Chapter 6 Learning

Learning: A relatively premanent change in behaviour due to experience.

Classical Conditioning: a procedure during which an animal or person learns to associate a reflex response with a new stimulus.

Classical Conditioning Schedule: The steps in the procedure to condition a new response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): The stimulus that produces a reflex response, such as the food for Pavlov's dog.

Unconditioned Response (UCR): The reflex response to an unconditioned stimulus, such as Pavlov's dog's salivation.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A new stimulus presented with the UCS, such as the bell in Pavlov's experiment.

Conditioned Response (CR): The response that is learnt; it now occurs when the CS is presented, such as Pavlov's dog's salivation.

Extinction: A conditioned response dies out.

Spontaneous Recovery: A conditioned response that has dissapeared suddenly reappears.

Generalisation: The conditioned response is produced when the stimulus to the original conditioned stimulus is presented.

Discrimination: (With reference to conditioning) The conditioned response is only produced when a specific stimulus is presented.

Operant Condditioning: Learning due to the consequences od behaviour, through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.

Law of Effect: Behaviours that are followed by rewards are usually repeated; those that are punished are not usually repeated.

Punishment: A stimulus that weakens behaviour because it is unpleasent and we try to avoid it.

Reinforcement: A consequence of behaviour that encourages or strengthens a behaviour. this might be seen as a reward.

Positive Reinforcement: A reward or pleasent consequence that increass the liklihood that a behaviour or action will be repeated.

Negative Reinforcement: When an unpleasent experience is removed after a behaviour or action has been made. This increases the liklihood of that behaviour or action being repeated.

Behaviour Shaping: Changing behaviour in small steps.

Phobia: A persistent and irrational fear of an object, an activity or situation. The typical symptoms are intense feelings of fear and anxiety to avoid the object, activity or situation.

Flooding: A treatment for phobias that involves the immediate exposure of the person to the feared object, activity or event, until there is no fear response.

Systematic Desensitisation: A treatment for phobias in which tge person si taught to relax and then is gradually exposed to the feared object, activity or event.

Hierarchy of Fears: A series of feared events ranked from least frightening to most frightening.

Aversion Theory: A treatment for addictions, such as drug and alcohol dependency, which makes the addict have an extremely negative reaction to the addictive substance.

Primary Reinforcer: A reward, such as food or water, that the animal needs in rder to survive.

Secondary Reinforcer: A reward, such as money or a token, that the animal or person can exhange for a primary reinforcer.