Psychology 001Introduction to Psychology

Christopher Gade, PhDOffice: 621 Heafey

Office hours: F 3-6 and by apt. Email: gadecj@gmail.com

Class WF 7:00-8:30 Heafey 650

What’s on tap?Today we’re going to discuss behaviorism and how it relates to learning

We’ll do this by… Briefly reviewing the field of behaviorism and

discussing one of its most influential characters

Going over one of the most popular behavioral discoveries of all time

Discussing classical conditioning and the basics of how this learning process works

Learning: A relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience.

Behaviorism: the approach to Psychology that involves observable cause-and-effect relationships between conditions and behavior

• Origins in ‘stimulus-response’ psychology

• Takes into account an organism’s history of experiences, i.e. knowledge

• Aims to decode the ‘basic laws of behavior’

• Assumes a deterministic perspective and emphasizes the influence of the environment

John B WatsonPioneer in the field of behaviorism

Considered by many to be the foundingfather of behaviorism. This might not be the case, but he was definitely their poster boy.

Famously known for his statement: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my

own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select…”

Most famous experiment was with Baby Albert.

Associative Learning (Classical Conditioning):

We link together events/experiences that have some kind of association such that you can predict one from the other:

• temporal sequence, they happen close in time.• meaning, they represent the same thing.• function, they serve the same function.• salience, they share the same emotional significance.

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Lightning thunder Bank teller ATM

9/11 WMD

Ivan Pavlov (1839-1946) • Originally interested in

the digestive system ofdogs.

• From his research, he discovered ‘psychicsalivations’ that dogswould show (for which he was awarded a Nobel prize)

• Realized that this form of learning was interesting and dedicated his time to studying how dogs developed this behavior

• 5:28

Classical Conditioning

In this form of learning, the learned responses develop from an initial pairing of two pieces of information:

• The unconditioned stimulus (US): a stimulus that elicits an unlearned, or reflexive response.

• The unconditioned response (UR): a response to a stimulus that is automatic.

Classical Conditioning

A “training” or “pairing” procedure then begins until the neutral stimulus is recognized to be associated with the unconditioned stimulus:

This pairing of stimuli eventually leads to a “conditioned response” (CR) to the newly “conditioned stimulus” (CS).

After the initial pairing of information, a “neutral stimulus” (NS) is presented to the individual.

Classical Conditioning

Important concepts• A learning curve tells us whether conditioning is

occurring, that is, whether, when and how strongly the CS is eliciting the CR over time.

• Second-order conditioning is a process of adding new CSs to the conditioned CSs (sequentially).

• If, after the conditioning, the CS is presented without the US repeatedly, the association will deteriorate and the CS will cease to elicit the CR – this is called extinction.

– however, extinguished associations can be reconditioned (usually faster than the initial conditioning) AND, sometimes organisms show spontaneous recovery of extinguished behaviors.

Strengthof CR

Pause

Acquisition(CS+US)

Extinction(CS alone)

Extinction(CS alone)

Spontaneousrecovery ofCR

Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery

What influences the strength of a learned response through classical conditioning?

Conditioning occurs more rapidly when the neutral stimulus is relatively unfamiliar.

The less time that elapses between the presentation of the CS and the UCS, the faster the CR is acquired.

The CR will be acquired more quickly when the CS precedes the UCS (forward conditioning).

Specific connections between CS’s and UCS’s are stronger in different species.

Rat and Poison example

• Sometimes, organisms respond to new, irrelevant stimuli that closely resemble the original Neutral Stimulus with the same CR, this is called generalization.

What about stimuli that are similar to the neutral stimulus?

• Organisms can also learn through conditioning to discriminate between similar stimuli, if a CS– is introduced into the conditioning process.

What does this tell us about learning?

It tells us how we can learn about how our minds might pair stimuli with each other.

However, it doesn’t inform us about how we know about what to do and not to do in our world.

In our next class we’ll revisit the world of behaviorism from a different perspective; from the world of operant conditioning.

Have a good weekend!