Biological Psychology

1
Simple learning Habituation and classical and
operant conditioning
2
Habituation

• Very basic learning
• A stimulus is repeatedly presented
• E.g., a light or a tone
• With no significant consequence
• Result Initial response to the stimuli
  diminishes with continued presentation
• E.g., 1st car alarm goes off everyone rushes to
  help - Car alarms go off every day no one
  rushes anymore - habituation

3
Habituation

• Turkeys panic according to direction of movement
• Long necked geese and ducks common overhead
  habituation clam
• Novel short neck panic
• Schleidt (1961)

Panic!
Calm
4
Classical conditioning

• The famous Pavlov (1935)!
• Dripping meat juice into dogs mouths elicits
  secretion of saliva and stomach juices
• That is
• An unconditioned stimulus (UCS) - food
• Elicits an unconditional response (UCR)-
  salivation

5
Classical conditioning

• Pavlov presented a neutral stimulus (bell ring)
  just before food (UCS)
• The bell elicits no response at first but
  eventually becomes associated with food so that
• Presentation of the bell ring (now a conditional
  stimulus CS) alone elicits salivation (now a
  conditional response CR)

6
Classical conditioning summary
Before Training
US (food)
UR (saliva)
CS (tone)
No response
Training
CS (tone)
US (food)
After Training
CS (tone)
CR (Saliva)
7
Instrumental conditioning

• Sometimes termed operant conditioning
• A form of associative learning where the animal
  is instrumental in what occurs
• For example
• In a simple maze a rat is rewarded by turning
  left with food and this increases the chances the
  animal will turn left subsequently entering the
  maze

8
Instrumental conditioning
50 chance of either direction
?
9
Instrumental conditioning
100 trials later!