Psych2020

Apparently, the baby boy had associated the white rat (original neutral stimulus, now conditioned stimulus) with the loud noise (unconditioned stimulus) and was producing the fearful or emotional response of crying (originally the unconditioned response to the noise, now the conditioned response to the rat).

· Watson claimed that psychology was not concerned with the mind or with human consciousness. Instead, psychology would be concerned only with behavior. In this way, men could be studied objectively, like rats and apes.

Apparently, the baby boy had associated the white rat (original neutral stimulus, now conditioned stimulus) with the loud noise (unconditioned stimulus) and was producing the fearful or emotional response of crying (originally the unconditioned response to the noise, now the conditioned response to the rat).

• • Skinner thought Classical Conditioning could not explain all behaviors
• • Only things necessary for person to learn something is that there is a stimulus and a response
• • Thorndike’s Law of Effect

• • Young children respond better to tangible, primary reinforcement
• • Older children respond better to external, social reinforcement
• (Responsive to peer pressure)
• Adults responsive to intrinsic, self-reinforcement

• Precision and Testing - Yes. Easily testable (e.g., with animals and humans), designed by Skinner to be testable.
• Comprehensiveness - Attempts to explain how any and all behaviors are learned.
• Heuristic Value - Sure, led to other theories (Bandura’s social learning theory).
• Applied Value
• Parsimony - Yes. It’s a simple theory, just looks at stimulus and response of behavior

(i.e., Most people see food as a reward, but people with anorexia view it as punishment; Most people would view being deprived of oxygen as punishment, but some teenagers do it for fun; Most people see physical pain as punishment, but not masochists; Money would be a reward for most, but not people who have taken a vow of poverty, etc.)

• Likelihood of a person engaging in a certain behavior is due to expectancy and value of the reinforcer.

• • Alternative Solutions - whether person will behave in a certain way depends on how many behaviors the person views as options for them, the fewer the other options the more likely they are to do that behavior
• • Freedom of Movement - person’s expectancy that his/her behavior will generally lead to success (high freedom of movement) or failure (low freedom of movement)
• • Locus of Control - person’s belief about what or who is in control of what happens to them. Ranges from internal (believe they are in charge of what happens to them) to external (believe that something outside of themselves, like luck, chance, authority figures, etc., are in control of what happens to them.

Skinner was strongly opposed to punishment (punishment only temporarily reduces behavior - once punishment ends, person likely to go back to doing that behavior).

Skinner attempted to describe a perfect world (Utopia) in Walden Two.

• We never know cause and effect of behavior and reinforcement, which causes which.
• • e.g., Does getting food cause the rat to press the bar, or does pressing the bar cause the rat to get food?
• • All operant conditioning theories are tautological (circular).
• • Skinner’s theory is Functional Analysis of Behavior.

• We must be able to learn in ways other than through direct experience.
• • e.g., We know that jumping off a cliff will kill us without actually having to do it.

• Does not account for new learning.
• • In order to be reinforced, animal/person has to do something (e.g., rat has to press a bar to get food)
• • What if animal/person can’t do the behavior? What if rat doesn’t know how to press the bar?
• • Skinner’s theory cannot explain new learning. Can’t explain how we learn something for the first time.

Cannot identify a universal reinforcer (no one thing affects everyone in the same way).

(aka Cognitive-Social Learning/Social-Cognitive Learning Theories)

• To learn a behavior, person must 1) observe a behavior and 2) retain (remember) that behavior.

• • Reinforcer is considered valuable if it can be used to modify their behavior
• • Any reinforcer exists on a continuum, at some point on the continuum the reinforcer changes from non-influential to influential at modifying behavior
• • ex) Grades are on a continuum. A good grade would be considered a reinforcer if it causes the person to be pleased with their performance and repeat what they did to get a good grade (e.g., study). The point at which a grade is considered good is different for each person. Some people might be pleased with a B-, some people might need an A+ to be pleased.
• • - the value or importance of a reinforcer to a particular person, reinforcers have different value for each person

• • Minimal goal is different for each person and is directly related to the value of the reinforcer
• • ex) a really high minimal goal would be someone who would only be pleased with an A+
• • the point at which the reinforcer changes from being non-influential to being influential.

• • According to Wolpe, extinction never happens (a behavior never goes away once it has been learned)
• • Proposed model/theory that dealt with Skinner’s idea of extinction

• - person learns to inhibit behavior, to not respond

• • - person learns another way to respond in the situation
• • ex) Person on a diet chooses to respond to sugar craving by eating something with a sugar substitute instead (chooses Diet Coke over regular)

• • Successfully used to treat phobias
• • ex) Someone is scared of a snake. Teach them relaxation techniques, then show them a snake. Teach them to relax when they see a snake. Uses reciprocal inhibition - instead of reacting to snakes with fear and anxiety, they learn to react by relaxing and becoming calm.
• • - therapeutic technique exposes person to what they’re afraid of and teaches them to respond to it differently

- expose person to feared object gradually over time.ex) Someone is scared of a snake. Start with looking at a picture of a snake, then watching someone hold a snake on TV, then watch someone hold a snake in the same room, then hold the snake themselves, etc.

• - instead of gradually leading up to the most feared situation, you “flood” the person by exposing them to the most feared situation first.
• • ex) Someone is scared of snakes, so put them in a bathtub full of snakes.
• • Hierarchical desensitization is usually preferred over flooding

• • Attempted to determine what will be reinforcing for a given individual, because people differ
• • Spent much of his career trying to teach apes how to talk

• • A reinforcer is anything that increases the intensity or frequency that a behavior will occur, a punishment is anything that decreases the intensity or frequency of the behavior
• • Especially used with young children because they can’t talk

- person must do something, learning (conditioning) is dependent on person doing something

• ex) In order to get food, rat must press a bar. Rat has to do something to get the response. In order to get the food he must emit a response.

• - person is passive, stimulus produces response no matter what
• • ex) Dog salivates when presented with food. Salivation is elicited by food.

• - noticeable to yourself and others, actively try to remember something by practicing or rehearsing it, e.g., parent teaches child to call 911 in emergencies by having her repeat the number over and over

• -internal and not observable to others, remember something without really trying to, e.g., spending time on campus and going to class helps you remember that you are a UNT student

• • Some things that we learn, we never forget (e.g., riding a bike)
• • We learn a lot more behaviors than what we actually need to do - difference between learning something and actually doing it
• • Distinguish between learning and performance
• • In order to actually do the behavior, there must be incentive or reinforcement
• • Have to practice something in order to learn it

• Young children respond best to tangible reinforcers.
• Older children/teenagers respond best to social reinforcers (peer pressure).
• • Teenagers likely to dress a certain way because their friends will like it. If their friends didn’t like it, they probably wouldn’t keep dressing that way.
• • Teenagers want clothes, cars, etc., because their friends have them
• • Peers have large influence.

• Adults respond to internal reinforcers (because of intrinsic value or satisfaction to individual).
• • e.g., Dr. Terrell reads a lot because he enjoys it.

• 1) Does not identify a universal reinforcer - a reinforcer that has the same effect on all people at all times.
• 2) Many things are not learned directly. Does not explain how things are learned indirectly.

• • Behaviors can be learned vicariously, by observing others
• • Elaborates on Skinner’s ideas
• • A person is most likely to model behavior of another person that is similar to them
• • What is most important varies by age:
• • Children - learn behavior where model is rewarded
• • Adolescents - extrinsic reinforcement
• • Adults -

• - Believes that they are in control of what happens to them, that what they do makes a difference, that if they do good things they will be rewarded or if they do bad things they will be punished

• - Believes that outside factors are in control of what happens to them (e.g., luck), that it doesn’t matter how they behave because good and bad things happen at random

• e.g., If someone promised you the Brooklyn Bridge as a reward, it would not influence your behavior because you do not expect them to fulfill their promise

• • Related to word association, what word comes to mind when another word is said
• • Test consists of 40 beginnings of sentences that the person completes
• • e.g., “I wish...”, “A mother...”
• • Usually reveals things that are psychologically significant
• • Difficult to use in research because everyone’s free associations are different
• • Expectancy can be based on Alternative Solutions - person’s behavior is determined by number of solutions the person believes are available to them
• • Idea originated from Freud, based on free association or getting a person to say the first thing that comes to their mind