PSYCH 1X03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Classical Conditioning, Reinforcement, Slot Machine
10 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
*classical conditioning: a process by which organisms learn the contingencies between biologically important stimuli and events. *instrumental conditioning: involves explicit training between voluntary behaviours and their consequences. i. e. if you touch a hot stove, you"re going to get burned. If you misbehave in kindergarten, you may be asked to take a time out. Overall, a speci c behaviour leads to a speci c consequences. Thorndike: psychologist who began an investigation on human behaviour by studying cats in a puzzle box. (tried to see how the cat would react by motivating him) At rst, animal would engage in random behaviour to try to escape. The animal struggled, and pulled on the rope by accident. However, the animals performance only improved by a little. Animals followed a simple stimulus-response type process w/little credit for consciousness. *thorndike found that the frequency of the random behaviours gradually decreased over time. Thorndike hypothesized a process called stamping in/out .
