PSYC 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Operant Conditioning, Behaviorism, Reinforcement

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1000
• Professor: Lisa Giguere

Document Summary

Behaviorism: started with proponents that mental life was much less important than behavior as a foundation for psychological science. Neutral stimulus: a stimulus that does not trigger a response. Unconditioned stimulus (us) and response (ur): a stimulus that triggers a response naturally, before/without any conditioning. Conditioned stimulus: a stimulus that will trigger the learned cr. Conditioned response: the learned response triggered by the cs. How can we tell that the acquisition has occurred: the ur now gets triggered by a cs (and has become a cr) Timing: for the association to be acquired, the ns needs to repeatedly appear before the us. The diminishing of a cr that occurs when cs is presented without the us. After extinction and following a rest period, presenting the cs alone often leads to a spontaneous recovery. Generalization refers to the tendency to have conditioned responses triggered by related stimuli.