LEARNING

Instinct vs. ExperienceWhat do salmon do at birth?

Unlike Salmon, we are not born with a genetic plan for life. Much of what we do, we learn from experience. Although we struggle to find the life direction a salmon is born with, our learning gives us more flexibility.

We can learn how to build grass huts or snow shelters, submarines, or space stations, and thereby adjust to almost any environment. Indeed, nature’s most important gift to us may be to our adaptability--our capacity to learn new behaviors that help us cope with changing circumstances.

According to Myers, no topic is closer to the heart of psychology than LEARNING, a relatively permanent behavior change due to experience.

We will focus on 3 types of LEARNING for now:

Classical ConditioningOperant ConditioningObservational Learning

Classical Conditioning is…

You all worked on your Learning Terms and saw the Zimbardo video…please take a second to tell the class what you think Classical Conditioning actually is?

Here’s a great way of putting it

Classical Conditioning is a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.

Example—seeing lightning and wincing as you anticipate thunder.

PAVLOV We have already discussed his

experiments, so let’s jump in and discuss the terminology that resulted from his research…

Unconditioned Response: he called the salivation in the mouth the unconditioned response because it was unlearned. The food was the unconditioned stimulus.

More On Pavlov… Salivation in response to the tone was

conditional upon the dog’s learning the association between the tone and the food. Today we call this learned response the Conditioned Response (CR).

The previously neutral tone stimulus that now triggered the conditional salivation we call the Conditioned Stimulus (CS).

1 Different Example Identify the US, UR, CS, and CR:

An experimenter sounds a tone just before delivering an air puff which causes your eye to blink. After several repetitions you blink to the tone alone.

ANSWERS

Unconditioned Stimulus=Air Puff

Unconditioned Response=Blinking to the Air Puff

Conditioned Stimulus=Tone After Procedure

Conditioned Response=Blink to Tone

Write this down to help you…

Unconditioned Stimulus Unconditioned Response

Neutral Stimulus+Unconditioned Stimulus Unconditioned Response

Repeat Several Times and…Conditioned Stimulus+No Stimulus Conditioned

Response

1 Last Time…Can one brave volunteer tell us…

The aroma of cake baking sets your mouth to watering. What is the US? The CS? And the CR?

ANSWER US=the Cake (and it’s taste)

CS=Aroma

CR=Salivating

To Fully Understand Classical Conditioning…

Make sure you learn these terms (if you know them now, please speak up):acquisitionhigher-order conditioningextinctionspontaneous recoverygeneralizationdiscriminationlearned helplessness