PSY 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Aversion Therapy, Vomiting, Classical Conditioning
11 May 2018
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Chapter 6 Learning
1. Learning Defined
− learning: "a change in an organism's behavior or thought as a result of experience"
• doesn't need to:
o involve "facts" or school
o involve people
o be "practical" or "useful"
− Habitation: reduced response when a stimulus is presented repeatedly
− Dishabituation occurs with new stimulus
• Dis/hab used in infant studies
2. Conditioning
− Conditioning: learning connections between events and behavior
o E.g. when this happens, I should do that
o E.g. when I do this, that happens
− Classical conditioning: automatic response transferred to a neutral stimulus
• Pavlov’s dogs learned or were conditioned to associated the sound of tone with food
− Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): stimulus that evokes an automatic response
− Unconditioned response (UCR): automatic response to a UCS
− Conditioned stimulus (CS): a previously neutral stimulus that now evokes a conditioned
response
− Conditioned response (CR): learned reaction to a CS
UCR and CR are often the same, but they don’t have to be
Tyrone has a cat hair allergy. When he comes into contact with cat hair, he stars
sneezing. After a few allergic reactions, he stars sneezing as soon as a cat comes
in the room
Are CR’s permanent? No.
Do stimuli similar to the CS elicit a CR? Yes. But the more similar the new
stimulus is to the original CS, the greater the CR
− Stimulus generalization; responding to a new stimulus in a way similar to the response
produced by an established CS
• Littler albert also shows how irrational fears may develop from classical conditioning
• Evaluative conditioning: changes in whiter you like something resulting from it being
paired with another positive or negative stimulus
• Aversion therapy modify problematic behavior by pairing it with an unpleasant stimulus
o Often uses an emetic as UCS
3. Operant conditioning
2 limitations of classical conditioning: 1. Some responses are voluntary
2. some responses influenced by what follows
− Operant conditioning: learning in which responses come to be controlled by their
consequences
− Law of effect
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