Chapter 1

• Behavior: internal or external observable, measurable activity
• Learning: Experience that causes a permanent change in Behavior
• Classical Conditioning: Learning through association between two stimuli that are paired together. It is an elicited response, or an involuntary response
• Operant conditioning: learning through consequences of behavior, reinforcement or punishment. It is an emitted response or a chosen response.
• A B C's of Behaviour:

  a- Antecedent (precedes behaviours)

  b- Behaviour

  c- Consequence (follows behaviour)
• Empiricist: assumes that a person's abilities are learned
• nativist: assumes that one's abilities are present at birth (Plato)
• Aristotles four laws of events being associated:

  Similarity

  contrast

  contiguity

  frequency
• Descartes: Believed that humans operate on two different fields: the mind (not automatic) and the body (automatic)

  • Only humans possess free will
  • Helped establish reflexive behaviors
• Structuralism: a goal of identifying the basic elements of the mind and brain
• Introspection: research method where participants subjectively described thoughts, emotions, and sensations
• William James is the Father of Functionalism, which is the belief that the mind evolved to help us adapt to the world around us.
• Charles Darwin popularized the idea of natural selection, the idea that organisms adapt to environmental factors, and pass on those characteristics to their offspring
• John Watson was a proponent of Bahviorism. The study of environmental influences on observable, measurable behavior.
• Stimulus-Response (S-R) theory: Connection or relationship between specific stimulus and specific response
• Hull: saw the S&R connection as the building blocks of behavior. Coined the term Neobehaviorism, which infer the existence of intervening variables from connection between environment and behavior
• Tolman: Cognitive Behaviorism also uses Intervening variables ti explain behavior. Holds the idea that we use cognitive maps (mental representations of spatial surroundings). And that rewards can speed along learning but are not required for it
• Bandura enphasized social learning: which enphasizes people learning through observation
• Bandura taught Reciprocal determinism–assumes environmental events, observable behavior, and thoughts and feelings mutually influence one another
• Skinner is the father of Radical Behaviourism: He believed that the environment is a large part of behavior. rejects internal events to explain behaviour
• •Operant conditioning resembles evolutionary principle of natural selection in that:

  – Adaptive (lead to reinforcers) behaviors increase in frequency

  – Non-adaptive (do not lead to reinforcers) decrease in frequency.

  – Behaviors are selected through the consequences they produce in the environment
• Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB)- the empirical and experimental study of the basic principles of behavior
• Applied behavior analysis (ABA)–interventions and solutions developed from the basic principles of behavior are applied to improve socially significant real-world problems