The Process of Conditioning

After reading through chapter six, I began reading chapter seven of our psychology text titled, Learning. Learning is something we do everyday even we don’t realize it. While reading chapter seven, I learned that there are three different types of learning, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and cognitive learning. Classical conditioning stands for two types of stimuli linking providing us the tools to have a reaction; this is the type of learning that involves automatic behaviors. Operant conditioning is the type of learning that causes a change in behavior, in reaction to consequences; this is the behavior that involves choosing of choices. Lastly, cognitive learning is the obtaining of new skills, behaviors, and information through

Classical conditioning is a form of learning that is taught to us through experiences we encounter in our lives. It involves outside stimuli to trigger the condition we have learned to expect. For example, the sound of a lunch bell would trigger our stomach to start growling soon after hearing the bell ring. The expectation of food to come soon after hearing the bell and satisfy our hunger is what makes our stomach growl. This is something learned over time. Expectations can be both good and bad. Sometimes these negative experiences cause us to have certain behaviors when we are reminded of such an event.

The child interpreted the sound of the hammer hitting the steel bar in coincidence with the visualization of the white rat. Even in nine months the child had been programmed by repeatedly hitting the bar and visual stimulation of contact with the white rat, had now become an unconditioned stimulus response by automatically changing physical and emotional outcomes from the child (Porter, B., 2013).

Evaluative conditioning is a form of conditioning whereby a neutral stimulus is paired with a positive stimulus and then the response to the positive stimulus is measured. (Brace, 2014) This type of conditioning can be applied in the real world. One use for evaluative conditioning is in advertising, whereby a product (the neutral stimulus) can be paired with positive imagery (the positive stimulus) in order to elicit a positive response from a viewer of consumer

Is it possible to rouse fear from a stimulus that at first caused no such response? Classical conditioning is a type of learning where a response is produced from combining a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus to produce an unconditioned response. Ivan Pavlov did a famous study, pairing the sound of a bell with food to produce salivation. After a while, just the sound alone would produce salivation. “Little Albert”, an infant that belonged to a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home was experimented on by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner. Watson and Rayner claim that “Little Albert” was a healthy, unemotional, and stable child. The experiment began with the introduction of a white rat, which alone, produced no fear response. At 11 months and 3 days, the rat was paired with a loud noise. The loud noise frightened “Little Albert”. He began to associate the fear he experienced with the white rat since it was paired with the loud noise.

Learning is a fascinating concept. Everyone does it and everyone always has, but not everyone explores its eclectic process. That being said, through the course of history, it has been studied vehemently. Ivan Pavlov, a behaviorist, had some groundbreaking research on subclass of learning called classical conditioning. Coming across it incidentally, he discovered that dogs would salivate not only from eating food, but anything associated with them getting fed. Anything unnatural in their feeding process, he termed as the conditioned stimulus, which would result in the conditioned response of them salivating (Daniels). Though classical conditioning seems rather simple and commonsensible, the information psychologists have gathered from it has been revolutionary. It has shown psychologists the very basics of how we learn and adapt as organisms and opened the door for other studies (Myers 268). According to psychologists, learning is the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors (Myers 268).

Skinner (1948) was also influenced by Thorndike’s (1898) operant conditioning of cats and went on to use similar techniques to study conditioning in rats. Skinner studied how behaviour that is rewarded will be repeated, unlike behaviour that has a negative consequence. Skinner (1948) placed hungry rats in a ‘skinner box’ with a lever, when the lever was pressed, food was released and the rats soon learned that when they pressed the lever they would be rewarded. Skinner (1948) then placed rats in another box and administered them with an electric current. If the rats pressed the lever in this box it would stop the discomfort of the current. After repeating the rats quickly learnt to press the lever. Skinner (1948) argued that all human behaviour can be learned through operant conditioning (McLeod 2015).

This lab tests different forms of conditioning on a virtual rat named Sniffy. In this experiment we began with the virtual rat completely unconditioned and then worked towards getting Sniffy to pull the lever and get food on his own. We went through many steps to complete this task starting with getting Sniffy to notice the food chamber, the lever, and finally having Sniffy realize he can obtain food whenever he wanted by pressing the lever. Then, pushing it further, we made him press the level two, three, four and then five times to receive one pellet. All of these steps tested the idea that receiving the food as a reward will allow Sniffy to realize the benefits of learning and conditioning himself to do things that have a positive outcome more.

Siegel, Hinson, Krank and McCully (1982) did a study to determine if environmental cues was a factor in heroin overdose in rats. They argued that conditioning may occur between environmental cues surrounding an organism and the time of drug administration, which in turn affects tolerance and overdose. In this study, they believed that the effect of heroin would be the unconditioned and the conditioned stimulus is the environmental cues associated with using heroin (was once the neutral stimulus before being paired with the effects of heroin). If a drug is administered frequently with the same environmental cues, an association is made between the NS and the CS. Once this association is made, a conditioned response of anticipatory physiological

Elsner and Hommel (2004), test the hypothesis that learning of relationships between actions and perceptual consequences is accomplished by using associative learning. Stage one of the studies on action-affect learning, required participants to respond to arrows with key presses that were followed by a distractor tone at a period of either 50, 1000, or 2000ms. In stage two, respondents were required to respond to the previously irrelevant tone. Condition one highlights consistencies between tone-key press relationships and the learning phase. Whereas the other condition portrays inconsistencies. In terms of contiguity, they concluded that temporal contiguity is an important mechanism in both animal and human associative learning, (Elsner &Hommel, 2004). However, they argue that relying solely on contiguity would not obtain valid results – supporting Rescorla’s argument that contiguity is not sufficient enough in explaining associative learning. Although, Rescorla concludes that contiguity is not an adequate explanation of associative learning, more modern research suggests it is a collaborative factor. Elsner and Hommel (2004) conclude that action-effect acquisition is dependent on temporal proximity of action and effect on the contingency or frequency of their co-occurrence.

The significance of nature and nurture has been a prolonged debate that has caused quite a controversy and the discoveries made on this topic have made harder to determine which side is the most crucial. Multiple experiments and research studies have been conducted to prove one is better or stronger than the other and they continue to be conducted. As a species, human beings inherited DNA from our ancestors, but what impacts our actions the most is our environment. The predetermined genes are impactful, but it is what one makes of it that shapes oneself. The path is driven by the human being. The way we carry ourselves out is affected by the choices we make, but the way we have evolved mentally comes from the nurturing of our caretakers.

Classical conditioning is the theory that involves a subject learning a new behavior by the process of association. A naturally occuring stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus) is paired with a response (the unconditioned response). Then, a neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus) is paired with the unconditioned stimulus and eventually the conditioned stimulus produces the initial response of the unconditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus being present. The response, therefore, becomes the conditioned response. This study had a major influence on the psychological study of behaviorism. “Behaviorism is based on the assumption that learning occurs through interactions with the environment” (Cherry 1). Classical conditioning

The first real-life instance of a psychological concept during my break was during the drive to Missouri to see family. We always bring our dog, who loves to ride in the car. Normally on this road trip, my dog drools a lot when we stop for food. In order to minimize the the drool, my brother thought it would be a good idea to pack dog treats. This time, we would give the dog a treat when we stopped the car to get food. After a few stops, my dog began to get excited and drool when we stopped the car. This is definitely an example of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning to connect two (or more) events, as well as learning to anticipate events (Myers, 2014). This definitely occurred with my brother and dog during our road trip; My dog began to anticipate the treat he would get when we stopped, so

Psychology is a broad subject filled with many different theories, several theories of which that were particularly interesting fall under the topic “The Learning Perspective”. In fact, Learning is described as the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught. This paper takes a leap further into the psychology and true meaning behind the Learning Perspective, as well as its Biological Importance in our everyday lives. The ideology behind his perspective basically revolves around the idea that behavior is trained, conditioned, reinforced and essentially reflexive. Two of the main theories are listed as follows; The Behaviorism theory and The Cognitive theory. Each theory draws a clear distinction about its differences and similarities with its connection to stimuli. For example, in both sub theories, such as Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning, an action is done and a specific response is given. What sets both theories apart are the positivity or negativity of the reward for the action. From this paper, the importance of Learning is discussed as well as the effectiveness of the different theories and its principles that define and set each other apart.

This contributes to psychologists understanding of behaviour as it is an extremely effective method of being able to measure and observe the process of learning in an organism. The action of Acquisition, which can be defined as a neutral stimulus becoming associated with an unconditional stimulus so that it can evoke the same response, can be influenced by a number of factors. The frequency of a pairing can have a huge impact on the strength of the response. The more frequent, the stronger the reaction. The object in question can also have an impact on the firmness of the association, due to some objects or fears being more attainable than others. For example, as humans we are much more likely to develop a fear of heights than we are of pencils. Both of these influences confirm that the associations being made in the brain are very sensitive and subject to change.