Psych 101 (5)

• Learning - “Any relatively permanent change in

  behavior brought about by experience and practice.”
• Basic Principles of Behaviorism

  • Organism
  • Environment
• Environment determines your behavior.
• Behaviorism is known as Stimulus-Response Psychology
• Cognition or any other internal mental state is not used to explain behavior
• The Intellectual Giants Behind Behaviorism

  • John B. Watson
  • B. F. Skinner

  thoughts and feelings are unimportant
• The philosophical paradigms the underpin behaviorism

  ● Empiricism - knowledge and truth can only be known through the senses
• The philosophical paradigms the underpin behaviorism

  Positivism - establishing relationship between variables based on scientific method
• Behaviorism puts emphasis on objectivity. We can only measure what is observable
• Albert Bandura recognized the role of cognition such as beliefs in determining behavior

  • You will only perform behavior for a reward if you believe you’re capable of doing the behavior
• Cognitive processes mediate the relationship between stimulus and response
• The brain is incredibly associative
• How did you make those associations? through experience
• Classical conditioning happens when we learn by associating one stimulus with another
• unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus that by itself can evoke an involuntary, unconditioned response.
• conditioned stimulus is a stimulus that elicits the conditioned response on its own.
• Classical conditioning can be used to explain the the development of phobias
• Stimulus Generalization - Objects similar to the conditioned stimulus can elicit conditioned response
• Phobias can also be undone by using the principles of classical conditioning For example, through systematic desensitization
• Operant Conditioning - learning by associating a behavior with its consequence
• The response frequency/likelihood of behavior depends on the consequence
• Types of consequences

  • reinforcement
  • punishment
• Reinforcement

  • makes behavior more likely to occur
  • strengthens the response
  • it is experienced as rewarding and pleasurable
• Types of Reinforces

  • Primary reinforcers - Reinforcers that we find inherently rewarding
• Types of Reinforcers

  • secondary/conditioned reinforcers - Reinforcers that we have associated with primary reinforcers
• positive reinforcement - addition of pleasant consequence
• negative reinforcement - removal of an unpleasant consequence
• Ratio Schedule of Reinforcement

  Fixed Ratio - after fixed number of responses
• Ratio Schedule of Reinforcement

  Variable ratio - after variable number of responses
• Interval Schedule of Reinforcement

  • Fixed Interval - reinforce after fixed time interval
• Interval Schedule of Reinforcement

  • variable interval - reinforce after a variable interval
• Variable schedules of reinforcement are less prone to decay
• Punishment

  • makes behavior less likely to occur
  • experienced as unpleasant
• Punishment by Application - addition of unpleasant consequence
• punishment by removal - removal of a pleasant consequence
• Observational Learning - learning through observation
• intermittent or partial - not every instance is rewarded
• continuous - every behavior followed by consequence
• attention - looking at the person doing the behavior
• retention or representation

  • trying to remember
  • not need to be exact
  • your own take or interpretation