Term
| What is a reflex and how can it change through habituation? |
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Definition
| A reflex is a simple, relatively automatic, stimulus-response sequence mediated by the nervous system. It can decline through habitation when the stimulus is repeated several times in succession. |
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Term
| How did Pavlov discover the condtioned response? |
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Definition
| In studies of digestive reflexes in dogs, he discovered that dogs that had been given food on previous occasions in his experiments would salivate before the received any food. He decided to consider it a reflex and analyze it objectively. |
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Term
| After his initial discovery, how did Pavlov systematize the process of conditioning, and what names did he give to the relevant stimuli and responses? |
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Definition
| He sounded a bell just before placing food in the dog's mouth. Later on no food was necessary to make the dog salivate. He called the stimulus 'conditioned stimulus' and the response to the stimulus he called 'conditioned response'. The original stimulus (food placed in the mouth) and response (salivation) were called 'unconditioned stimulus' and 'unconditioned response'. |
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Term
| How can a conditioned response be extinguished? What evidence led Pavlov and others to conclude that extinction does not return the animal to its orginal, untrained state? |
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Definition
| When the conditioned stimulus (bell) is frequently repeated without the unconditioned stimulus it can be extinguished. The mere passage of time following extinction can partially renew the conditioned response (spontaneous recovery); a single pairing of the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus can fully renew the conditioned response which can be extinguished again only by another series of trials in which the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus > The conditioned response is not truly lost during extinction, but is somehow inhibited and it can be disinhibited by such means as the passage of time or the recurrence of the unconditioned stimulus |
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Term
| How can generalization in classical conditioning be abolished through discrimination training? How can discrimination training be used to assess an animal's sensory capacities? |
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Definition
| If the response to one stimulus is reinforced while the response to the other stimulus is extinguished; you can present it with two items, one with colour 1 and the other with colour 2 (a shade of colour 1), one being followed by food after seeing it, the other never. Consequenty you make the difference between both shades of colours smaller and smaller to see if the dog still recognizes the difference in colours. |
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Term
| How have researchers shown that the meaning of a stimulus, not just its physical characteristics, can provide a basis for generalization in classical conditioning? |
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Definition
| Gregory Razran used college students as subject, printed words as conditioned stimuli and a squirt of lemon juice into the mouth as the unconditioned stimulus. He conditioned students to salivate to the words Style, urn, freeze and surf. He found that students salivated more to the words fashion, vase, chill and wave >the true conditioned stimuli were not the physical sights or sounds of the words but the subject's interpretation of them. |
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Term
| What were the characteristics of early North American behaviorism? Why were Pavlov's findings on conditioning particularly appealing to behaviorists? |
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Definition
| They argued that their science should avoid terms that refer to mental entities (thoughts, emotions, motives) because such terms cannot be directly observed whereas behavior can. Pavlov provided an objective, stimulus-response way of studying and understanding learning. If all behavior is essentially reflexive and if most behavior is learned, and if conditioning is the process by which reflexes are learned, then conditioning would appear to be psychology's most basis explanatory concept. |
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Term
| How did Pavlov's S-S Theory of classical conditioning differ from Watson's S-R theory? How does an experiment involving habituation of the unconditioned stimulus support the S-S theory? |
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Definition
S-R Theory: rats freeze in response to the signal light because of a direct learned connection between light and freezing (light > freezing) / S-S Theory: rats freeze because of a learned connection between light and loud sound. (light > mental representation of loud sound > freezing).
Habituation (sound without light until the rats stopped freezing); than after time elapses again confronting the no longer freezing rats with light. Habituation to the sound greatly reduced the degree to which the rats froze in response to the light. |
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Term
| How does the cognitive construct of expectancy help explain the ways in which conditioned responses differ from unconditioned responses? |
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Definition
| Expectancy theory makes sense of the observation that a conditioned response is often quite different from the unconditioned response. All responses do not occur because they were previously elicited by the unconditioned stimulus but because they are responses to expectations. |
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Term
| What are 3 conditions in which the pairing of a new stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus does not result in classical conditioning? How do these observations support the idea that classical conditioning is a process of learning to predict the onset of the unconditioned stimulus? |
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Definition
1. the conditioned stimulus must precede the unconditioned stimulus.
2. the conditioned stimulus must signal heightened probability of occurence of the unconditioned stimulus.
3. conditioning is ineffective when the animal already has a good predictor. |
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Term
| How did Watson demonstrate that the emotion of fear can be conditioned? |
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Definition
| Little Albert experiment:2 unconditioned stimuli for fear in human infants: sudden loud sounds and sudden loss of support > rat + loud noice |
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Term
| How can the appetizer effect and sudden cravings for specific foods be explained in terms of classical conditioning? |
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Definition
| Any signal that reliably precedes a meal can rather quickly cause us to feel much hungrier that we were feeling just before the signal. |
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Term
| How has sexual arousal been conditioned in humans and other animals? What is the evidence from experiments with nonhuman animals, that such conditioning promotes success in reproduction? |
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Definition
| sight of a sexually receptive female or physical acces to such a female = unconditioned stimulus; a signal that reliably precedes the presentation of the female becomes a conditioned stimulus for a set of responses that prepare the man for courtship and mating > it increases the number of offspring the animal produces because the conditioned stimulus mobilizes the sperm-release mechanism/more sperm at time of copulation. |
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Term
| why is the conditioned response to a drug-related stimulus often the opposite of the direct effect of the drug? |
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Definition
| Only the compensatory reaction is conditioned. A stimulus that reliably precedes delivery of drugs produces a conditioned response that is opposite to the drug's direct effect. |
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Term
| How does classical conditioning contribute to the development of drug tolerance? Why is it dangerous for a drug addict to take his usual drug dose in an unusual environment? |
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Definition
| Because of conditioning, stimuli that normally precede drug intake cause the conditioned compensatory reaction to begin before the drug is actually taken and that reaction counteracts the effect of the drug. In a new environment where no conditioned cues are present, the full impact of the drugs kicks in before a counteractive reaction begins. |
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Term
| How does classical conditioning help explain drug relapse after an addict returns home from a treatment center? |
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Definition
| Cues elicit compensatory drug reactions which feel like withdrawal symptoms and elicit a strongly felt need for drugs |
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