PSY 120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Habituation, Little Albert Experiment, Robert A. Rescorla
Document Summary
Learning: the acquisition of new knowledge, skills, or responses from experience that results in a relatively permanent change in the state of the learner. 2 key ideas: learning is based on experience, learning produces relatively permanent changes in the organism. Habituation: a general process in which repeated or prolonged exposure to stimulus results in a gradual reduction in responding. Sensitization: occurs when presentation of a stimulus leads to an increased response to a later stimulus. E. g. people whose houses may have been broken into may later become hypersensitive to late-night sounds that wouldn"t have bothered them previously. Behaviourism was the major outlook of most psychologists working from the 1930s - 1950s, the period during which most of the fundamental work on learning theory took place. Awarded nobel prize in physiology in 1904 for his work on the salivation of dogs.
