week 2

• Systematic desensitization


  A technique based on respondent conditioning used to reduce fear and anxiety in clients
• Respondent conditioning


  • Used to extinguish chemotherapy patient’s anticipatory nausea and vomiting
• Learning enables individuals to adapt to demands and changing circumstances and is crucial in health care
• Discrimination learning


  Occurs when an individual learns to differentiate among similar stimuli
• Learning


  • Defined as a relatively permanent change in mental processing, emotional functioning, skill, and/or behavior as a result of experience. It is the lifelong, dynamic process by which individuals acquire new knowledge or skills and alter their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions
• Examples of learning applications in health care

  • For patients and families to improve their health and adjust to their medical conditions
  • For students acquiring the information and skills necessary to become a nurse
  • For staff nurses devising more effective approaches to educating and treating patients and one another in partnership
• Learning theory


  A coherent framework of integrated constructs and principles that describe, explain, or predict how people learn
• Systematic desensitization is based on respondent conditioning and is used to reduce fear and anxiety in clients by gradually introducing fear-producing stimuli at nonthreatening levels
• The construction and testing of learning theories over the past century contributed much to the understanding of how individuals acquire knowledge and change their ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving
• Operant Conditioning


  Learning as a change in the probability of response, Behaviorist B.F. Skinner coined the term, Focuses on external observable causes of human behavior
• Classical Conditioning


  • Discovered by Russian Physiologist Ivan Pavlov, Creates a conditioned response through associations between an unconditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus
• Behaviorist Learning Theory

  • Focusing on what is directly observable, Learning is the product of stimulus conditions and response, Useful in nursing practice for the delivery of health care
• Behaviorism


  Assumes that all learning occurs through interactions with the environment and that the environment shapes behavior
• Respondent conditioning

  Emphasizes the importance of stimulus conditions and the association formed in the learning process
• Positive Reinforcers


  Favorable events or outcomes that are presented after the behavior, Strengthen a response or behavior by the addition of something like praise or reward
• Negative Reinforcers


  The removal of unfavorable events or outcomes after the display of a behavior
• Learning Outcome


  • After the discussion students will be able to: Define the principal constructs of each learning theory, Identify the differences in the learning theories, Discuss examples of how these theories could be used in a given situation
• Stimulus Generalization


  The tendency of initial learning experiences to be easily applied to other stimuli
• Cognitive Learning Theory


  • The key to learning and changing is the individual’s cognition (perception, thought, memory, and ways of processing and structuring information)
  • Highly active process largely directed by the individual
  • Involves perceiving information, interpreting it based on what is already known, then reorganizing the information into new insights or understanding
• Cognitive Learning Theory perspectives

  • Gestalt
  • Information Processing
  • Cognitive Development
• Avoidance conditioning


  The unpleasant stimulus is anticipated rather than being applied directly
• Piaget’s theory of cognitive learning
• Operant Conditioning


  • Simple and easy to use
  • Encourages clear objective analysis of observable environment stimulus conditions, learners’ responses, and the effect of reinforcement on people’s actions
• Two methods to increase the probability of a response
• Principal assumption of Cognitive Learning Theory
• Information Processing perspective

  • Refers to patterned organization of cognitive elements reflecting that the whole is the sum of its parts
• Advantages of Operant Conditioning
• Implications of Cognitive Learning Theory
• Giving positive reinforcement greatly enhances the likelihood that a response will be repeated in similar circumstances


  Applying negative reinforcement after a response is made involves the removal of an unpleasant stimulus through either escape conditioning or avoidance conditioning
• Cognitive Development perspective

  • An assumption that each person can perceive, interpret, and respond to any situation in their own way
• Escape conditioning


  An unpleasant stimulus is being applied, the individual responds in some way that causes the uncomfortable stimulation to cease
• Memory process

  First stage involves paying attention, second stage involves processing by the senses preferred mode of sensory processing, third stage involves transforming and incorporating the information, last stage is the action or response based on how information was processed and encoded
• Disadvantages of Operant Conditioning
• Social Learning Theory

  • Largely based on the work of Albert Bandura
• Gestalt perspective


  • Emphasizes the importance of perception to learning rather than focusing on discrete stimuli
• Operant Conditioning

  1. Positive Reinforcers are favorable events or outcomes that are presented after the behavior

  2. Negative Reinforcers is the removal of unfavorable events or outcomes after the display of a behavior

  3. Punishment is the presentation of an adverse event or outcome that causes a decrease in the behavior

  4. Positive punishment is a punishment by application, involves the presentation of an unfavorable event or outcome in order to weaken the response

  5. Negative Punishment is punishment by removal, occurs when a favorable event or outcome is removed after a behavior occurs
• Freud compared the mind to an iceberg, with only about one-tenth being conscious and the rest unconscious
• Psychodynamic Learning Theory


  • Implications for learning and changing behavior based on Sigmund Freud's work
  • Motivational theory emphasizing emotions over cognition or responses
  • Importance of conscious and unconscious forces in guiding behavior, personality conflict, and childhood experiences on adult behavior
  • Primitive motivation source from the id based on libidinal energy
• Social learning theory is the theoretical foundation for the technique of behavior modeling used in training programs
• Principles of Social Learning Theory

  Attentional phase, Retention phase, Reproduction phase, Motivational phase