Scarica 'Psychology and Life' Summary of the 6th chapter. e più Appunti in PDF di Psicologia Cognitiva solo su Docsity! THE STUDY OF LEARNING What is learning? Learning is a process based on experience that results in a relatively permanent change in behabior or behavioral patterns. LEARNING-PERFORMANCE DISTINCTION -> the difference between what has been learned and what is expressed, or performed in overt behavior. HABITUATION and SENSITIZATION are two of learning's most basic forms. HABITUTION: decrease in behavioral response when stimulus repeatedly presented. SENSITILIZATION: increase in behavioral responses when stimulus repeatedly presented. BEHAVIORISM AND BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS John Watson is the father of American behaviorism, he argued that introspection was not acceptable means of studying behavior because it was too subjective but it could have been acceptable the use of observable behavior. He defined the goal of psychology as 'the prediction and control of behavior'. B.F. Skinner adopted Watson's cause and expanded his agenda. He formulated a position known as Radical Behaviorism. In his view, mental events don't cause behavior. Rather, they're examples of behavior that are caused by environmental stimuli. This brand of behaviorism originated by Skinner served at the original philosophical cornerstone of Behavior Analysis. BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS --> It focuses on the discovery of environmental determinants of behavior and learning CLASSICAL CONDITIONING It's a basic form of learning in which one stimulus predicts occurrence of another stimulus or event. The innate capacity to quickly associate pairs of events in your environment has profound behavioral implications. IVAN P. PAVLOV He was a Russian psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in 1904. Pavolv had devided a technique to study digestive processes in dogs by implanting tubes in their glans and digestive organs to divert bodily secretions to containers outside their bodies so that the secretions could be measured and analyzed. STUDY OF REFLEXES: reflex is a response of behavior elicited by specific stimuli that are biologically relevant for the organism. Any stimulus that naturally elicits a reflexive behavior is called an UNCONDITIONAL STIMULUS (UCS) PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER VI: LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS The behavior elicited by UCS is called UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE (UCR). CONDITIONED STIMULUS (CS) It's a neutral stimulus that is able to elicit behavior only after association with UCS. After several trials, the CS will produce a response called CONDITIONAL RESPONSE (CR) It's whatever response the conditioned stimulus elicits as a product of learning APPLICATIONS OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Classical conditioning explains how the positive emotions associated with drug taking can lead to learning a preference for the drug through the association between drug taking and feelings of pleasure. This association can be strengthened over time, causing addiction. Shepard Siegel is a contemporary researcher who suggested that the setting in which drug use occurs acts as a conditioned stimulus The taste-aversion learning is a type of experimential learning that occurs when a person associates a certain food or drink with a negative experience, such as neausea or vomiting. the inborn bias can influence an individual's ability to learn through taste aversion learning, but there are other factors that can also affect the learning of this form of association, such as the intensity of the negative experiene and the individual characteristics of the individual. OPERANT CONDITIONING THE LAW OF EFFECT A basic law of learning that states that the power of a stimulus to evoke a response is strenghtened when the response is followed by a reward and weakened when it is not followed by a reward. To analyze behabior ecperimentally, Skinner developed the: OPERANT CONDITIONING PROCEDURES In which he manipulated the consequences of an organism's behavior in order to see what effect they had on subsequent behavior. It's a learning in which probability of response is changed by a change in its consequences. REINFORCEMENT CONTINGENCY It's a consistent relationship between response and changes in environment that it produces. REINFORCER It's any stimulus that, when made contingent on behavior, increases the probability of that behavior over time. REINFORCEMENT Is the delivery of a reinforcer following a response. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT= It's the behavior followed by the delivery of an appetitive stimulus and increases the probability of that behavior. NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT= It's the behavior followed by the removal of aversive stimulus and increases the probability of that behavior. PUNISHER It's any stimulus that when made contingnt on behavior decreases the probability of that behavior over time. PUNISHMENT Is the delivery of a punisher following a response. POSITIVE PUNISHMENT= It's the behavior followed by the delivery of aversive stimulus, it decreases the probability of that behavior. NEGATIVE PUNISHMENT= It's the behavior followed by the removal of appetitive stimulus, it decreases the probability of that behavior. DISCRIMINATIVE STIMULUS = stimuli that act as predictors of reinforcement or punishment USING REINFORCEMENT CONTINGENCIES --> how can you define the behavior that you would like to reinforce or eliminate? --> how can you define the contexts in which a behavior is appropriate or inappropriate? --> Have you unknowingly been reinforcing some behaviors? PROPERTIES OF REINFORCERS PRIMARY REINFORCERS -> Biologically determined reinforcer such as food and water CONDITIONED REINFORCERS -> In classical conditioning, a formerly neutral stimulus that has become a reinforcer. PROBABLE ACTIVITIES are pleasurable activities that can be used as a reward to increase the probability that a desired behavior will occur again. For example playing games or doing favorite activities can be used to encourage a positive behavior. the Premack Principle in this case can be used in conjuction with probable activities as a tool to reinforce a desired behavior and promote positive behavior change. SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT It's a learning theory that describes how often and when reinforcement is given for a specific behavior There are four main types of reinforcement schedules: o fixed-ratio (FR) schedule o variable-ratio (VR) schedule o fixed-internal (FI) schedule o variable-internal (VI) schedule
