PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Operant Conditioning, Habituation, Little Albert Experiment

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Ryan Curtis

Document Summary

Eliciting a natural behavior from a new stimulus. Operant conditioning elicits a brand new and unnatural behavior from reinforcement/punishment. Think: what is the outcome of the behavior. Neutral stimulus (ns) - does not naturally elicit any response. Ex: pavlov sounds a tone/rings a bell. Condition stimulus (cs) - always the neutral stimulus. Condition response (cr) - always the unconditioned response. Neutral stimulus is paired with the ucs. Forward pairing: ns goes first, ucs follows. When, in classical conditioning, the subject generalizes the condition stimulus to something else that is similar to that condition stimulus. Little albert was conditioned to fear white rats. Because of stimulus generalization, little albert began to fear anything that was white and fluffy (like, a santa claus mask) You will only respond to the one thing that is similar to the stimulus that you are conditioned with, and not everything. Food aversion as a result of a ucs.