Hi everybody, welcome back to psychology and continuing our learning. Ironically, this is our learning chapter. In this chapter, we are going to do a lot with investigating the different ways that we learn from birth.
Three different ways. We learn through observation, of course. We learn through associating stimuli in our environment, which is classical conditioning. And we also learn through reinforcement and punishment, which is called operant conditioning. Learning fits very nicely into psychology because the way that we learn helps us to adapt to our environment.
And, of course, the ability to learn allows us to cope with changing environments. So it's absolutely essential to study learning in any kind of introduction to a psychology course. Let me tell you.
This is going to be one of those chapters where it's going to take a lot of applied practice. So the terminology can be kind of tough in this chapter. The ideas are simple in a way. You know, it's easy to understand how learning happens.
It becomes difficult when we want to start to map out exactly how it happens with respect to the correct terminology. And so this PowerPoint presentation is quite long because it introduces you to all the concepts and there are a lot of them. But more importantly, I have many slides in here that help you with applied practice.
And so you can, maybe as we get to them I'll remind you, but maybe you can work through these voice presentations. And when I get to the part where I'm asking you to apply the information, I give a lot of examples, maybe you can pause the slideshow and think about what you think the answer is. before I give it. So I'll remind you as we get there, but just know that this is a very applied chapter, and it can be tough, and so we'll do a lot of examples.
So like always, we're going to start with a quick definition of learning of our chapter, and when we talk about learning, you read about this, as I know again, because you read the chapter before you listened to these, learning is this relatively permanent change in your behavior. or it's a relatively permanent change in knowledge that you have. Whether it's from practice or experience, it is a relatively permanent change.
Once learning happens, depending on what it is that you've learned, you might never forget that again, that lesson again, or that example again, or that knowledge again. But sometimes we do. So depending on what the information is, we may learn it and remember it for life. We may learn it and remember it for the hour it takes to take our exam. But it is a relatively permanent change in our behavior or knowledge.
What we're focusing on is learned behavior rather than automatic responses. And as I mentioned before, learning really helps us cope to our environment. And sometimes we don't truly learn a lesson until we're mature enough to learn it or until we really want to learn it.
So sometimes you've been exposed to things many times before the learning takes place. Some people call it a learning curve. There is a curve to learning, but some of that depends on the material, some depends on your motivation, your cognitive abilities, and so forth.
So what we're going to do is talk about these different ways that we learn. In general, what we're going to focus on at the beginning of the section is on associative learning. And anytime you talk about associative learning, it means that the reason that you've learned something is because you're associating two events together.
There are two different ways that associative learning happens. One of them is when you associate two stimuli together in the environment. That's what we're going to cover first.
That's classical conditioning. So two things that happen in your environment get paired together, and then you come to expect something from that association. So, for example, whenever I go in my refrigerator and my dog hears cheese wrappers, My dog comes running into the kitchen so fast because she hears the cheese wrapper and thinks she's getting cheese. Because she associates that sound with me giving her that food.
That's classical conditioning, associating two stimuli together in your environment. But another way associative learning happens is through associating a response and its consequence. So it's different than classical conditioning.
This time it's operant conditioning. This is basically learning through reinforcement and punishment. So we have some kind of a response, and there's a consequence of that response.
We're rewarded for our behavior or we're punished for our behavior. But still, the reason why the learning happens is because you associate the response and the consequence. So two different types of associative learning. As I mentioned, we're going to focus on...
classical conditioning first, followed by operant conditioning and observational learning. We learn in all three of these ways from the time we're born. So if you remember in the lifespan development chapter, we talked about how a child is born already with a lot of neurons in place and a lot of neural connections already in place.
And then we watched how quickly those neural connections improved and how wide that network. became pretty quickly in their life. So we are born with the ability to learn in all three of these ways and actually there's a lot of evidence that classical conditioning type learning happens in utero too. But we learn in all of these ways and we're ready to learn in all three of these ways once we're born.
Alright, so let's focus in on classical conditioning. We're going to spend quite a bit of time on classical conditioning. The best example of classical conditioning is course Pavlov's dog I think the best way to learn this information and really truly make it stick is by picking an example that you really like that makes sense to you whether it be Pavlov's dog or something I give you as an example during this lecture pick an example you really know and you like and it makes sense to you or pick your own you would have learned by classical conditioning every day pick an example and then learn the terminology along with that example and then that example can serve as your prototype.
We're going to use the Pavlov's Dog Study as your prototype as we first start learning the terminology, and then we're going to practice it a lot. So it's going to take a little bit of time to get through this, but do really pay attention and really work out these applied problems. When we go through the notes, sometimes it can seem like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. But when I give applied examples, you're like, ooh, I thought I got it. Let me check this out.
So do work through all the examples. It's really going to serve you well. All right, so we already mentioned that classical conditioning is associative learning, and you're associating two stimuli in your environment.
This is the previous example I gave of my dog Ruby running to the refrigerator, running to the kitchen when she hears a cheese wrapper. And she knows that sound of a cheese wrapper compared to any other wrapper. She's got that down.
And so that's an example of associating two stimuli and anticipating an event. She... notices me opening that cheese drawer, she hears the wrapper, she starts to anticipate me feeding her cheese. So that's the association and that's the learning that happens.
So we're going to use Pavlov's dog as our prototype. But lightning signaling thunder is another really good example of flaskle conditioning. A lot of people don't mind lightning, but they don't like the thunder that follows it. That loud booming thunder can really get in, you know, get you in your gut and make you nervous.
I happen to not like the lightning. But the lightning signaling thunder is an example of associating two stimuli and then coming to expect the thunder because you see the lightning. Tickling a child playfully is another example that I'm going to use. Kids learn to associate that tickle or a little motion you make or some phrase that you say with knowing they're going to be tickled, and before you even touch them, they go off running.
So that's another good example of associating. to things in your environment. So here's Pavlov's dog, as you can see. And what I wanted to mention to you is you might remember in your reading that Pavlov wasn't even trying to study classical conditioning.
Actually, Pavlov is a physiologist, right? He's a physician, or was a physician. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize in the early 1900s.
because of his study with digestion. But what's most interesting is what he set out, and I have this picture on here just so you can look at what was really going on in his study. Pavlov set off to investigate the digestive processes of this dog. He really wanted to, he put this tube in the dog's glands and digestive organs and he was watching how much bodily secretions would come into this container. when food powder, meat powder, was presented to the dog.
So he was really trying to notice salivation, how quickly the dog starts this digestion process. Well, what he actually started noticing is that the dog would start to salivate before the food was even present. Sometimes he would salivate to the dish just before the food was put in it, or the person bringing the food, or the footsteps they associated with the person bringing the food.
So he came to think to himself, you know, this is really more about digestion. This is really about learning. This dog is starting to anticipate food. because of a pattern, because of associating two events in his environment. And so this really brought about this whole idea of classical conditioning.
This was not Pavlov's intention at all. He was studying digestion, not learning. But it is one of the most classic, amazing studies that happened in the area of psychology by someone who was not even a psychologist. In the area of psychology by someone who wasn't even a psychologist.
Every time I put this picture up, it makes me laugh. Because one semester a student said to me, so seriously, it was adorable, said, you know, it's really amazing how they taught this dog to drink out of a straw. So when you look at that picture, it does sort of look like the dog is drinking out of a straw, but he's not. That tube is really measuring the amount of saliva that's being secreted. But I always share that story because I think it's kind of adorable.
All right. Now, when we use that example, let's use that example of Pavlov's dog. And. you know, that dog learning to anticipate the food because of the association between the food or the sound of the dish being set down or the footsteps of the person, learning to associate that with being fed, just like my dog associates the sound of the cheese rack for being fed.
We're going to use that as our prototypical example and start talking about the terminology. So there's two... types of learned or unlearned relationships that happen here that you need to be familiar with. And this is where the terminology kicks in. There's going to be an unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response relationship.
And when you see that arrow there and the UCS arrow UCR, the way that that reads is the unconditioned stimulus causes an unconditioned response. So this is a causal type relationship. When you see unconditioned, think unlearned.
So an unconditioned stimulus response relationship is one that's kind of a reflex, something that's happening that doesn't necessarily need to be taught. So let's define these terms. The unconditioned response, the unlearned response, is something that naturally occurs to some environmental stimuli. And that environmental stimuli then is called the unconditioned stimulus.
So the UCR, the unconditioned response, is whatever the response is to some naturally occurring stimulus in the environment. So you can think of it as a reflex. And using Pavlov's example, when that dog salivates because food is put in his mouth, that's an example of an unconditioned response.
The dog salivated, that's the response, the unconditioned response to the food, which makes the food the unconditioned stimulus. So something was present in the environment that caused a response to happen that nobody needed to teach. That dog did not need to be taught to salivate when the food's put in front of him. It just naturally happens.
So this is the unlearned stimulus-response relationship. That's critical in classical conditioning. There has to be an unlearned stimulus-response relationship, a UCS that causes a UCR.
That is a critical relationship. in classical conditioning. If that relationship doesn't exist, then the association that needs to happen for this type of associative learning wouldn't be able to happen. The unconditioned stimulus, for a proper definition, is whatever stimuli triggers that response we just talked about.
So again, it naturally and automatically triggers some kind of response. It's an unlearned stimulus-response relationship. It's a reflex. So in the case of Pavlov's dog, it's the meat powder.
That meat powder being presented automatically makes that dog salivate. Just like every time I smell microwave popcorn, I crave microwave popcorn. That same kind of trigger. Now, my example I gave you with the popcorn is a little bit more of a learned response, but it became and becomes an automatic response.
So typically, you think of this UCS-UCR relationship as a reflex, but sometimes... It could be something that was previously learned but becomes so innate that it seems like a reflex. Okay, so it's kind of like a double type of classical conditioning.
We'll get back to that again in a minute. So remember that unconditioned stimulus-response relationship is one important relationship. There's a second important association, and that's the relationship between a conditioned stimulus and a conditioned response. Remember, unconditioned means unlearned. which means conditioned means learned.
So this is a learned association, and this too is necessary for classical conditioning to happen. But this has to be taught. So the conditioned response is a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus. That word gets very, very complicated.
The wording gets very complicated at first. But in a couple slides, I have some diagrams I'm going to show you that I think are really going to help. So if you feel like you're getting caught up in what stimuli is that?
Is it a conditioned stimuli? Is it an unconditioned stimuli? Is it a neutral stimuli?
Don't get caught up too much in the words yet. But... And wait until we get through some more examples, and it'll make a lot more sense. But there is this stimulus-response relationship that is learned. So it's a taught relationship.
Something used to be neutrally in the environment, but now it's a learned stimulus-response relationship. So for Pavlov's dog, salivation is also the conditioned response. Remember, the unconditioned response was also salivation.
but the conditioned response is also salivation, but this time it's to something learned. It's to a learned stimulus, not an unconditioned stimulus. That learned stimulus, that conditioned stimulus, used to be irrelevant or neutral. That NS means neutral stimulus.
So the conditioned stimulus used to be neutral, but after associating it enough with the unconditioned stimulus, it starts to trigger a response. And when this thing that used to be neutral triggers a response by itself, it's no longer neutral, and it's now a conditioned stimulus. So a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus once learning happens. And again, this sounds so complicated, and I guarantee you, give it a couple minutes and it'll be crystal clear. So for Pavlov's experiment, um...
One of the things he did is he started to make a tone or ring a tone, ring a bell, however you want to say that. He started to use a tone that was neutral to the dog. You know, that tone didn't really elicit a response from the dog.
Maybe the dog's ears would perk up or, you know, put his head up and look around at the tone, but it didn't elicit any kind of specific response. But it got paired continually with the meat powder. And then pretty soon that tone alone triggered the dog to salivate.
So what was once neutral, the tone, becomes something conditioned, a conditioned stimulus, because it produces a response in and of itself, just because of the association it had with something else that automatically produced that response. That's the conditioned stimulus. One other definition, so there's five terms you need to know.
to be able to map out classical conditioning. And the last one is a neutral stimulus. I've already mentioned what this is.
This is any kind of stimuli in the environment that doesn't elicit any kind of specific response before classical conditioning happens. But once that pairing happens, once the learning happens, the neutral stimulus begins to create a response all by itself. And that's when it changes from neutral to conditioned. So we'll see that mapped out in just a minute. This is kind of a phrase you can use or think about when you want to describe classical conditioning to something.
This has a lot of the terminology in it. So classical conditioning happens in general when a neutral stimulus, something that's neutral in the environment, like the tone, is paired with an unconditioned stimulus, something like the meat powder that causes a response all the time. until the now formally neutral stimulus elicits the response by itself. That is when classical conditioning happens. So Pavlov's dog didn't respond to the tone at first, but because that tone was paired with the food, every time the food was put down, a tone was sounded.
Every time the tone was sounded, there was food. They were paired together enough that pretty soon, as soon as the dog heard the tone, the dog would start to salivate because they expected, the dog expected the meat. So what was once neutral becomes a conditioned stimulus.
That's when classical conditioning happens. So let's look at this quick little visual that's in your book that shows how classical conditioning happens, but I need to sort of show you how I wish they would have worded something a little bit differently. So let's look at this diagram together.
This is trying to visually show you classical conditioning. So at the very top it says before conditioning. The food.
automatically elicits the dog to salivate. Because that happens automatically and it was not a learned relationship, the food is considered the unconditioned stimulus, I'm calling it the UCS, here it says US, the unconditioned stimulus and it automatically elicits the unconditioned response, the UCR. Here they're calling it a UR, but I like putting the C in there.
Okay, and still before conditioning, the tone elicits no response. Here's where I wish they would have written something a little differently. If the tone is not eliciting a response yet, it really is a neutral stimulus.
So where it says condition stimulus under the tone at the top third of the diagram, I would cross that out and say neutral stimulus, because that tone is not producing any kind of specific response. Then if you look at the next part of the slide, just a little under the half, you know, where that first line is dividing it. It says during conditioning. The tone followed by the food elicits the dog to salivate. Again here, I wish under the tone it said neutral stimulus there.
Because the tone is still neutral, it has to be paired with the unconditioned stimulus. So the tone is paired with the food. The tone is paired with the food.
The tone is paired with the food over and over during conditioning while the learning is happening. and it elicits the salivation. But really, truly, what's eliciting the dog to salivate there is the food.
So that salivation is still an unconditioned response. It's still that UCS-UCR relationship, but we're starting to pair something neutral with it. That's the conditioning piece.
Now, finally, at the bottom where it says after conditioning, this makes sense. The tone elicits the dog to salivate all by himself. So notice that salivation is still a response.
This time it's in response to a tone by itself. No food is present at all. That means the dog has learned that that tone means food is coming. He's anticipating the food.
So the tone now, instead of being neutral as it was all above, it is now a conditioned stimulus because it's eliciting that response, and that response is now called a conditioned response. So even though the response has been the same all the way through this diagram, before conditioning, during conditioning, after conditioning, it's always the same response of salivation. Only after conditioning is it called a conditioned response. Only if the dog salivates to what used to be neutral is it a conditioned stimulus response relationship. So that's a pretty good visual for you.
I just wish that they called the tone neutral up until the very bottom. Here's where I think this diagramming is going to help you. I draw these out usually. So I try to create these slides for you to really be able to see what I would normally draw out on a board to work through with students. I draw out a couple different relationships, and then I when I'm working through an applied example, I draw out these relationships knowing I need to find these five pieces, and I find those five pieces to name what's going on during conditioning.
So this is in general what you need to think about. The fact that every single time you're looking for a couple different relationships. One is that the unconditioned stimulus produces the unconditioned response or causes the unconditioned response.
This is that unconditioned, unlearned, naturally reflex type unlearned relationship. Some stimuli in the environment naturally produces a response that is unlearned. During classical conditioning, you pair.
that unconditioned stimulus with something neutral. That neutral stimulus has nothing yet. It doesn't do a single thing yet. It doesn't elicit any kind of response yet.
But it's paired over and over with the unconditioned stimulus. And then over time, that neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned response that elicit, or I'm sorry, a conditioned stimulus that elicits a response. And then what was once neutral is no longer neutral. OK?
But before that, before it becomes neutral, leaves being neutral, it's still neutral. So let me show you that again. There's some, oh shoot, I want to show you the slide. I'm going the wrong way.
Hang on one second. I want to go backwards for just a minute. So think of that one more time. There's some kind of stimulus in the environment. that naturally produces a response.
Unlearned relationship there. That stimulus is paired with something that was neutral in the environment. Through that association, eventually, if classical conditioning happens, what was once neutral becomes a stimulus that produces the response all by itself.
If that's the case, it becomes called a conditioned stimulus-response relationship, and that is no longer neutral. It is now a conditioned stimulus. So the responses will always be the same, but what stimulus the response is from is different.
So if the response is to something in the environment that naturally causes that response, it's the UCS-UCR relationship. If the response is to something that had to be taught as a stimuli, that it's a condition-stimulus-response relationship. So the responses are always the same, and the neutral stimulus and the condition stimulus are one and the same as well. The condition stimulus only happens once learning has happened. So let's do an example.
One of my very favorite examples of classical conditioning is the role that music plays in movies. You could watch a movie without music. and it would be so dull. Music is used in such an interesting way to get our emotions all excited.
So sometimes music is really happy. Upbeat music is used because something happy is happening on the camera or in the movie. Sometimes kind of like scary movie music is used so that you are lurking. You know someone's lurking around the corner just by the music. Sometimes sad music is played when there's a sad event.
So Music is used all the time to elicit different emotions in us. It's a great example of classical conditioning. So, of course, one of my favorites is the Jaws music.
Most people have seen Jaws or know about Jaws. Gosh, it was a movie so long ago. It was out when I was a kid.
And if you don't know Jaws, let me just quickly tell you that it was basically filled with a lot of shark attacks, hence the name Jaws, and, you know, different people would be attacked in the water. There was always a lot of blood. Sometimes that person you would know died.
Sometimes they were just attacked by the shark. But either way, it wasn't pleasant. And a certain type of music was always played with these shark attacks, that na-na, na-na, na-na type music. Well, that music originally is just music that somebody wrote. It didn't mean there was going to be a shark attack.
But by pairing it with shark attacks, pretty soon that music alone made people They'd hear that music in the movie and cover their eyes, thinking, oh my gosh, here comes the shark attack. Or maybe they'd be all excited if they were, you know, a 12-year-old boy thinking, oh, yeah, yeah, shark attack. Either way, that music eventually would create this sort of fear or this worriedness in people where they were expecting a shark attack. So let's map that out. This is how you can work through examples.
So let's look at that. So there's going to be an unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response relationship. In the example with the Jaws theme, there's going to be a shark attack that naturally elicits fear or, you know, disgust or whatever it is.
Like I said, if you're a 12-year-old boy, maybe you get all excited. But let's go with the shark attack elicits fear. Well, that shark attack was paired over and over again with theme music.
That theme music was nothing significant, nothing exciting. Nice music, nothing exciting. Pretty soon that music alone caused the fear.
And when that happened, the theme music was no longer neutral, but rather the condition stimulus. So you notice that the responses are exactly the same, fear and fear, but the fear from the shark attack is natural. You don't have to necessarily be taught that.
So that is natural fear. unconditioned stimulus response relationship unlearned. When the fear is from the theme music, well that had to be taught.
And it was taught because the theme music was paired with the shark attack over and over and over again. And through that pairing, through that association, as soon as the music alone elicits the fear, then the music is no longer neutral. It becomes a conditioned stimulus response relationship.
So a couple things that you need to think about in mapping these out. And we're going to do another example, but a couple things you need to think about. Previously, I showed you the definitions of all of these terms, these five terms. I do want you to be somewhat familiar with these definitions, even, you know, just on their own, knowing that the unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response are that unlearned relationship, and the conditioned are the learned relationship. So to be able to know those definitions in general is very important.
but it's also extremely important to apply them to a problem, and this is what we're going to practice a little bit more of. The other thing I want you to always remember is that the UCS and the NS always have to be paired together. So if I were to ask you a question on the test that says, what two stimuli must be paired together for classical conditioning to occur, you would automatically think to yourself, oh, the two stimuli are the unconditioned stimulus and the neutral stimulus. Those get paired over and over again, and through that pairing, pretty soon that neutral stimulus is no longer neutral because it elicits the response by itself and it becomes the condition stimulus.
So if you can't remember all of those words, I think if you map things out like this, it helps tremendously. So let me show you another example. One of the other things that I really like to do is when my kids were little, I loved tickling them. And actually, usually when you get tickled, not everybody enjoys being tickled. But sometimes people really like to be tickled.
It's funny, it's fun, it's silly, but sometimes people hate it. But I would always do something with tickling. Like I would make these little, I can't show you, but I'd move my fingers a little creepy like, I'm going to get you. And I would pair that with tickling them.
I'd say, I'm going to get you and tickle them. Well, it doesn't take long for a child to pick up on the fact that the I'm going to get you with the little fingers moving means oh my gosh I better run if I don't want to be tickled right it's a pretty quick learning that happens there so let's map that one out being tickled typically elicits a laugh I recognize not everyone is ticklish but for someone who is ticklish that being tickled typically elicits a laugh when you pair that with something like I'm gonna get you pretty soon that pairing, the I'm going to get you alone causes that response of laughter. When that happens, that I'm going to get you goes from being neutral to being something that's a conditioned stimulus response relationship.
So that neutral stimuli goes away. So again, you can map them out in that way. It's different for everybody what's the easiest to pick out of a scenario and we're going to practice some of these now.
For some people, the easiest thing to first pick out is a response. And if you can pick out the response, you know that the UCR and the CR will always be the same. It has to be the same for classical conditioning.
So if you can pick out a response, label the responses first, and then say to yourself, okay, what caused that original laugh? Well, tickling, of course. Okay, so that's kind of the reflex, the UCS, the unlearned contin...
Contin... Sorry, the unlearned stimulus response relationship, the UCS-UCR relationship. Then you say to yourself, well, what caused them to laugh after conditioning happened? Well, it's the I'm going to get you.
And if you know the CS is I'm going to get you, then that was also once a neutral stimuli. Those are always the same. The NS and CS are always the same. So you might go about solving a problem that way. Or sometimes what's easiest to pick out in a problem, and again, we're going to practice these in just a second.
is the pairing. You think to yourself, what two stimuli are paired together in this whole scenario? And it's always going to be a UCS and an NS. They always get paired together.
So if you can figure out what's being paired together, then you can label the UCS and the NS, and then everything else falls into place. So let's practice some of these. And I would love it if after we read this example, you try either to diagram it on paper, or just figure it out on your own, however you want to do it.
I'd love for you to try to figure out these relationships. So I want you to find the unconditioned stimulus, the unconditioned response, so the UCS, the UCR. Find the neutral stimulus, the NS, and then find the conditioned stimulus, the CS, and the conditioned response, the CR.
Find those five terms. So maybe you want to quickly grab a piece of paper, if you don't have one in front of you, and write those things down. Write down UCS, UCR, NS, CS, CR.
Okay, those are the five terms we want to find. Every morning, Jeremy flushes the toilet while Julia is in the shower. The shower water becomes very hot and causes Julia to jump back.
Now, whenever Julia is in the shower and hears the toilet flush, she jumps back before the water temperature changes. So this used to happen all the time when I was a kid. Now we have, I'm going to call them water spouts, shower heads, that's what I want to say.
Now we have shower heads that are temperature control. So very, very infrequently do you have that reaction when a toilet flushes, does the water get really, really hot? But that used to happen all the time when I was a kid.
So that's my example here. So what do you think, what do we want to pick out first here? You know, read through this and think to yourself, what stands out?
What kind of response is happening? Or what two things are being paired together? So this would be a great time, if you want to pause what I'm talking about, try to figure out those five terms on your own and then check them with me. All right, so here are the answers. The unconditioned stimulus is the hot water, and that hot water causes the response of Julia jumping back, right?
So that response of jumping back out of the way, originally, before being taught, is to the hot water, scalding her. Nobody needs to be taught that when they're scalding hot water to get out of the way. That's natural instinct.
That's a reflex. So that's the unconditioned stimulus-response relationship. What was neutral in this whole scenario is the toilet flushing. But because the toilet flushing was paired with the UCS, so again, I don't have this diagrammed here.
I just have these, you know, listed. But hopefully you drew out a diagram and tried to figure this out first. That toilet flush got paired with the hot water. The neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus are always what is paired together. And pretty quickly now, whenever Julia hears the toilet flush, she jumps back.
before there's even the hot water scalding her skin. So just to the toilet flush alone, she jumps back. That's the learned stimulus-response relationship.
Okay, let's try another one. I have, I think, five of these just to make sure. Here's another scenario. Kyle, notice I use all of my children's names.
Kyle was at a new Asian restaurant in town and decided to sample stink bugs, a known Asian delicacy. Later that night, Kyle comes down with the flu and is very sick. However, Kyle developed a dislike for the food and feels nauseated whenever he sees a stink bug. Okay, so just so you know, this is a tougher one.
But this happens all the time. We have food aversions because you might get sick, but it's not from the food, but you associate it with the food you ate. A lot of people have food aversions. I could not drink hot tea for the longest time because when I was a kid, My mom, like maybe when I was 12 years old, my mom let me get tea at a restaurant, and I felt so excited and adult because she always drinks tea.
And I was sick that night, but it had nothing to do with the tea. But I couldn't drink tea for years because of that association. So this is a really good applied example.
By the way, I wrote this example because last fall we had major stink bug attacks. I don't know if they happened by you, but there were stink bugs everywhere. And I had never.
seen a stink bug before that I recalled. I didn't know what they were. They were everywhere. And so I was Googling stink bugs one day and it's true.
It is an Asian delicacy. I am not kidding you. Well, okay. Google told me it was an Asian delicacy. So maybe I am kidding you, but Google told me that.
Okay. So in all of my talking just now, I'm hoping that you tried to map out this example. If not, pause real quickly before I, before we go through the answers.
Okay. So we want to pick out the unconditioned stimulus response relationship. This is something that is unlearned.
So in this one, I think the easiest thing to pick out first is a response. And the response is that Kyle got sick. Okay, he got sick. We have to think about what did he originally become sick of?
What made him sick originally is what I meant to say. What did he originally become sick because of? Well, originally, something totally unlearned.
is that he was sick because he had the flu. So the unconditioned stimulus-response relationship is the flu and to be sick or nauseous. But the nausea is because of the flu. Nobody has to teach you to be sick when you have the stomach flu.
It just happens. Okay? But he was pairing together that flu sickness with the stink bug.
So the stink bug was originally neutral. He was happy to try them. It was just a neutral stimuli in his environment. Oh my goodness. I don't know how to turn that off.
Sorry. I apologize. I'm using my daughter's computer and she was getting a Skype call. So he was, she was happy to you to sample that. So it was originally neutral, but through that association over time.
and really later that night because getting sick is a is a you food aversions happen very quickly the stink bug itself caused him to feel nauseous. So Kyle then, whenever he would think of the stink bug or see a stink bug, felt nauseous, that's the learned relationship. So it's this condition-stimulus-condition-response relationship. Okay, here's another one to practice.
Like I said, I have a lot of them. Okay. An individual receives frequent injections of drugs, which are administered in a small examination room at a clinic. The drug itself causes increased heart rate, but But after several trips to the clinic, simply being in the small room caused an increased heart rate.
So this too is a really common, I can't think of the word, common applied example. Sometimes you smell a certain scent and it reminds you of the dentist's office and then you're like, oh. Or certain lights make you remember being at the hospital and maybe that brings back a bad memory so you don't like certain lighting or certain colors. So this is actually a quite common example as well. So pause the computer, pause your PowerPoint, and practice this.
Draw out your diagram or whatever you want to do to figure out all of these relationships, the UCS, UCR, NS, CS, and CR. Here's what's going on here. Again, I think the easiest thing to pick out here might be the reaction, the response. And the response here. is an increased heart rate.
So you think to yourself, well, what causes that increased heart rate naturally that you didn't have to be taught? Well, it says right there that the drug itself causes the increased heart rate. So that's a pretty clear unlearned stimulus-response relationship.
The drug causes this response of an increased heart rate. What was originally neutral? Unless someone has claustrophobia, what was originally neutral for this person? is the small room at the clinic. It was just an examination room.
But because that room was being associated with the drug, now the small room itself will cause that person to have an accelerated heart rate. So the pairing of the small room and the drug administration, that is what now causes the drug, the small room alone now causes that accelerated heart rate. So it's no longer neutral. Okay, this is my second last one. Okay, Geraldine had an automobile accident at the corner of 32nd Street and Cherry Avenue.
Whenever she approaches the intersection now, she begins to feel uncomfortable. She feels very nervous and gets butterflies in her stomach and her palms become sweaty. So again, we need to figure out what's the unconditioned stimulus response relationship, what's unlearned, and what was once neutral in this whole scenario that now causes a reaction.
For me, the first thing I see in this one is the association. Geraldine is associating that intersection with the accident. Before the accident, she probably went through that intersection 100 times and never thought twice about it. But now she associates those two things.
So for me, the association stands out here. Because I know that the unconditioned stimulus and the neutral stimulus are what are associated, the street, that intersection of the streets, used to be neutral, but because of... pairing it with the accident, now she has this response of being uncomfortable. So the accident and the nervousness or anxiety because of the accident, that's the unlearned stimulus response relationship.
So because the response is that nervousness and anxiety, we know that's also going to be the conditioned response. The responses are always the same. So we think to ourselves, what now causes that nervousness and anxiety? And it's the intersection. So the intersection used to be neutral, and it becomes conditioned because now the intersection itself causes that nervousness, just the sight of it.
So it used to be neutral, and it's no longer neutral, which means classical conditioning. That association has happened. My final classical conditioning, just in case you haven't had enough, my final one is another one that's really common.
So it's summertime. Romeo and Juliet are in love. They enjoy being together and are thoroughly relaxed and content in each other's presence. The hit song that summer is Buckets of Love, and they hear that song often when they are together. That fall, every time Sarah hears the tune Buckets of Love, she experiences the same feelings of relaxation and contentment that she felt when she was with Romeo.
So this is an example of maybe they spent the summer together, and then fall comes around and they have to go their separate ways back to college. And so that song, remember we talked about music elicits all kinds of emotions in us. That song now brings certain feelings in and of itself associated with Romeo.
So here we go. So being with Romeo naturally causes Juliet to feel relaxed and content because she's in love with Romeo, so she's happy. Now, at some point, that was a learned relationship, right? Unless it was love at first sight, she learned to be relaxed and content around Romeo. So at some point that happened.
But now in this scenario, we already know they're in love, and so that's a natural relationship. Something that did not have to be taught now that they're already in love. The song, however, was a new hit song.
It didn't really mean anything when it first came out, but because of its association with being with Romeo, the song itself now causes her to feel relaxed. So remember, the responses are always the same, and the neutral stimulus and the conditioned stimulus are always the same, and it's the UCS and the NS that are paired together. Alright, I think we have enough examples of that. So now that we understand how to think about classical conditioning, and again I want you to know that terminology and the associations in general and then also apply them to examples. I guarantee you I will give you some applied examples to work through on the exam.
Now that we understand how to do that, we also need to talk about the fact that learning happens at a certain time. and learning can be extinguished and maybe come back again. So there's different processes of conditioning. So Pavlov then started trying to understand this whole idea of, okay, I know now when learning is happening, what are we going to call this whole process? So there's five processes of conditioning.
All right, so we had five terms we have to know, five things we have to pick up and apply example. we also have five processes of conditioning. The first is called acquisition.
Acquisition is basically the moment when learning happens. So if you think about when does learning actually happen, well, it's when you find you have a conditioned stimulus response relationship. That is the moment learning has happened because that conditioned stimulus used to be neutral.
It's no longer neutral because learning has happened. That's acquisition. So the initial stimulus-response relationship that's learned, that's the moment when learning has happened. Another way you can say that, because I do want you to understand this terminology in general and be able to talk about it, when we associate a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus so that the NS elicits a CR and becomes a CS itself, that's a mouthful, but think of your diagram.
That's when acquisition happens. So if you think of your diagram, it's when you notice that there's a plus sign between the unconditioned stimulus and the neutral stimulus. Those two things are paired together.
I put a plus sign between them, and I often circle them together. That pairing happens enough so you can cross out the NS, and it becomes a CS eliciting a CR. That is the moment when acquisition happens, the moment when learning first happens.
So... So Pavlov realized that just because something is acquired, just because a learning has been acquired, it doesn't mean that learning always stays. So in his example with the dog, you know, he had taught the dog to expect food when he sounded a tone, right?
He expected food because he conditioned that tone to be a conditioned stimulus for the response of saliva. Once acquisition happened, he then started to sound the tone, the dog would salivate. He sounded the tone, the dog would salivate.
He sounded the tone, the dog would salivate. Pretty soon, he sounded the tone, and the dog's like, wait a second. You keep sounding that tone, and nothing's happening. You keep sounding that tone, and you're not giving me food.
And eventually, that tone became neutral again. So you can say this a few different ways, and that's extinction, by the way. You have to have acquisition happen first before extinction. You have to acquire something before you can extinguish it.
So you can think of extinction as the diminishing of the conditioned response. If the conditioned response doesn't occur anymore when the conditioned stimulus is present, it's as if you turn that arrow upside down and the conditioned stimulus becomes neutral again. And the reason that happens is because you stop that pairing. So where that plus sign is between the UCS and the NS, you stop pairing things together, and pretty soon that conditioned stimulus is going to turn right back around into a neutral stimulus. So again, once you acquire the conditioned response, so once conditioning happens, once acquisition happens, if the conditioned stimulus, the tone, happens repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus, the meat powder, then that conditioned response...
salivating to the tone weakens and eventually disappears. That's extinction. Another way to look at extinction is, let me do another example here.
So that's the first example I gave you. So let's say there's a bell or a tone and you ring the bell but you stop giving food. Eventually, salivating to the bell alone becomes extinguished.
The bell becomes a bell. The bell does not sing the food anymore. So the C S becomes an NS again. Another example, if we look at the music in Jaws, what do you think is going to happen if about, you know, four or five times in the movie you hear the dun-dun-dun-dun, but nothing happens?
First time through, you probably close your eyes still or get excited if you're a 13-year-old boy. Dun-dun-dun-dun, nothing happens. Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh. And you're like, all right, I'm not going to expect that shark attack anymore.
You've extinguished it. The music now becomes neutral again. So that's another example. If you play that music without the scary thing happening, then you're probably going to stop expecting the shark attack.
And this is how they get you in scary movies all the time. I don't see scary movies because I am a baby, so I can't see scary movies anymore because they make me very, very nervous. But if you love scary movies, part of the way they get you all the time is they get you all geared up to expect something, whether it be because there's a creaking staircase or a door that you just know something is behind.
And at first in the movie, there's always something behind the door that jumps out at you, or there's always something that happens when you go up the creaking staircase, or there's always something that happens when they play that music. But then they stop that association. and they get you to forget about it, and then out of the blue again, boom, they hit you with that scary thing again. They extinguish that conditioned response just long enough to make you get, you know, nice and relaxed.
That's what they do in scary movies. Okay, so we have the process of acquisition when learning first happens, when you first have that conditioned stimulus-response relationship. After acquisition, something could become extinguished, but...
What's interesting and what Pavlov noticed, let's go back to Pavlov's example. He extinguished that behavior. He kept sounding the tone or ringing the bell and not giving food.
So the dog stopped caring about the bell and the tone. So extinction happened. And so for Pavlov, he's like, okay, unlearned.
We're done. Unlearned. Dog forgot everything.
But then one time, after some time had passed, a tone sounded. where you rang the bell again and all of a sudden the dog started salivating. Even though the dog had seemingly forgotten about that association between the tone and the food, the dog started salivating. That's called spontaneous recovery. So it's basically after a rest period, after some period has gone by, after there's been an extinguished response, all of a sudden there's a reappearance of that response.
So in other words, all of a sudden that bell or that tone signals food. That is spontaneous recovery. So acquisition has to happen before extinction. Extinction has to happen before spontaneous recovery. But that CSCR relationship suddenly reappears.
That is spontaneous recovery. And what spontaneous recovery really tells us is that the word extinction seems too final. Extinction makes us think gone, done.
That learned relationship is never coming back. But really what it suggests is that extinction is suppressed. It suppresses the conditioned response rather than eliminating it.
So rather than thinking that conditioned response to salivate to the bell is gone, which is what extinction sounds like, instead it's just suppressed. And that learning that happened is still within us and might come back just spontaneously for no reason. Spontaneous recovery does not mean we paired those things up again. Because remember, the CS becomes the NS again.
So it's not like we get the response again because we start pairing together the bell and the food. No, no, no, no. We never pair that together again. It just happens automatically kind of out of the blue.
That spontaneous recovery. There's two other processes of conditioning. So one of the things that Pavlov also investigated was whether or not there could be similar stimuli in the environment that might elicit a conditioned response without being.
taught. So in other words, Pavlov originally used a tone that he sounded to train the dogs. Then he used another device like a metronome, or he might have done it the other way, but he used a metronome or some other device that made a similar sound as the tone, but it wasn't the thing we trained the dog on.
Something similar in the environment, something similar as a stimuli elicited that response without ever being trained, without ever being taught. That's the idea of generalization. So once a response has been conditioned, so once we have a conditioned response, a stimulus-response relationship, which means acquisition, then similar stimuli elicit a similar response. But there was no original pairing of that new stimuli and the unconditioned stimuli. So we didn't train the bell and the food, but the bell is just close enough to the tone that it elicits a response to.
Okay? So a buzzer or a bell similar to the original tone elicits salivation for Pavlov's dog, even though it was never taught. It was never paired with the meat.
The last process is exactly the opposite thing, which is discrimination or differentiation. That is, we do have the ability to distinguish between stimuli. So this is the opposite of what we just said with generalization. With differentiation, this is the ability for Sure. Pavlov's dog or the ability for my dog or a person to distinguish between that conditioned stimulus that produces the response and a stimulus that's similar.
All right. So in this case, maybe Pavlov's dog heard a doorbell ring, but could tell that that doorbell was different than the tone. So that doorbell did not make the dog think, oh, yay, I'm getting fed.
He discriminated between the tone and the doorbell. Or children can discriminate between tones of parents'voices, or parents can discriminate between different cries that children have. So we learn to discriminate stimuli as well.
So there are some stimuli in the environment that are similar enough to elicit the response, the conditioned response, that's generalization. And there are stimuli in the environment different enough that they don't elicit that response, that conditioned response. All right. So those take care of the five different processes of conditioning.
So, you know, run through those examples with those five processes. Understand those definitions in general. But also, if I were to say to you, you know, that there is a condition-stimulus-response relationship, you would know that that's acquisition.
And you would know that if something that was once a CS becomes an NS again, you would know that that means, oh, extinction happened. We no longer expect that. the response. Know that, oh my gosh, suddenly that relationship reemerged, that spontaneous recovery, and so forth.
Be able to know that with general terminology and also with an example. So I showed you what happened in Pavlov's example with all five of those terms. Go back to one of our other examples, whether it be the scary movie music, or I'm going to get you and tickling, or you know maybe the buckets of love song whatever kind of strikes a chord with you go back to one of those other examples and look at those five terms and make sure you understand when each happens okay um one last thing about classical conditioning before we move on to another type of learning is the application of classical conditioning in the real world a little bit um as i mentioned fear is is a is a an emotion that we have that conditions very easily.
And when we condition fear to happen, it's very difficult to reverse that conditioning. Once you acquire fear from an object, it's hard to extinguish that fear. We know this to be true, but there's a very famous study that you need to be aware of. This is one of those you have to know this study before you can walk out of an intro to psych course.
kind of study that was done and the little baby's name was little Albert that took place in the study. And I have a little picture there that you can see. a little Albert and this is something that really happened there really was a little baby whose name was not really Albert they called him little Albert and John Watson is the researcher that you should associate with the little Albert study of fear conditioning associate John Watson with it so Watson conducted this experiment to show what he thought to be true which is He was a behaviorist and if you remember behaviorists only are interested in observable behavior and they believe that every important behavior is because of learning, because of conditioning.
Everything we do is because we've learned it. That's what a true behaviorist believes. And that a true behaviorist is John Watson. We've seen his name before.
So he did this study where he conditioned this little baby, this 10-month-old baby, to fear a white rat. And you read about this in your book, so think about it before I tell you about it. But think about it.
In this study, that child was naturally afraid of a loud noise. You do not have to teach a child to be afraid of a loud noise. A loud noise is always going to startle a child, a small child.
A loud noise is always going to startle me, by the way, too. But a loud noise is always going to startle a child. So that's an unconditioned stimulus-response relationship. The unconditioned stimulus being a loud noise, the unconditioned response being the fear, the crying, right?
The upset nature. Well, he paired that loud noise with a white rat, a little white rat. Well, originally, this little white rat did not elicit anything in the baby. This 10-month-old baby had never been exposed to a white rat, so the baby wasn't nervous around it.
We get nervous around a little white rat because a little white rat to us signifies maybe that you're in a dirty environment, right, because we've been taught. that a dirty environment means there's going to be a rat or something, right? So that's been taught to us.
But for this child, nothing. It was a little creature. Fuzzy little creature. But he paired that rat being presented with the loud noise.
So very quickly, anytime that child would see that rat, even when there was no loud noise, he would start to cry. Little Albert would start to cry and get very upset. That's classical conditioning.
By definition, that's classical conditioning. So... what he also did then is show this whole idea of stimulus generalization because soon a little white bunny rabbit, a fuzzy white mask, all kinds of fuzzy white things made little Albert cry and be fearful without ever being paired with that loud noise. So that shows generalization. So by the way if you look up little Albert because you worry about this little child He actually died at a young age, so you can't really know the outcome of this fear conditioning when he was a child.
But again, fear is a very difficult emotion to try to extinguish. So who knows? He might have always sort of had this little bit of fear of rats or bunnies or anything like that that wouldn't be typical of a person. But he also, John Watson also showed discrimination. It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but he also put on masks that should be really scary, really scary masks, one that would make me nervous because I associated with scary movies.
But he showed the baby like a scary mask and the baby would just look at it like, oh, OK, look at you. Because fear was taught to the white fuzzy stuff. Fear of that mask, a scary mask, the baby was never taught.
So it also shows discrimination. That's one application that you should know about. Another really good application of classical conditioning is advertising. Do we, what do we typically see in a print ad or on a commercial for products that they want us to buy? So, for example, let's say there's cologne.
We have no idea what this cologne necessarily smells like. Maybe in a magazine it has a little scent with it that you can sample. But on a TV commercial, or some magazines, they don't always have the scent of the cologne. Let's say there's not a little scratch and sniff thing.
What is always advertising a cologne? It's probably going to be a really attractive man. So we don't have to be taught really what attractive is. We all, we have different preferences, but we all find certain things attractive.
We talk about that in the social psychology chapter. But we all... agree on some common features that are attractive. They pair that attractive person with the cologne. or a celebrity with the cologne.
We think, oh, that person is attractive. That makes me kind of excited. Or, oh, that's a celebrity.
I like that person. And all of a sudden, you start to pair the cologne with the celebrity or pair the cologne with the attractive man. All of a sudden, you think, oh, that cologne.
I bet that's a really nice cologne. I think I'll buy it for my husband. Advertising is full of examples of classical conditioning. And one of the applications I think is really interesting is that Sometimes, and this is only a small piece of it, by the way, but classical conditioning can explain why some people become addicted to drugs or alcohol or smoking or whatever.
So my example here is with my brother, actually. My brother, a different brother than I talked about with the adoption, my other brother, he used to smoke, but he only smoked when he was out with his friends at a party or out with his friends at a bar. because he is associating the smoking with drinking and the drinking with having fun. And so he would smoke whenever he was out at a party, but he never smoked any other time. So he wasn't really addicted to smoking physically.
He was addicted to smoking psychologically because he associated with having a good time. So it's an example of why sometimes people might be addicted to a drug. physiological way which is kind of interesting to me.
Okay moving right along that is one way we learn and that's the way that takes the longest to talk about by the way if it makes you feel any better that was the longest discussion we're going to have. What we're going to talk about now is switching gears a little bit to a different type of learning and it's operant conditioning. Well operant conditioning is another type of learning through association so at the beginning of this discussion, I mentioned that we have two types of associative learning.
One is we associate to stimuli in our environment. We just did that ad nauseum. That's classical conditioning.
This is now associating some kind of a response and a consequence. So we have on the screen operant conditioning. It's all about consequences. This is all about the consequences of our actions.
Are we rewarded for our behavior? Are we punished for our behavior? It's that association that maybe changes whether we're going to do that behavior more or do that behavior less.
That's what operant conditioning is. Before we can really get into it, though, I need to show you a certain principle called the law of effect. So this is not yet operant conditioning, but this is what operant conditioning stems from.
The law of effect basically says this. Anytime you have a response followed by a satisfying consequence, you're probably more likely to do that response again. But when you have a response followed by something less satisfying, then you're probably going to do that thing less often.
Makes a ton of sense. That's, in general, the law of effect. And Thorndike is the person that you should associate with the law of effect. Okay? Now, I have in parentheses here a puzzle box for cats.
And you saw these in your book. Thorndike did a lot of studies. where he created this particular puzzle box that cats had to be able to make their way through.
And he used reinforcement and punishment, so he would have a positive satisfying consequence and a less satisfying consequence, so kind of like a reward and a punishment, and would see how the rat would do. Not the rat, the cat. Sorry, it's a cat, Thornducted Cat.
How the cat would perform. Well, Skinner is who you should associate with operant conditioning. So just like you associate Pavlov and Watson with classical conditioning, you should associate Skinner with operant conditioning.
Skinner used what he understood of Thorndike's theory of the law of effect, and he developed what he considered operant conditioning. And Skinner is the one that used rats. And so this little rat maze at the bottom, and again, there's my favorite little rat. I've shown you this picture before. He's got his glasses and a map and a compass to try to get through the maze, which I think is cute and clever.
Really what Skinner did is would put rewards at different places in the maze and would see how long it took the rat to learn the right way through the maze. All because they're looking for the punishment, not the punishment, all because they're looking for the rewards, the reinforcement. So Thorndike is the law of effect, it's that general idea.
Skinner followed that law of effect, that theory, and developed operant conditioning. And operant conditioning is quite Easy at first. We completely know learning from rewards and punishments. We remember learning from being rewarded.
We get good grades maybe because we were given money for our A's, which I find ridiculous, but I'm going to get over that. I guess that is a good motivating tool. We know what it's like to be reinforced with hugs and kisses when we do something well.
And some of us might know a thing or two about punishment, too. So we know that we associate behavior and a consequence. that's operant conditioning in a nutshell.
We're going to do things that lead to rewards and we're going to avoid things that lead to punishment, typically. We are not going to get into the specifics of this, but that acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination, those five processes of conditioning that we talked about with classical conditioning also work for operant conditioning. I want you to just know it for classical conditioning. That's what I really want you to be able to use those terms with.
But just know in the back of your head, conditioning is conditioning. Whether it's classical conditioning or operant conditioning, those five terms work. They make sense. Okay, let's look a little bit then at what happens with operant conditioning.
And again, we can move a little quickly through this beginning stuff because we understand the idea of consequences. Sometimes a response might lead to a neutral consequence in which learning is not going to happen. Sometimes a response is going to be followed by a reinforcer, and any time there's a reinforcer, it's whenever whatever the consequence is increases the frequency of the response. That makes a ton of sense now, but pretty soon we're going to talk about positive reinforcers and negative reinforcers, and sometimes we think negative means bad, and it doesn't in this case.
Any time something is a reinforcer, it's because it increased the frequency of a behavior. or the frequency of a response. Punishment always decreases the frequency of a behavior or response.
So we're going to talk about positive punishment and negative punishment. Even though positive punishment makes it sound like it's something good, anytime there's punishment it means that it's a consequence where the behavior or the response will be decreased because it's not a good thing. So just keep in mind reinforcer and punishment.
Reinforcers always increase the frequency of the behavior. Punishers always decrease the frequency of a behavior. Let's talk about reinforcement first. As I mentioned, there's two types of reinforcers.
There are positive reinforcers, such as food attention, money approval. Whenever you see positive, when we're talking about learning, whenever you see positive, think add. Instead of thinking positive with respect to having the connotation of something good, Don't think of it as good.
Think of positive as adding something, like a plus sign. Think of positive as a plus sign adding something. So when you give a positive stimulus, a positive consequence, like you give food as a reward, you give attention as a reward, you give approval as a reward, money as a reward, whatever it is, if it is a positive reinforcer, a reinforcer means it's going to increase the frequency of a behavior.
Positive means you're adding something to increase. that behavior. Negative means you're removing something. So again, don't think of negative as having a bad connotation.
In the learning realm, negative means you're removing something. So if it's a negative reinforcer, you're removing something to increase the frequency of a behavior. Well that must mean you're removing something undesirable. So for example, And actually this does not happen in my house, unfortunately. But let's say that I totally nagged my kids to clean their room.
That does happen. The nagging happens. Let's say I completely nag my kids to clean their room. And the only reason they clean their room is because they want me to stop nagging them.
Well, I got the desired behavior. I got them to increase that behavior of cleaning their room. That's a good thing. That's a reinforcer. But it's a negative reinforcer because I removed something aversive.
which made them want to keep up the behavior. Okay, so the removing of something negative is a negative reinforcer. In both cases, whether it's a positive reinforcer or a negative reinforcer, both positive and negative, and here I used a plus and minus sign rather than the words positive and negative, to remind you positive think plus, adding something in, negative think minus, subtracting something out, removing something, both positive and negative reinforcers increase a behavior because they are reinforcers.
Their whole point is to increase the frequency of behavior. They are rewards of some kind. So let's look at an example, and this is kind of a silly example, and I have others.
This is just a silly example for you to think about. Let's say you put coins into a vending machine, and you receive a pop, a soda. Well, you're more likely to put coins in a vending machine again in the future because you were once rewarded with what you wanted. So this is positive reinforcement.
The frequency of me putting money in a vending machine in the future is probably going to go up because something positive was added, was a positive reinforcement. Something reinforced my behavior, and because it was added to the situation, I was given a cold can of pop, then I was reinforced. That's positive reinforcement. This is my silly example of negative reinforcement.
Let's say in the middle of a boring date, you say you have a headache. And the date ends early. Ha ha.
Probably likely to use that have a headache excuse again in the future because I got out of a date I didn't want to be in. So I'm probably going to use my headache tactic later in a future boring date. That's negative reinforcement. The frequency of me using that behavior again has gone up, but it's because something unpleasant was removed. I got out of that date.
and I did not want to be in that date. That is negative reinforcement. Wow, little pop sound there. I didn't know it was going to be in there.
This is just a quick little chart that's also in your book that shows how the same behavior and the same outcome can happen, but sometimes through the use of positive reinforcement, adding something to the situation. sometimes through negative reinforcement removing something aversive from the situation so let's say my whole goal is that I want the behavior of studying to increase I want students to study more and let's say one method of doing it is through positive reinforcement reinforcement is reinforcement it always means I'm increasing the frequency of the behavior so notice the up arrows at the end. The increase, the change in the behavior is in the increase direction.
But using positive reinforcement means I am going to add something to the situation that increases the behavior of studying. Let's say I give you my approval when you study. Good for you.
Great job studying. I'm really proud of your study techniques. I'm so happy you made note cards because it really seems to work for you.
That approval is something I'm adding to the situation to make you want to study more. Let's say that what I do instead is I remove my disapproval. Now, first of all, I know you don't probably care if I disapprove of something you do, but perhaps if someone else is disapproving of you, that would be hard on you.
So let's just pretend you care about my disapproval. And when you study, instead of giving you my approval, I remove my disapproval. I stop nagging you to study, or I stop.
giving that look like come on already and do your work if I remove that disapproval and it makes you want to study more because that final behavior was increased to know its reinforcement It's negative reinforcement because I removed something aversive to increase the frequency of a behavior So my whole point here in this slide is the change in behavior if it increases it is a reinforcer You just have to decide if that reinforcement happened because something was added to the situation in which case it's positive reinforcement or something aversive was removed from the situation, in which case it's negative reinforcement. Now, when talking about reinforcement, we have to think about how often should we reinforce something for a behavior to change. You could reinforce every single time something happens. We could use continuous reinforcement.
If we use continuous reinforcement, then we may or may not get the desired outcome. Most likely what's going to happen is learning is going to be very quick, but then extinction is also going to be quick. So remember I mentioned that extinction and acquisition and spontaneous recovery, all those terms play a role here as well.
Let's say every single time. Let's use a different example. Hmm. What do I want to use as an example? I'm trying to think of something I might have just reinforced recently.
Let's say it's, oh, I know. Oh, I totally know. My kids and myself, by the way, we are awful at putting our shoes away.
Awful, just awful at putting our shoes away. Let's say that I tell my son, every single time you put a pair of shoes away, you get to add an extra minute to your bedtime at night. And so he puts his shoes away, puts them away, puts them away.
And trust me, he's a lot of shoes. And so putting them away is going to add on minutes to his bedtime by the end of the week, let's say. So if I reinforce every single time, he's going to learn pretty quickly. If that reward is a good one for him, if he's interested enough in the reward, he's going to learn quickly and put his shoes away all the time.
But as soon as I take away that reinforcement even once, even if one time I say, aha, just kidding, I'm not really going to add time to your bedtime. he is going to stop putting his shoes away probably. If you continually reinforce every single time a behavior happens, even one time removing that reinforcement, that behavior might extinguish. So continuous reinforcement has its place if you want learning to happen quickly, but if you want learning to maintain itself, if you want to sustain learning, continuous reinforcement really isn't the best way to go.
Instead, partial reinforcement would work better. Reinforcing responses sometimes leads to learning. Now the learning happens, that acquisition happens a little slower.
However, it's more resistant to extinction. It's learning that's going to sustain itself. Because the person does not really learn because of the reward so much. They learn because they do desire the positive outcomes and they don't know when they're going to come. So it's not just about the reward, it's also about the anticipation of the reward.
So there are four different types of partial reinforcement. So these are going to be called schedules of reinforcement. So if you reinforce continuously, you don't have to talk about schedules of reinforcement.
You only talk about these when you reinforce sometimes. So when you reinforce sometimes and not always, then you talk about a partial reinforcement schedule. There are four of them.
There's a lot, right, of everything. There are four of them. But these are going to make a ton of sense.
By definition, they're going to make a ton of sense. Practicing them can be a little tougher, but we're going to practice them. So sometimes reinforcement is going to happen after a number of responses. So when you see ratio, because there's going to be ratio schedules and interval schedules, when you see ratio, think a number of responses has to happen for the reinforcement to happen. So ratio, think number.
Fixed ratio means there's a specific number of responses that have to happen, and if it does, you become rewarded. So, for example, let's say you're a salesperson, and you know that every 15 sales, you get a bonus check. That gives a high rate of responses because you know as soon as you get to 15, you get a bonus check.
So you consistently work hard to get to that 15. Get there, You are constantly responding, constantly trying to make sales to get to that 15. That's a fixed ratio scale. It's based on the number of times I do a behavior, the number of times I make a sale. And it's a set number of times. Every single 15 sales, I get a bonus check.
That is a high rate of response. But what if it's a variable ratio schedule? Ratio still means number of responses. You get rewarded because of a number of responses that you do. But this one's variable.
I don't really know exactly the set number of responses. I just know it's going to happen at some point. It's like an average number of responses, but I don't know what that number is. So gambling is a really great example of a variable ratio schedule. Think of this.
Now, I don't know if any of you have been to a casino recently or know about all these casinos, depending on how old you are. But it used to be that you pulled a lever, right? You would put money in, pull a lever, and you would see if you won anything.
Some casinos still have that lever that you can pull, and most of them, though, you just touch a button. Let's do the pull the lever, though. It's more fun.
So think about gambling. You know eventually one of the times you do that behavior, a certain number of times you pull that lever, sometime you're going to be rewarded, but you don't know when. If you knew when... You would sit behind someone at a machine and you would wait until they pulled the lever almost enough times to get rewarded. You hope they'd walk away from the machine and then you would pull it two more times and you know you'd get rewarded.
That's not how gambling works. You don't know when the reward is coming, but you know if you keep up those behaviors, you keep doing them, it's based on the number of responses. So I keep pulling that handle.
Eventually, I'm going to get rewarded. It is the absolute highest rate of responding. So if you really want to encourage behavior, this is the way that you reinforce it.
It's the highest rate of responding. Now, the fixed ratio also had a high rate of response. This is the highest rate of responding, and it is the absolute hardest type to extinguish.
So it is hard to extinguish this behavior because you know that reward is coming, and it's based on the number of times you do something. So you keep plugging away. You keep doing it because you know that reward is coming.
That is why gambling is so incredibly addictive. The other way you might reinforce, instead of based on a ratio schedule, you might reinforce on an interval schedule, in which case now you're concerned with a period of time. So interval means time, ratio means number of responses. Fixed interval means I know when reinforcement is going to happen. It's going to happen after a certain amount of time.
The absolute best example of this is your paycheck. I get paid every other Friday. Every other Friday I get paid.
Whether there's two pay periods in a month or three, every other Friday I get paid. It's based on a fixed interval schedule. It doesn't really matter my performance.
It's not based on the number of classes I teach. It's not based on the number of times I give a test. It's not based on a behavior.
It's based on time. Now, of course, I have to perform well to keep my job, but my reinforcement, my paycheck, is based on two weeks. going by and I know it's every two weeks so that's a great example of a fixed interval schedule. What's interesting about a fixed interval schedule is it does not induce a high rate of responding and it doesn't induce a consistent rate of responding. What's really going to happen here is things are based on time so oftentimes you respond more frequently the closer you get to your reward.
So as an example of this let's say that that my child knows that at the end of the week on Friday night, or let's make it Sunday, by the end of the weekend on Sunday, Sunday's payday for allowance. By the way, I don't give allowance. The kids don't do enough. But let's say that every Sunday I gave an allowance, and my kids just knew by Sunday your little jobs better be done or else you're not going to get your allowance.
For the most part, most of the time, kids are going to try to get their chores done, but right at the end, right before they get their payday. Instead of that consistent responding that the fixed ratio or the fixed interval ratio provides, when it's based on interval, I'm sorry, I don't know if I said that right, the fixed ratio or variable ratio, those give a consistent rate of response. When it's based on time, you don't get as consistent rate of response.
And then the last one is variable interval. On a variable interval schedule, it's based on time again, but it's an average amount of time, and you don't know how much time. So an example, and this is kind of a silly example that I came up with, but it's harder to come up with variable interval examples, is a pop quiz.
Now, I recognize that that's not really reinforcement to you. You're not super excited for a pop quiz, but let's say that at the beginning of the semester, I tell you there's going to be a quiz. quiz, there's going to be four quizzes, you don't know when they're going to be, but there's going to be four quizzes.
You know it's based on time in that at some point by the end of the semester we need to get these four in, but we don't know when they're going to come. That's an example of a variable interval schedule. This does provide for a steady rate of responding compared to a fixed interval, because fixed interval you know when that time is coming.
And this is slower extinction than fixed interval as well. but it's still not the slowest type of extinction. That really happened with that variable ratio.
That example of gambling is really the most addictive schedule of reinforcement. It's the hardest to extinguish. So when you're studying for these, remember that you have interval schedules and ratio schedules. Interval are based on reinforcing after a certain amount of time. Ratio is after a certain amount of behaviors.
So fixed, I mean there's interval and ratio. Then there's fixed or variable for each of those, and you know what those mean. So you end up with four schedules based on that little dyadic relationship between those two variables.
All right, so let's practice some of those. So this is, again, one of those points where I have some examples for you, and I want you to determine the schedule of reinforcement. So I'm going to give you an example, and maybe you'll want to pause and figure it out. before I show you the answer. So decide whether this is fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, or variable interval.
Getting a free flight after accumulating 10,000 flight miles in a frequent flyer program. Okay, so you are getting rewarded with a free flight. When do you get rewarded after the free flight?
Is it based on a number of behaviors or is it based on time? Well, you have to accumulate 10,000 miles, which means it must be based on number of behaviors and you know the number of behaviors. You have to accumulate 10,000 miles. So it's a fixed ratio schedule. How about this one?
Employees are subjected to random drug testing. Hmm. Well, the random piece to me definitely screams variable, right?
I don't know when it's going to happen. And I also don't know, this is also going to be based on time, right? It's going to happen.
I don't know when it's going to happen, but it's based on time. It's not because... certain number of people have been caught with drugs that now we're going to have a random drug testing. It's just based on a certain amount of time has elapsed and it's about time the dogs be sent in to do the random drug testing of the lockers in school or you're in the workplace and a urine sample is going to be asked for randomly after a certain period of time because it's a random drug test policy. Getting a paycheck at the end of every week.
This one's really straightforward. Hopefully right away you understand this is fixed interval. So at the end of every week, you get paid.
It has nothing to do with the number of behaviors you've done. It's not the number of sales. It's not, you know, the number of widgets produced. Widgets. The number of products produced.
It's really after one week, and it's fixed. Fixed interval. How about this one?
The mailman must visit the same number of mailboxes each day in order to go home. So he's got his mail route or her mail route, and he or she has to hit a certain number of mailboxes before their route is over. So.
It is based on a number of behaviors, so it must be ratio, and it's fixed ratio. And this is my last example of the schedules of reinforcement. The star baseball player gets a hit about every 3 out of 10 times at the plate.
What do you think? Is this ratio or interval? Okay, right, it's definitely ratio because it's based on the number of behaviors. The player has to go up to the plate to hit.
So it's based on behavior. And it's about every 3 out of 10 times. So this is a variable ratio schedule. All right.
So that's a little bit of practice with schedules of reinforcement. Those schedules of reinforcement are only when you do partial reinforcement. I am not reinforcing every time. It's on a certain schedule. And you decide if it's on a schedule for ratio, the number of times a behavior is done, or it's a schedule of interval of time.
something is reinforced after time has elapsed. Alright, that takes care of reinforcement. But remember, reinforcement is reinforcement. If a behavior increases in frequency, it means reinforcement took place. And it could be positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.
Positive means we add something to the situation that someone likes to encourage their behavior. Negative means we remove something they didn't like, which encourages their behavior. In both cases, it's reinforcement.
Let's talk a bit about punishment. So, When you add an unpleasant stimulus, that is positive punishment. So again, don't think of positive as good, because good punishment doesn't really make sense. Think of positive as adding something. Punishment is punishment.
I do it. Oops, I've got to get my battery plugged in. Let me pause for a second here.
I'm sorry. Let's see if I can pause. Ooh, I don't want to do that. I want you to just pause.