• Learning - refers to a relatively durable change in behavior or knowledge that is due to experience. Learning includes the acquisition of knowledge & skills, and it also includes things like personal preferences, habits, and tastes.
• Learning has a good bit to do with Antecedents & consequences.
• Antecedents are anything that happens before a response. Consequences are anything that happens after a response.

C.C. involves what happens before a response - the antecedents. Through classical conditioning, a stimulus will come to evoke a response that was originally evoked by a separate stimulus.

Vocabulary Words - click here.

• Pavlov's experiment
• Pavlov rang a bell and then immediately put meat powder on the dog's tongue, causing the dog to salivate reflexively. The bell is a neutral stimulus - meaning it produces no response naturally. Animals don't come pre-wired to respond to bells. The meat powder is an unconditioned stimulus - a stimulus that is responded to naturally - it's biologically significant. If it's an unconditioned stimulus, animals come pre-wired to respond to them. The drooling is the unconditioned response - or an unlearned response. Pavlov did this over & over again - multiple pairings of bell + food = salivation. Then one day, he rang the bell, but he didn't present the food. Despite the presence of the food, which is the biologically significant stimulus, the dogs still drooled. This wasn't reflexive, no - this salivation was learned. The dogs had learned the bell signified that food was coming and thus, salivated. They associated the sound of the bell with the meatpowder, and that's why they drooled. The meatpowder was the UCS because it automatically caused salivation, the UCR The bell became the conditioned stimulus because the dog learned to associate it with the meatpowder, which in turn caused it to salivate (the conditioned response). The bell became a conditioned stimulus - meaning it was a previously neutral stimulus, that through this process of conditioning, began to act like a UCS - it could elicit a response. This response that the CS elicits is called the conditioned response.

NS + UCS -------> UCR

• C.C. can be responsible for many emotional responses that we have, both good ones & bad ones. Ex: phobias - highly irrational fears.

• Acquisition - acquiring the response, learning the response. The initial stage of learning something. In classical conditioning, stimulus contiguity is very important. Stimulus contiguity refers to some sort of time association between 2 events. In classical conditioning, acquisition comes the fastest when the unconditioned stimulus comes immediately after the conditioned stimulus
• If the stimulus you are trying to condition is novel, unusual, or particularly intense, contiguity is not as important. A bigger space in time can occur.
• Ex: new foods
• The bond between stimulus response doesn't have to last forever. Whenever it breaks down, extinction is said to have occurred. Extinction happens when the CS (it's no longer neutral because it's eliciting a CR) is no longer followed by the US.
• You drank way too much vodka & got sick. Really, really sick. And for a while, just sipping vodka would make you feel really sick (classically conditioned link between vodka & sickness). But, over time, you sipped a little more vodka and every time, you felt less nauseous. There was an uncoupling there between sickness & vodka. Now you can drink it just fine!
• Sometimes responses reappear even after a long time of extinction. This is called spontaneous recovery. It's a reappearance of an extinguished response after a period of nonexposure to the CS.
• Despite the fact that vodka doesn't make you sick anymore, one day, you smelled it & felt really sick.
• Sometimes after conditioning has occurred, animals may show a tendency to give the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the CS. This is known as stimulus generalization.
• Now your sickness w/ vodka has generalized! All alcohol makes you want to hurl!
• Stimulus discrimination is on the other end of things. Stimulus discrimination is when you give the CR only for the CS.
• No wait, you only want to hurl on the vodka.
• Sometimes new stimuli will take on the characteristics of an unconditioned stimulus because it is paired with a conditioned stimulus. This is a process called higher-order conditioning.
• Sometimes we can pick up classically conditioned responses just by watching other people acquire them. This is a process called vicarious conditioning.
• This is why kids are afraid of cockroaches. They watched someone else's classically conditioned fear of roaches & acquired it themselves.

Unlike classical conditioning where responses are controlled by the stimuli that precede them, in operant conditioning, responses are controlled by what follows them. Behaviors are guided by their consequences

• Behaviors that are reinforced will tend to occur again. Behaviors that are punished will tend not to occur again.
• reinforcers - a reinforcer is anything that follows a response that will increase the likelihood of that response occurring again
• punisher - a punisher is anything that follows a response that will decrease the likelihood of that response occurring again.
• Some research on operant conditioning has been conducted using a Skinner Box, or a conditioning chamber, aka SKINNER BOX
• Superstitious Behavior happens because the reinforcer reinforced the desired response and the behavior occurring at about the same time. You reinforced more than what you intended to. You reinforced the target behavior, but also another one.
• Operant conditioning works best when it is response contingent, meaning that you get the reinforcer only when you execute the desired response.
• When you're trying to initially condition an animal, it's best if reinforcement is immediate. You press the lever - you get the food.
• In shaping, you reinforce successive approximations of the desired response. Shaping is necessary when an organism doesn't, on its own, emit the desired response. You have to shape it or mold it.
• Example from class. Casey & the stool.
• In operant conditioning, extinction refers to the gradual weakening and disappearance of a response tendency because the response is no longer followed by a reinforcer. So, once the reinforcement is gone, the response will gradually fade away.
• If you didn't get paid, you probably wouldn't go to work. Unless, of course, you go to work for the sheer love of the job. And in that case, that's reinforcing enough. But in the real world, we need $$$$.
• Resistance to extinction occurs when an organism continues to make the response after the delivery of the reinforcer has stopped.
• You don't drop out of school is you make one bad grade. The Coke machine doesn't give you your soda but you don't swear off Coke machines forever.
• People at the casino. Enough said.
• operant stimulus discrimination - it's the ability to tell the difference between those stimuli that came before behaviors that lead to reinforcement & those that lead to no reinforcement.
• Mom's got a happy facial expression - if I ask for my favor now, I'll get it! So I go ask!
• Mom's got an angry facial expression. If I ask for my favor now, I won't get it. So don't ask.
• Generalization can also occur with operant In operant conditioning, generalization refers to the tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the ones that were present when you got reinforced.
• You can work one Coke machine, you can work them all.
• Primary & secondary reinforcers:
• Primary - biologically significant. Ex: Food
• Secondary - have learned value. Ex: Dollar bills.
• Schedules of Reinforcement
• Continuous - reinforcement for every correct response
• Partial - reinforcement for only some correct responses
• Variable - changing
• Fixed - set
• Interval - time
• Ratio - number of correct responses
• FR - bonus for every 5th car.
• VR - selling things door to door
• FI - the washing machine
• VI - watching for shooting stars

• Anything that leads to an increase in behavior is reinforcement.
• ANYTHING. If I spit on you and your behavior continues to increase as I spit on you, then that's reinforcement. Reinforcement doesn't have to be what most people consider to be pleasant (like praise, cookies, etc).
• Anything that leads to a decrease in behavior is punishment.
• If I give you money, but your behavior slows & decreases, then it is still punishment.

• TWO KINDS OF REINFORCEMENT
• Positive - adding something in. Ex: giving dog treats
• Negative - taking something away Ex: the alarm clock example from class.
• TWO KINDS OF PUNISHMENT
• Positive - adding something in. Ex: spanking
• Negative - taking something away Ex: you're grounded! No TV for you!

We learn by watching others. You learned to shave by watching someone else do it. Kids can learn violent behavior from watching Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers.

Learning involves thinking, understanding, considering, etc.