PSYC 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Observational Learning
14 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Learning
Psychology Lecture 12
Oct. 25th 2016
Modules 6.1 & 6.2
What are the main types of learning?
1.Classical conditioning: learning to link two stimuli in a way that helps us anticipate an event to which we have a
reaction (associative learning)
2.Operant conditioning: changing behavioural responses in response to consequences (contingencies)
3.Cognitive (latent) learning: learning that can occur without reinforcement and without being directly observable
Learning without thinking?
B. F. Skinner
• Behaviourism: Started with proponents that mental life was much less important than behaviour as a foundation
for psychological science
J. B. Watson (1878-1958)
1. How do we learn by acquiring associations?
• Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
• Nobel Prize 1904 studying digestion
• Noticed his dogs salivated at the sound of a bell
Before conditioning: Neutral stimulus (NS) (Unconditioned stimulus (US)), No response
Unconditioned response (UR): dog salivates
During conditioning: Neutral stimulus (NS) + Unconditioned response (UR): dog salivates + Unconditioned
stimulus (US)
After conditioning:Conditioned stimulus (CS) + Conditioned response (CR): dog salivates
The language of classical conditioning
• Neutral stimulus (NS): A stimulus which does not trigger a response
• Unconditioned stimulus (US) and response (UR): A stimulus which triggers a response naturally,
before/without any conditioning
• Conditioned stimulus (CS): A stimulus that will trigger the learned CR
• Conditioned response (CR): The learned response triggered by the CS
What are some of the properties of classical conditioning?
i. Acquisition
• What gets acquired?
• The association between a NS and an US
• How can we tell that acquisition has occurred?
• The UR now gets triggered by a CS
(and as become a CR)
• Timing
• For the association to be acquired, the NS needs to repeatedly appear before the US
ii. Extinction
• The diminishing of a CR that occurs when CS is presented without the US
Spontaneous recovery
[Return of the CR]
• After extinction and following a rest period, presenting the CS alone often leads to a spontaneous recovery
iii. Generalization and discrimination
• Generalization refers to the tendency to have conditioned responses triggered by related stimuli
• Discrimination refers to the learned ability to only respond to a specific stimuli, preventing generalization
Other applications:
Increasing implicit self-esteem through classical conditioning
• The game helps create an association between information about oneself
and smiling faces (Baccus, Baldwin & Packer, 2004)
2. How do we learn through the consequences of our actions?
• Operant conditioning involves adjusting to the consequences of our behaviours (functionalism)
How operant conditioning works?
• A behavioural response is followed by a reward or punitive feedback from the environment
• Thorndike’s law of effect:
• Reinforced behaviour is more likely to be tried again
• Punished behaviour is less likely to attempted in the future
• Different than classical, because this one is initiated by the organism
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