Classical conditioning

Question 1

Describe classical conditioning and how it is used in everyday functioning

Answer 1

• A process used by organisms involving acquiring knowledge from their experiences and it creating long-lasting changes in their behaiviour, abilities and knowledge.
• Differs in each organism depending on their biological, cultural, cognitive and social aspects
• Is an adaptive behvaiour allowing us to predict future consequence beased on past experiences and use this to approach the new situation with knowledge

Question 2

Differentiate between habituation and sensitisation and provide relevant examples

Answer 2

Both are a type of non-associative learning, however habituation involves the continual occurrence of a stimuli which gradually decreases the responsiveness to it whereas sensitisation involves a heightened attention and responsivity to a sudden, suprising stimuli and sensitivity to it does not decrease over time

Question 3

What do spontaneous recovery and rapid reacquisition suggest about the extinction process?

Answer 3

A conditioned response once learnt, can never be fully extinguished and is just suppressed until reexposure or being relearnt

Question 4

How does the process of a learned fear response demonstrated in little albert relate to phobias and other anxiety stress disorders?

Answer 4

Alludes that phobias and anxiety stress disorders could be a direct result of conditioning. Phobias could be a result of pairing the fear with an UCS and anxiety stress disorders being an anxious/stressful feeling being paired with a UCS

Question 5

Describe the 4 types of reinforcement

Answer 5

Positive reinforcement: produce behaviour to recieve something pleasant
Negative reinforcement: produce behaviour to stop something unpleasant
Positive reinforcer: add something unpleasant to increase behaviour
Negative reinforcer: something unpleasant removed to increase behaviour

Question 6

discuss continuous and partial reinforcement

Answer 6

In continuous reinforcement, each behaviour is reinforced, resulting in a quicker learning process but when stopped, rapid extinction occurs. On the other hand, partial reinforcement invovles reinforcement of behvaiour over a longer period of time and results in a more persistent recall of info.