Download File

Classical Conditioning
Learning
•
Learning
–relatively permanent change in
an organism’s behavior due to
experience
–experience (nurture) is the key to
learning
What is Classical Conditioning?
Learning through association; a tendency to connect
events that occur together in time and space
Classical or Pavlovian
Conditioning
• Classical Conditioning
– organism comes to associate two stimuli
• lightning and thunder
• tone and food
– begins with a reflex
– a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus
that evokes the reflex
– neutral stimulus eventually comes to evoke
the reflex
Classical Conditioning
It all started with:
Ivan Pavlov
Russian
Psychologist
1849-1936
Discovered classical conditioning on accident,
was just measuring saliva in dogs
A Stimulus elicits a Response
Did You Know? Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work with studying
digestive systems…. years before he even worked on classical conditioning!
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): a
stimulus that naturally and automatically
triggers a response.
Unconditional Response
(UCR): the unlearned,
naturally occurring
response to the UCS.
Neutral Stimulus (NS): an unrelated
stimulus that will become the Conditioned
Stimulus
Conditioned Stimulus (CS): an
originally irrelevant stimulus that, after
association with the UCS, comes to
trigger a response.
Conditioned
Response (CR): the
learned response to a
previously neutral
stimulus.
Classical Conditioning Example
• A young girl reaches out to pet a dog
and is bitten by it. This causes the
young girl to cry. Now, every time she
hears a dog bark, the hair on her arms
stand up.
• UCS
• CS
UCR
CR
EXAMPLE: The Office, Altoid
1.) Application: Classical Conditioning Worksheet
2.) Come up with your own examples of Classical
Conditioning
Classical Conditioning and Humans
• John Watson brought Classical Conditioning to
psychology with his Baby Albert experiment.
Click to
see Baby
Albert to
some nice
jazz.
This type of Classical Conditioning is also known as Aversive Conditioning.
Learned Helplessness
• A condition suffered by people or animals
who have learned to believe that negative
events in their lives are unchangeable.
This leads to a state of passive
helplessness even when the person or
animal actually has the power to change
negative circumstances.
Learned Helplessness
• When people are unable to control events in their
lives, they are less motivated to act and thus stop
trying. As a result, they also may think badly of
themselves and feel depressed.
• Example: Student fails a math test; can decide
problem temporary-didn’t study enough or that he
never does well on math tests and never will.
• If rewards come without effort, a person never
learns to work hard (learned laziness).
• Do you think kids today are rewarded to much?
Learned Taste Aversions
• When it comes to
food being paired
with sickness, the
conditioning is
incredible strong.
• Even when food and
sickness are hours
apart.
• Food must be salient
(noticeable.)