LRG - Behaviorism and Classical Conditioning Lesson

 

Behaviorism and Classical Conditioning

Psychology defines learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior that is caused by experience. Psychologists who study learning are called behaviorists; they believe that most of your reactions are unconsciously determined by experiences you've had. Behaviorists shift the focus away from conscious thought processes and emotions and toward the concrete study of external stimuli and external consequences as determining human behavior. In this unit, you will study three types of learning: classical, operant, and observational.

Classical Conditioning arose from the study of digestion in dogs over 100 years ago, an unlikely beginning for one of the most important concepts in psychology. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scientist, noticed that the dogs in his digestion study began to salivate before they ever saw or smelled their food. As soon as the dogs heard the click of the cabinet door where their food was held, the dogs' bodies anticipated food and began preparing to eat by increasing salivation.

The dogs' learned response fascinated Pavlov, so he decided to scientifically test learned responses. For several feedings in a row, he rang a bell immediately before feeding the dogs. At first, the dogs did not have any response to the sound. Then one day he rang the bell and, without giving the dogs food, he measured salivation. And he found that, once again, the dogs had learned to have an automatic response (salivation) in response to a stimuli (the sound).

Classical Conditioning is a type of passive learning because the dogs did not intend to learn anything and didn't even realize they were learning anything. They did not put forth any effort to learn to salivate in response to the sound, so this learning was automatic.

Practice classical conditioning terms:

According to Pavlov's terminology, at first, when the dogs had no response to the bell, the bell was a neutral stimulus (NS). They did, however, salivate in response to food, so the food was an unconditioned stimulus (US) and the salivation was an unconditioned response (UR). Then when they began to have a response to the bell, the bell became a conditioned stimulus (CS) and the salivation became a conditioned response (CR). At this point, the acquisition has occurred.

If this sounds complicated, consider other unlearned responses that you already know about. If you get an electric shock, you jump. It's just a normal, automatic response (UR). Now imagine that right before I shocked you, I snapped my fingers (NS). Although you wouldn't jump at the snap at first (because it's a NS), eventually your body would hear the snap (CS) and jump because it anticipates the shock (CR). You wouldn't be consciously thinking about this; it would be a learned automatic response (CR).

Any of these conditioned responses (CR) will end eventually if they aren't sometimes connected to the unconditioned stimulus (US). If Pavlov kept ringing the bell (CS) and never gave the dogs food (US) again, they would stop salivating to the bell. The same thing would happen with you and the finger-snapping. If I keep snapping my fingers (CS) without ever shocking you (US), your body would learn that no shock was coming and stop reacting. This is called extinction.

Occasionally, after extinction, the conditioned response will come back. This is called spontaneous recovery. With Pavlov's dogs, if he rang the bell several times without giving them food, the dogs eventually stopped salivating in response to the bell. But occasionally they might salivate when hearing the bell.

Two more important terms apply here: generalization and discrimination. Generalization is when the subject can't tell the difference between similar stimuli. In the case of the dogs, because of generalization, they might salivate if they hear a car horn or a cell phone ring. With the shock example, any sound that sounds similar to a snapping finger might make you flinch. Discrimination is just the opposite. If the subject has no response to similar stimuli, then they have discrimination.

Complete the classical conditioning terminology review below:

 

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