2007-11-12
Learning: Classical & Operant Conditioning
Learning is any relatively enduring change in behavior as the result of experience. How do you change because of experience? Not permanent, just enduring. So the definition of enduring can be a few seconds to a few years. Behaviorists would argue that you are learning all the time, you are a non-stop loop of learning, and that experience creates feedback that creates reinforcements that keep you doing behaviors, and because of this, behaviorists wonder if you're completely determinist or if you have free will and if you are really making choices. Nonbehaviorist psychologists would say that you have choices, behaviorists think that you are just responding to stimuli.
Initial reaciton to the first photo: Height, romance, business, woman doesn't work, guy is pissed off most of the time, bad dress, exposed shoulder (oh no?), ....
What is your reaction to this blue box? It looks like the blue box has a top to it, as if it is two boxes put together.
Advertizing: pair something neutral to something that has an emotional reaction, this leads people to buy. This creates a basic association.
Fiat Ad (1964) = First impression: fast car, hot summer days and maybe women too?
Giving signals / signaling - take a naturally pleasant or attractive object or istuation, associate it with a neutrla object or situation, if done enough times the netural object or situation becomes a mental signal for the pleasant or attractive one. It signals that the naturally pleasant or attractive object or situation is about to appear on the scene.
Watson and Little Albert
Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov - 1849-1936 near Moscow. Animal research using living animals. He did some early research on animal digestion. Animals had small incision in jaw to create a channel (fistula) through which saliva would flow and be collected and measured. Pavlov began to research what would happen whenhe rang a bell or sounded a gong just before he put meat powder in the dog's bowl.
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) elicits an unconditioned response (UCR)
Stimulus contiguity - period of acquisition (when the organism is learning, taking on the behavior). The pairings associations need to be done closely in time, this is stimulus contiguity.
The neural stimulus generally needs to be novel or at least an intensive stimulus which is distinctive or strands out in some way.
Spontaneous recovery - after there has been some extinction, the animal is no longer responding, and it sometimes responds.
Higher-order conditioning - a second CS can be paired with a first CS and serve to cause a CR (red light -> tone -> food -> salivation). Chaining is different, with rewarded responses. Higher-order conditioning is more steps, and you can drop the immediate steps, and so a red light means dog drooling or something in higher-order conditioning.
John Broadus Watson
1878 - 1958 taught 1909-1921 at Johns Hopkins University. He believed that all emotions are conditioned. While he was working at Harvard, he had an affair with his assistant student, and so he got fired, but he took his psychology to advertizing. He used what he learned about conditioning and pairing, and he revolutionized advertizing.