l2 behaviorism

• Habituation


  A decrease in the strength of an elicited behavior following repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus
• Sensitization


  An increase in the strength of an elicited behavior following repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus
• Both habituation and sensitization usually disappear when the stimulus is not presented for a period of time
• Sensitization generalizes to other stimuli
• Habituation tends to be more stimulus specific
• Even small changes in the stimulus may result in reappearance of the response
• Why is it sometimes habituation and sometimes sensitization

  • Evolutionary (adaptive) significance of the stimulus
  • Intensity of the eliciting stimulus
• Dishabituation


  Reappearance of habituated responses following the presentation of a seemingly irrelevant novel stimulus
• Opponent-process theory of emotion


  An emotional event elicits two competing processes: an a-process (or primary process) that is directly elicited by the event, and a b-process (or opponent process) elicited by the a-process and serves to counteract the a-process
• Classical conditioning


  A type of conditioned learning which occurs because of the subject's instinctive responses
• Respondent conditioning


  The acquisition of knowledge in responding to environmental signals, a type of learning that happens when stimuli naturally produce a response
• Unconditioned stimulus


  Stimulus that leads to an automatic response
• Unconditioned response


  Automatic response to a stimulus.
• Conditioned stimulus


  Stimulus that can trigger a conditioned response
• Conditioned response


  Learned response to a previously neutral stimulus
• Recipe for classical conditioning


  1. To produce a CR, the CS and the US must be paired a number of times (conditioning trial)

  2. CS is first presented then the US

  3. Each time the US occurs, a UR occurs

  4. A CR is demonstrated when a response similar to UR is elicited even when CS is presented alone
• Pavlov believed that the CS comes to substitute for the US (stimulus substitute learning); thus, the UR and the CR are always the same kind of response
• However, later research suggests that Pavlov's contention that CRs are always a "mini-me" of URs is incorrect
• Excitatory conditioning


  Conditioning in which the NS is associated with the presentation of a US; results in eliciting a certain response
• Inhibitory conditioning


  Conditioning in which the NS is associated with the absence or removal of a US; the CS comes to inhibit the occurrence of a certain response
• Appetitive conditioning


  US is an event that is an organism will generally approach and seek out
• Aversive conditioning


  US is an event that an organism generally avoids
• Acquisition


  Process of developing and strengthening a CR through repeated pairings of a NS with a US
• Extinction


  Repeated presentation of the CS in the absence of the US (procedure), process is the decrease in the strength of the CR
• Spontaneous recovery


  Reappearance of a CR when a period of extinction is followed by a rest period
• Stimulus generalization


  Tendency for a CR to occur in the presence of a stimulus that is similar to the CS
• Stimulus discrimination


  Tendency for a response to be elicited more by one stimulus than another
• Shenger-Krestovnikova: an experimentally produced disorder in which animals exposed to unpredictable events develop neurotic-like symptoms
• Compensatory response model


  A CS that has been repeatedly associated with the primary response (a-process) to a US will eventually come to elicit a compensatory response (b-process)
• Drug tolerance


  Greater tolerance in settings with the CSs, external and internal CSs associated with the use of a drug cause CRs to counteract the drug before it is ingested, making it less effective
• Drug withdrawal


  Heroin-related cues: relaxing effect of heroin → tension and agitation, presence of drug-related cues is one of the strongest reasons why people continue to battle cravings long after using the drug
• Higher order conditioning


  Conditioned stimulus-response association that piggy back one another
• For classical conditioning to take place, the organism must be able to use the CS to predict whether reinforcement will occur
• Overshadowing


  Only more salient component is conditioned in a compound stimulus
• Blocking


  Presence of an established CS interferes with conditioning of a new CS
• Rescorla-Wagner theory


  Conditionability of a particular US-CS pair depends on the potential associative strength of a given CS and the potential associative strength of a specific US
• Associative bias: associations between certain kinds of stimuli are more likely to be made than are associations between others
• Latent inhibition: a familiar stimulus is more difficult to condition as a CS than is an unfamiliar (novel) stimulus
• To be most effective, reinforcers and punishers should be: Immediate
• A reinforcement is a consequence in which increases the likelihood that the preceding behavior will occur again.