�     MOTIVATION - Finally, the learner must have the ________________ to perform the action.

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