Psychology Chapter 6 (1/2): Learning Study Guide
~~General Terminology/ Concepts~~
Learning: Any relatively durable change in behavior or knowledge that is due to
experience.
Conditioning: Involves learning associations between events that occur in an
organism’s environment.
Classical Conditioning: A type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the
capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus.
^ was originally called “Pavlovivan conditioning”, first described by Pavlov (1903)
^
Renewal Effect: If a response is extinguished in a different environment than it
was acquired, the extinguished response will reappear if the animal is returned to
the original environment where acquisition took place.
Stimulus Generalization: Occurs when an organism that has learned a response to
a specific stimulus responds in the same way to new stimuli that are similar to the
original stimulus.
^ For Instance: Little Albert was conditioned to fear white rats because every time
he saw one, John B. Watson would startle him with a loud noise.
Unconditioned Stimulus (Loud Gong) = Unconditioned Response (Fear)
Conditioned Stimulus (White Rat) = Conditioned Response (Fear)
Five days later, Watson exposed the child to similarly white and furry objects
(i.e rabbit, dog, fur coat, Santa mask), to which Little Albert responded to with
fear.
*Keep in mind* the more similar new stimuli are to the original Conditioned
Stimulus (CS), the greater the likelihood of generalization
Stimulus Discrimination: Occurs when an organism that has learned a response to
a specific stimulus does not respond in the same way to new stimuli that are similar
to the original.
Higher-Order Conditioning: In which a conditioned stimulus functions as if it
were an unconditioned stimulus.
^In Depth: Higher-Order Conditioning requires a two-phase process.
*First Phase:
A Neutral Stimulus (A Bell) is paired with an Unconditioned Stimulus (Meat
Powder) until it becomes a Conditioned Stimulus that elicits the response
originally evoked by the Unconditioned Stimulus (Meat Powder which triggered
Salivation)
Unconditioned Stimulus (Meat Powder) = Unconditioned Response (Salivation)
Conditioned Stimulus (Bell) = Conditioned Response (Salivation)
*Second Phase:
Another Neutral Stimulus (Red Light) is paired with the previously established
Conditioned Stimulus (Bell), so that it also acquires the capacity to elicit the
response originally evoked by the Unconditioned Stimulus (Meat Powder which
triggered Salivation)
