PSYC 1001 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Classical Conditioning, Agoraphobia, Reinforcement
16 Jun 2018
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Psychology Chapter 6 Notes
- Learning: Any relatively durable change in behavior or knowledge that is due to
experience
o Relatively durable or permanent change in: behavior, knowledge, capability,
attitude
o Acquired through experience and not due to maturation, illness, injury
o Ifats do’t lear to alk
- Phobias: Irrational dear of specific objects or situations (often the result to classical
conditioning)
- Agoraphobia: Intense fear of being in public places where it may be difficult to escape
from or in which it might be difficult to obtain help
- Conditioning: involves learning connections between events that occur in an orgais’s
environment learig ehaioral pshologists
Pavlov’s Deostratio: Psychic Reflexes
- Classical conditioning: a type of leaning in which a stimulus acquired the capacity to
evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus
o Pavlovian conditioning
- Palo’s work showed how stimuli in the external world controlled out actions and
behavior
- Pavlov’s dogs: the stimulus was a tone, which would indicate that meat powder would
come and triggered a salivating response from the dog when it was previously a neutral
stimulus (dogs salivated when food presented; also salivated to footsteps of assistants or
rattling food dishes)
- Unconditional stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that evokes an unconditional response without
previous conditioning
- Unconditional responses (UCR): an unlearned reaction to an unconditioned stimulus that
occurs without previous conditioning
o Example: the bond between the meat powder and the salivation (a natural
stimulus-response)
- Conditioned stimulus (CS): a previously neutral stimulus that has, through conditioning,
acquired the capacity to evoke a conditioned response
- Conditioned response (CR): a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs
because of previous conditioning
o Example: the link between the tone and the salivation
- Trial: consists of any presentation of a stimulus or pair of stimuli
- Stimulus: any event or object in environment
- Association: formed between two stimuli
o Passive reflexes
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Influence classical conditioning
- Number of pairings of US and CS
- Intensity of US (unconditioned stimulus)
- How reliably CS predicts US
- Time between CS and US
Classical Conditioning in Everyday Life
- Conditioned fear and anxiety (phobias)
- Some people acquire conditioned fear less readily than other probably due to differences
in their genetic makeup
- Evaluative conditioning: refers to changes in the liking of a stimulus that result from
pairing that stimulus with other positive or negative stimuli
- Immunosuppression: a decrease in the production of antibodies
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o Example: animals are injected with a drug that chemically causes
immunosuppression while they are simultaneously given a weird tasting drink (CS)
o Days later, the animals are re-exposed to the CS and found to have reduced
immune response due to the weird drink
- Classical conditioning can also elicit allergic reactions and to drug tolerance/ withdrawal
symptoms
Conditioning and Drug Effects
- Stimuli that are consistently paired with administrative drugs can acquire the capacity to
elicit conditioned responses
- In many instances the conditioned responses are physiological reactions that are just the
opposite of the normal effects of the drugs
o Known as compensatory CRs (partially compensate for some drug effects)
o Counterbalance some of the potentially dangerous effects of various drugs
- Environmental cues can eventually begin to elicit compensatory CRs that partially cancel
out some of the anticipated effects of abused drugs
o As the CRs strengthen they neutralize more and more of the drugs pleasurable
effects, producing a gradual decline in the user’s responsiveness to the drug
- Problems: if drugs are taken in new ways or in a new setting the usual compensatory CR
may not occur, and the drug might have a stronger impact than usual increasing the risk
of an overdose
- Problem: when people try to quit drugs, exposure to drug related cues may trigger
compensatory CRs that increase drug cravings and fuel drug addiction and relapse
- Contextual cues may elicit conditioned CRs that contribute to the development of
tolerance for the drug
- Use becomes UCS
- Administration rituals counteract drug → psychological tolerance
- Different environment, no tolerance, more powerful effects & overdose more likely
Basic Processes in Classical Conditioning
Process
Description
Acquisition: forming new responses
- Acquisition: refers to the initial stage
of learning something
- Stimulus contiguity: stimulus that
occur together in time and space
- Stimuli that are novel, unusual, or
especially intense have more
potential to become CSs than routine
stimuli since they are likely to stand
out among other stimuli
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Document Summary
Learning: any relatively durable change in behavior or knowledge that is due to experience: relatively durable or permanent change in: behavior, knowledge, capability, attitude, acquired through experience and not due to maturation, illness, injury. Phobias: irrational dear of specific objects or situations (often the result to classical conditioning) Agoraphobia: intense fear of being in public places where it may be difficult to escape from or in which it might be difficult to obtain help. Conditioning: involves learning connections between events that occur in an orga(cid:374)is(cid:373)"s environment (cid:894)(cid:862)lear(cid:374)i(cid:374)g(cid:863) (cid:271)(cid:455) (cid:271)eha(cid:448)ioral ps(cid:455)(cid:272)hologists(cid:895) Classical conditioning: a type of leaning in which a stimulus acquired the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus: pavlovian conditioning. Pa(cid:448)lo(cid:448)"s work showed how stimuli in the external world controlled out actions and behavior. Unconditional stimulus (ucs): a stimulus that evokes an unconditional response without previous conditioning. Unconditional responses (ucr): an unlearned reaction to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without previous conditioning.
