ADAPTATION TO THE ENVIRONMENT Learningany process through which

ADAPTATION TO THE ENVIRONMENT • Learning—any process through which experience at one time can alter an individual’s behavior at a future time • A relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience

BEHAVIORISM • The view that psychology should restrict its efforts to studying observable behaviors, not mental processes. • Founded by John Watson • Thought that all human behavior is a result of conditioning or due to past experience and environmental influences. • Claimed he could take any child and train him to become any type of specialist.

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING • Learning where an animal learns to do a natural reflexive response to something that it would normally not do the response to. • Form of learning by association

LEARNING BY ASSOCIATION • Learning that certain events occur together

STIMULUS-RESPONSE • Stimulus - anything in the environment that one can respond to • Response – any behavior or action

STIMULUS-RESPONSE RELATIONSHIP

STIMULUS-RESPONSE RELATIONSHIP

Ivan Pavlov (1849– 1936)

PAVLOV’S DOGS • Russian physiologist • Won the Nobel Prize • Digestive reflexes and salivation

PAVLOV’S RESEARCH APPARATUS Video

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING NEUTRAL STIMULUS will elicit NO REACTION UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS will elicit a Unconditioned REFLEX ACTION Stimulus UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS NEUTRAL STIMULUS CONDITIONEDSTIMULUS will elicit a CONDITIONED RESPONSE

NEUTRAL STIMULUS—BELL • Does not normally elicit (cause) a response or reflex action by itself • a bell ringing • a color • a furry object

UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS—FOOD • Always elicits a reflex action: an unconditioned (unlearned) response – food – blast of air – noise

UNCONDITIONED RESPONSE —SALIVATION • The automatic response to the unconditioned stimulus • A response to an unconditioned stimulus—naturally occurring & not learned • Salivation at smell of food • Eye blinks at blast of air • Startle reaction in babies

CONDITIONED (LEARNED) STIMULUS — BELL • The stimulus that was originally neutral becomes conditioned after it has been paired with the unconditioned stimulus • Will eventually cause the unconditioned response by itself

CONDITIONED (LEARNED) RESPONSE - SALIVATION • The original unconditioned response becomes conditioned after it has been caused by the neutral stimulus • Usually the same behavior as the UCR

PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT

PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT

PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENT

EXPLAIN HOW DWIGHT IS CONDITIONED

LET’S APPLY TO A NEW EXAMPLE • Tracy goes to the park and is playing near a tree • She bumps into a branch that just happens to house a family of birds that proceed to attack her! • After she recovers from her bird attack, she refuses to go near the park.

LET’S APPLY TO A NEW EXAMPLE • Tracy goes to the park and is playing near a tree • She bumps into a branch that just happens to house a family of birds that proceed to attack her! • After she recovers from her bird attack, she refuses to go near the park. • • • UCS— UCR-NS— CR— Bird Attack Fear The Park Fear

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING TERMS • Acquisition • Extinction • Spontaneous recovery • Generalization • Discrimination training

ACQUISITION • The process of developing a learned response • The initial learning that takes place in the during stage of conditioning when the animal starts to associate the NS with the US.

ACQUISITION

EXTINCTION • The diminishing of a learned response • When the CS is continually presented without the UCS then the CR will eventually begin to disappear.

EXTINCTION

SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY • The reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response • After a period of time if the CS is presented, the CR returns. • Learning may disappear but is not eliminated.

SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY

GENERALIZATION • Process in which an organism produces the same CR to two similar stimuli (CS) • The more similar the substitute stimulus is to the original used in conditioning, the stronger the generalized response

DISCRIMINATION • Ability of an animal to not respond to a new CS that is too different from the original CS. • The subject learns that one stimuli predicts the UCS and the other does not.

HIGHER-ORDER CONDITIONING • Connecting a second stimulus to the CS to elicit a new CR • The subject learns that either stimuli can produce the CR

LET’S PRACTICE • With a partner…. • Identify the Terms in each example

JOHN B. WATSON AND LITTLE ALBERT • 11 -month-old infant, Albert • Watson and his assistant classically conditioned Albert to be frightened of white rats • Led to questions about ethics in experiments

LITTLE ALBERT – BEFORE CONDITIONING

LITTLE ALBERT – DURING CONDITIONING

LITTLE ALBERT – AFTER CONDITIONING

LITTLE ALBERT - GENERALIZATION

COULD LITTLE ALBERT’S FEAR HAVE BEEN UNDONE? • YES!!! Through Counter Conditioning! • Must pair the conditioned stimulus (Rat) with something that is incompatible with fear (Candy). BEFORE: Rat Fear CS = CR DURING: Rat Candy Happy CS + UCS = UCR AFTER: Rat Not Scared CS = New CR Candy Happy UCS = UCR

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING AND DRUG USE

RESPONSES SIMILAR TO THE DRUG’S EFFECT: CLASSICALLY CONDITIONED DRUG EFFECT • Drugs that are regularly used to restore normal functioning produce a conditioned response (CR) similar to the drug’s effect. (see diagram below) • You feel more alert after drinking decaffeinated coffee

RESPONSES SIMILAR TO THE DRUG’S EFFECT: CLASSICALLY CONDITIONED DRUG EFFECT

RESPONSES OPPOSITE TO THE DRUG’S EFFECT: CLASSICALLY CONDITIONED COMPENSATORY RESPONSE • Drugs that are regularly used to disrupt normal functioning produce a conditioned compensatory response (CCR) opposite to the drug’s effect. • This is caused by your body naturally trying to compensate and restore normal functioning. • Eventually, stimuli that reliably precede the administration of a drug cause a physiological reaction that is opposite to the drug’s effects. • May be one explanation for the characteristics of withdrawal and tolerance

The Conditioned Compensatory Response

SIEGEL’S RAT STUDY • Over the course of a month, rats gradually developed tolerance to increasing amounts of heroin. • Then, they were injected with an overdose of almost twice as much heroin as they had become accustomed to receiving. • Rats that were injected with the heroin overdose in the same setting in which they had previously received heroin were twice as likely to survive as were rats that were injected in a different setting.

SIEGEL’S CCR STUDIES • If a drug abuser does their drug in an unfamiliar setting they will run the risk of overdose because they will not have the CCR effect before they take the drug. • Spontaneous recovery is a reason people relapse when they find themselves in a similar situation to the one in which they regularly used the drug.

CCR & DRUG OVERDOSE • Some heroin addicts have died after injecting their usual amount of heroin in an unfamiliar environment. Why?

EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

TASTE AVERSION • Rats drank flavored water (NS) and hours later were given a shot with a drug (UCS) that made them sick (UCR). The rats refused to drink the flavored water again. • Subjects become classically conditioned to avoid specific tastes, because the tastes are associated with nausea. John Garcia (1917 - )

TASTE AVERSION **Differs from other Classical Conditioning in that: • It did NOT require repeated pairings of a NS and UCS. • The time span between the two was a few hours. • Rats were conditioned to taste and not anything else that occurred in the hours between when they drank the flavored water and got sick.

HOW TASTE AVERSION WORKS: BEFORE Flavored Water Drug NS = No Response DURING: Flavored Water Drug Nausea NS + UCS = UCR AFTER: Flavored Water Avoidance CS = CR Nausea UCS = UCR

BIOLOGICAL PREPAREDNESS & PHOBIAS MARTIN SELIGMAN • We are biologically predisposed to learn things that affect our survival. • We are predisposed to avoid threats our ancestors faced--food that made us sick, storms, heights, snakes, etc. • People more easily acquire conditioned fear responses to pictures of snakes & spiders when paired with electric shocks than they do with flowers and mushrooms. • Monkeys will learn a fear response to snakes & crocodiles but not to flowers and toy rabbits.

BIOLOGICAL PREPAREDNESS & PHOBIAS MARTIN SELIGMAN • But not modern-day threats—knives, stoves, cars, water pollution, etc. • Recent studies showed that children like Little Albert could NOT be classically conditioned to fear things like wooden blocks & curtains.

WHAT DO YOU FEAR? • Interestingly enough, there’s a reverse side to classical conditioning, and it’s called counterconditioning. • This amounts to reducing the intensity of a conditioned response (anxiety, for example) by establishing an incompatible response (relaxation) to the conditioned stimulus (a snake, for example).

WOLPE • Wolpe developed a treatment program for anxiety that was based on the principles of counterconditioning. ² Wolpe found that anxiety symptoms could be reduced (or inhibited) when the stimuli to the anxiety were presented in a graded order and systematically paired with a relaxation response. ² Hence this process of reciprocal inhibition came to be called systematic desensitization.

YOUR DESENSITIZATION • See it in Action: Using Humor in Systematic Desensitization • Let’s put Wolpe’s theories to practice, by creating our own heirarchies

EVALUATION OF SD • Systematic Desensitization is highly effective where the problem is a learned anxiety of specific objects/situations (e. g. phobias). • Systematic Desensitization is a slow process. Although, research suggests that the longer the technique takes the more effective it is. • However, it only treats the symptoms of the disorder, not the underlying cause.