PSY 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Classical Conditioning, Observational Learning, Habituation

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Brenda Baird

Document Summary

Learning: a relatively permanent change in behaviour (or behavioural potential) due to experience. Behaviourism: emphasizes the study of observable behaviour and the role of the environment as a determinant of behaviour. Is learning not to respond to an unimportant event that occurs repeatedly. **classical conditioning**: the process by which a previously neutral (unrelated) stimulus acquires the capacity to elicit a response through association with a stimulus that already elicits a similar or related response. Unconditioned stimulus: a stimulus that elicits a re exive response in the absence of learning. Conditioned stimulus: an initially neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response after being associated with an unconditioned stimulus. The ability to learn to recognize stimuli that predict the occurrence of an important event allows the learner to make the appropriate response faster and more effectively. Stimuli that were previously unimportant acquire some of the properties of the important stimuli and can now modify behaviour (token economies)