PSYC2014 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Biological Target, Classical Conditioning, Reductionism

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC2014
• Professor: Niko Tiliopoulos

Document Summary

Evolutionary continuity: human and animal behaviour are not different in kind, but only in the degree of its complexity. Reductionism: all behaviour is understandable ultimately as the workings of the organism"s nervous system. Determinism: every behaviour is caused, and the cause can be traced to environmental stimuli connecting the action to its biochemical bases. For behaviorists - it"s about the external causes. Empiricism: only phenomena that could be observed, measured and manipulated were fit subjects for psychology. Historical influences (to watson): emotions were acquired conditioned reflexes. Pavlov (1927) showed that by pairing a conditioned stimulus (a bell) with an unconditioned stimulus (food), a dog would begin to salivate (response) when the bell was rung without presenting the food: natural response (before conditioning occurs) No response from the dog: conditioning procedure for several trials. Light is switched on and food is presented to dog. Neutral stimulus + unconditioned stimulus: after the conditioning trials. The conditioned response could generalise to similar stimuli.