Psychology UNIT TWO Learning

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

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): The stumulus that produces a reflex response (eg. food).

Unconditioned Response (UCR): The reflex reponse to the UCS (eg salivation)

Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A new stimulus presented with the UCS (eg. bell).

Conditioned Response (CR): The response that is learnt and is now occurs after the CS.

Extinction: A conditioned response dies out.

Spontaneous Recovery: A conditioned response that disappeared suddenly appears again.

Generalisation: The CR is produced in response to a similar stimulus.

Discrimination: The CR is only produced in response to a specific stimulus.

-Pavlov wanted to investigate whether the dogs could learn to salivate to other events

-each time the dog was fed, a bell was rung for a few seconds and the amount of saliva produced was measured

-then the bell was rung but no food was given: the amount of saliva produced was the same

-if he continued to ring the bell without giving the dog any food, the dog would no longer salivate after a short time (extinction)

-after a short period in which no bell was rung, Pavlov would suddenly ring the bell and the dog would immediately salivate again (spontaneous recovery)

-if he changed the tone of the bell, the dog would still salivate (generalisation)

-he rang a number of bells of different tones, but presented food only with a certain bell

-the dog stopped salivating to the other bells and only salivated to that particular bell (discrimination)

Aim: -see if fear could be conditioned in a human

Method: -11 month old Albert liked a white lab rat and had no fear of white furry objects

-rat was shown to him and when he reached for it, a metal bar was hit very hard with a hammer behind his back

Results: -after 7 times, Albert screamed and tried to get away from the rat

-did this even though there was no loud noise

-he also screamed when shown a Santa Claus mask and a fur coat

Conclusion: -fear responses can be learned through classical conditioning

Evaluation: -unethical (caused psychological harm)

-only involved one chld, need to use a larger sample (lacks population validity)

-advertising agencies build up a favourable assocation between the advert and the product

Operant conditioning is learning through consequence. 

Law of effect is the idea that behaviours that are rewarded are usually repeated, and behaviours that are punished are usually not repeated

-cat had to escape from a box: there was a loop of string attached to a latch and when the string was pulled the latch would lift and the door would open

-cat would move around the box and accidetally pull the string and lift the latch

-after about 20 trials, the cat began to escape very quickly (learn through trial and error)

-the pleasant consequence of escaping encouraged the cat to pull the string

Punishment: a stimulus that weakens behaviour because it is unpleasant and we try to avoid it

Reinforcement: a consequence of behaviour that encourages/strengthens a behaviour

Positive Reinforcement: a reward/pleasant consequence that increases the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated

Negative Reinforcement: an unpleasant experience is removed after a behaviour has been made, increasing the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated

Behaviour Shaping: changing behaviour in small steps

-said that all behaviour is learnt from the consequences

-placed a hungry rat in the Skinner Box, and by accident it would press the lever and a pellet of food would drop into the food tray, positively reinforcing the behaviour of lever pressing

-sometimes there was an electric shock through the floor of the Skinner Box, and when the rat pressed the lever the shock would switch off (negative reinforcement)

-punishment does not encourage the desired behaviour, it just stops one unwanted behaviour

-behaviour shaping is where you reinforce something in baby steps (eg. giving pigeon some grain for moving towards a ball when learning to play ping pong)

-will then only receive the reinforcement for the next step and so on- eventually the whole sequence is needed for one reward at the end

Phobia:  a persisten and irrational fear of an object, activity or situation. The typical symptoms are intense feelings of fear and anxiety.

-the normal reflex is Danger ---> Fear

-when someone has a phobia, their fear response is to something that doesn't cause danger

-their fear response is no longer an automatic response to a danger/threat

-in order for the connection between something (eg. spiders) and fear to be made, that something must have been present when something scary happened

-for example, fear of balloons is a result of assocating loud noises with balloons

Flooding is a treatment for phobias that involves the immediate exposure of the person to the feared object, activity or evevnt, until there is no fear response

-the person is exposed repeatedly and rapidly to the thing they fear, they are flooded with thoughts and experiences

-flooding prevents escape and people learn that their anxiety levels start to drop the more times they are exposed to their fears

-flooding removes the phobia when a person realises they are not in danger

Ethical Implications

-the person loses thier right to withdraw

-it can be a very stressful procedure (psychological harm)

-difficult to protect and avoid harming someone who is being flooded, psychologist has to judge

Systematic Desensitisation is a treatment for phobias where the person is taught to relax and then is gradually exposed to the feared obect, acitivty or event

Hierarchy of fears is a series of feared events ranked from least to most frightening

-the fear response is replaced with feeling relaxed

-the person with a phobia is taught how the relax themselves (eg. listening to music)

-person and therapist construct a hierarchuy of fears 

-person relaxes and gradually works through the hierarchy of fears, relaxing after each feared event is presented 

-person only moves up the hierachy if they have been relaxed at the previous stage

-final stage is to be relaxed at the 'most frightening' event

Aversion therapy is a treatment for addictions, such as drug and alcohol dependency, which makes the addict have an extremely negative reaction to the addictive substance

-uses vomiting reflex (emetics) to get the pateient to develop a negative reaction

-emetic is designed so the patient is sick immediately after they drink alcohol

-start to associate sick with alcohol so they avoid it

-therapists believe it is most effective when used alongside other support (helping the patient to stay away from situations where they used to spend time drinking)

Evaluation

-can be extremely unpleasant for the person (ethical issues)

-not always successful over time, people are likely to go back to their addictive behaviour after the treatment stops

Primary Reinforcer: a reward, such as food or water, that the animal or person neesd to survive

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

-token economy programmes have been set up in hospitals/psychiatric wards to reward socially acceptable behaviour in people who may have stopped looking after themselves properly

-every time the person produces an appropriate behaviour, staff immediately give them a token

-can be used to 'pay for' activities like watching a favourite TV programme

Evaluation

-produced improvements in behaviour and self-care of patients 

-make patients focus on reward rather than wanting their own behaviour to improve

-ethical issues if patients are denied something for not having enough tokens