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Summary AP Psychology Unit 6 Comprehensive Notes
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Learning- Lasting change in behavior or mental process as result of an experience
- Lasting change cannot be a simple reflexive reaction
- Learning regarding mental processes is much harder to observe and study
- Active learning: observation, direct instruction, physical activities, reading, listening
- Passive learning: trial and error process → we use everyday to find what works, what
doesn’t and what’s the most efficient ways of completing tasks
- Learning covers a broad spectrum of activities → that always leads to acquisition of skills
and knowledge
- Learning: any relatively permanent change in behavior brought by experience or
practice
- When people learn, some part of brain is physically changed to record what they
learned
- Maturation: change controlled by a genetic blueprint
- Psychologists study “learning” to understand “learning styles” → how and why different
methods work for different people
- Also study existence of learning disabilities → why some people have extra
difficulties learning things
- Learning is more than school, books, tests, etc.
- Without learning → life is a series of reflexes and instincts (ie. grunting and turning away
is a reflex VS using words to express disagreement)
- We can’t communicate or have memory of our past or goals for future
- In humans, learning has much larger influence on behavior than instincts
- Learning represents an evolutionary advance over instincts
- Over time we discovered diff methods of learning
- Habituation: learning not to respond to the repeated presentation of a stimulus
- Ie. emergency sirens in city
- Mere exposure effect: learned preference for stimuli we’ve previously been exposed to
- Ie. parent’s voice
- Ie. if you always drink coca-cola then you would probably choose coca-cola
rather than pepsi
Simple VS Complex learning
- Behavioral learning is described in terms of stimuli and responses
- Simple learning = classical conditioning (more like reactions and reflexes)
- Complex learning = operant conditioning
Ivan Pavlov and Classical Conditioning
- Ivan Pavlov → Russian physiologist (not a psychologist) → originally study salivation
and digestion esp on dogs
- He suddenly discovered classical conditioning while experimenting on his dog
,- Classical conditioning: form of learning where previously neutral stimuli (stimuli that
does not cause any reflex or reaction) gains ability to have the same innate reflex
produced by another stimulus
- Ie. how we get dogs to salivate (neutral stimuli) to the sound of bell LIKE how it
would salivate to food → the bell is gaining the same innate reflex as food
- And it’s not that the dogs think the bell is food but rather the bell indicates
food is coming
- Classical conditioning is basically how to create a reflex (something you can’t
control) through association → ie. salivating is something dogs can’t control
- Reflex: unlearned, involuntary response → not under personal control or choice
- Stimulus: any object, event, or experience that causes a response
- Response: the reaction of an organism
- Dogs would salivate before they were given food → triggered by sounds, lights, etc. →
dogs must have LEARNED to salivate
- Pavlov’s experiment:
- Before conditioning:
- Food = unconditioned stimulus → smth you naturally respond to, no
teaching
- Bell = neutral stimulus → has no association, causes no response
originally
- During conditioning: conditioning = how to train dog to salivate to neutral stimulus
- Pair up neutral stimuli to unconditioned stimulus
- After ring bell, bring up food, then salivate
- Dogs are able to associate these two stimulus → learning to salivate
when bell rings → Bell now becomes conditioned stimulus
- After conditioning:
- Conditioned response because it’s not natural for dogs to salivate to a bell
, - Components of conditioning:
- Neutral stimulus
- Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
- Unconditioned response (UCR)
- Conditioned stimulus (CS)
- Conditioned response (CR)
- Pavlov’s Findings
- Pavlov discovered that a neutral stimulus paired with a natural
reflex-producing stimulus will produce a learned response → even when it is
presented by itself
- Neutral stimulus: Any stimulus that produces no conditioned response prior to
learning
- UCS (unconditioned stimulus): stimulus that automatically (w/out conditioning
or learning) prokes a reflexive response
- Unconditioned = “unlearned” or “naturally occurring”
- Ie. Pavlov used food as UCS because it produced a salivation reflex
- When you repeatedly pair a neural stimulus with UCS → it learns this pairing
- Classical conditioning CANNOT happen w/out UCS
- The only behaviors that can be classically conditioned are those produced by
unconditioned stimulus
- UCR (unconditioned response): response resulting from an unconditioned stimulus
without prior learning
- Ie. For Pavlov, the UCR was the dog salivating when its tongue touched food
- UCS and UCR connection involved NO learning or acquisition
- From unconditioned → conditioned
- During acquisition, a neutral stimulus is paired with unconditioned stimulus
- After several trials, neutral stimulus will gradually begin to have same response
as UCS
- Acquisition: learning stage where a conditioned response comes to be elicited
by the conditioned stimulus
- CS (conditioned stimulus): originally neutral stimulus that gains the power to cause the
response
- For Pavlov, the bell/tone began to produce the same response the food did
- CR (conditioned response): response elicited by a previously neutral stimulus that has
become associated with the unconditioned stimulus
- Although response to CS is essentially the same as the response originally
produced by the UCS, we now call it a conditioned response
- We know learning exist because CS is linked to UCS
- This is acquisition → but acquisition does not last forever
- The moment CS is no longer associated with UCS → this is extinction
- Extinction: diminishing (or lessening) of a learned response when unconditioned
stimulus does not follow conditioned stimulus
- To acquire a CR, we repeatedly pair a neutral stimulus with the UCS
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