Please use this to comment on your reading for sec 3.3. I'll leave it up to you about what and how you would like to comment, however I would ask that you attempt to write using behavioral terms. I will also use this as a way to 'time stamp' that you read the section on or before Thursday.
Let me know if you have any questions,
--Dr. M
I wasn't really sure what to say about this section, so I decided to look up a youtube video related to classical conditioning. I found a funny clip from "Two and a Half Men", where Charlie and Alan are at Pavlov's bar. Everytime the bell rings, everyone in the bar makes a barking sound and has to take a shot of tequila. I just thought it was funny how psychological principles are applied to sitcoms, and it relates back to Pavlov's classical conditioning of his dogs.
It would be helpful if we went over the different types of conditioning in class. The figures from the section help somewhat, but if they could be put with examples, it would help clarify them a little better. Also, Dr. Maclin, if you could provide the answers for the activities at the end of the section that would be great so I can check mine! Thanks!
Sorry I forgot to paste the link for the youtube video! Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEDxRCa_wfc
Alan's first time at Pavlov's Bar on Sunday night: bell rings (US), seeing Charlie take a shot of tequila (UR). Charlie explains the Sunday night tequila tradition to Alan. Alan becomes classically conditioned: Bell rings (CS), shot of tequila (CR).
What I took from section 3.3:
I'm still confused by 3.2. When you give examples and explain them, I understand. When you have me come up with my own examples or identify the UR, CR, US, and CS, I struggle. I know I'm going everywhere but with 3.2, I am still confused about knowing the difference between S-->R and R-->S. I know you said not to think too hard with it, but either I am or I don't get it. Now for Sect. 3.3, it cleared up a little for me with the rabbit and the air puff. Then I got to pos. contingencies and neg. contingencies and making the examples. I don't know if I'm correct. You said that neg. contingencies would be harder to do, but I don't understand why. Let me give you an example and you tell me what I am doing wrong.
Ex. Pos. Cont.= The cab driver will stop car when light turns red.
Neg. Cont. = The cab driver will not stop car when light turns red.
I am also having problems with the examples where I have to identify the different types of conditioning. This would be a great section to go over in class, at least for my sake.
I thought this section on classical conditioning was a little confusing. I am a little confused on the positive contingencies. From what I understand it is like a stimulus that signals that something is going to occur. Then it talked about the Contingency Theory. This one I am still not sure what it means. From what I gathered I think there are two types: excitatory and inhibitory contingencies or positive and negative. This part I understand. A negative contingency signals that a US will most likely not occur. With a positive contingency there is an increased likelihood that that US will occur.
Then there was a section on discrimination training. This involved using two different stimuli to signal different contingencies – as said in the section. The example was about the dog and whether to salivate or not. This was applied to the excitatory and inhibitory contingencies idea. When the discrimination task of the dog got harder the dog would become agitated and bark, etc. This was an example of excitatory. Other dogs seemed helpless during this process and that was seen as inhibitory.
Then I learned about conditioning methods. From what I could tell, most classical conditioning methods are used on animals. One example of this is the rabbit restrainer. Another could be electric shock in conjunction with an operant chamber (for rats). An example for humans would be and eye blink procedure and a mild electric shock. When using a shock method, conditioned emotional response is typically involved.
I thought the exercises in this section were kind of helpful. I am not sure if my attempts are correct though. I like in the last section how the answers were given at the end. I was kind of hoping there would be something like that for this one.
I think the material from these sections is starting to blur together, and it's hard to learn it just from reading. I think it would be nice to go over the different types of conditioning in class, so we can hear the differences, instead of just reading them. I feel like I'm starting to get frustrated when reading, and then I just give up and don't want to keep trying since I can't figure out any examples. It would be nice if the answers were given to us, so then we could check our answers as we go to see if we are correct. Honestly, I feel like I didn't get much out of this section.
I think the material from these sections is starting to blur together, and it's hard to learn it just from reading. I think it would be nice to go over the different types of conditioning in class, so we can hear the differences, instead of just reading them. I feel like I'm starting to get frustrated when reading, and then I just give up and don't want to keep trying since I can't figure out any examples. It would be nice if the answers were given to us, so then we could check our answers as we go to see if we are correct. Honestly, I feel like I didn't get much out of this section.
This sections was a bit confusing to me. I have gone over Classical conditioning is many classes before but just the basics of it. I think i understand the example in the text about watching a scary movie and eating thing mints. If I understand it correctly The US in watching a scary movie, the UR is being scared by the movie. Then we associate eating thing mints with the scary movie so the thing mints become the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response is being scared. I agree with Emily S that it would be nice to have the answers because i will at least know if I am doing these correctly.
Section 3.3 had me a little confused, so it would be really great if we could cover this material a bit more in depth as a class! When I think of classical conditioning, my mind instinctively applies it to Pavlov and more specifically animal behavior. It is much harder for me to apply this to humans. From positive and negative contingencies, I basically gathered that the CS will predict the US in a positive contingency. The idea that the neutral stimulus becomes a CS in a contingent relationship whereby its capable of eliciting an UR is still a little fuzzy to me ( a bit more elaboration on this part would be nice!) In that case, a negative contingency is where an US is likely to not occur. While these are the primary definitions Im finding it difficult to apply them to real world examples and behavior.
I did feel rather lost when trying to complete the examples for types of conditioning and filling in the US, UR, CS, and CR. As others have stated, it would have been nice to have the answers to know if I am on the right track!
Hopefully we will cover this material better in class or a lecture!
Section 3.3 was a review for most psych students I'm sure, but it was a good chance to review Pavlov's studies on dog's and classical conditioning. I do have to agree with some of the comments made above - I would also like to see some more of this covered in lecture as opposed to group activities. It can be easy to confuse the US and CS if you are not careful reading the material. I found the circle vs. ellipse conditioning experiment to be very interesting. Maybe it would help clear up some confusion by having a Q&A lecture regarding what we have learned thus far.
Section 3.3 was a bit up in the air for me as well. I felt the types of conditioning could have been explained to a fuller extent, but perhaps I am not linking the material together. However, I did understand positive and negative contingencies (and found out how challenging it was to actually come up with negative contingencies). The thunder and lightning example really helped me out with the positive contingencies or excitatory contingencies as they can be called. My example of an excitatory contingency would be, just as lightning precedes thunder, when one observes a baseball game say at Wrigley Field, the fans often see the ball put into play before they can hear the crack of the bat. Thus there is a positive contingency as the sight of the ball put into play is the conditioned stimulus followed by the arrival of the unconditioned stimulus--the crack of the bat.
I was also somewhat confused by section 3.3. I understand the basic ideas of classical conditioning, and I feel like I can identify the US, UR, CS, and CR pretty well for most examples. However, I had difficulty with understanding the different methods of conditioning. For example, for the conditioned emotional response, I did not know if it was always a situation in which a shock was used, or if it was any aversive stimulus at all. Trace conditioning also confused me. An example I have heard used a lot for conditioning is the following: US=hear toilet flush, UR=get burned in shower, CS=hear toilet flush, CR=jump out of shower. So in my mind, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus are usually the same. With operating under this assumption, I could not understand how the CS could be presented right before the US if they are in fact the same thing. This is the definition of trace conditioning though. I know I'm just not getting something, but I'm not sure what that is. I think it would be good to talk about this in class too.
I've studied classical conditioning in several psych classes but I don't remember ever hearing about positive and negative contingencies. I had to read the chapter a couple of times to really understand what was going on but I think after the second time I'm understanding. I think there should be a link on the site that is just for vocabulary. It should include the vocab from the beginning and then just a quick description and example of each. That way when you continue to use behavioral terms if someone needs the reminder they are able check it out easily to help them understand the reading. I was actually a little disturbed by this chapter. I understand that animal testing is necessary but some of the procedures make me really uncomfortable such as reading the part on Pavlov's dogs going crazy. I wish there were ways to study how the mind works without having to harm living things.
I was glad to hear that others were having some problems understanding this section also. I've learned some of these concepts in other classes, but I don't think I've heard of excitatory or inhibitory contingencies before now. I'd like to go over them quickly in class. I also had more problems coming up with US, UR, CS, and CR than I thought I would. Apparently I just need more practice. I think it would help if we could find the answers somewhere though, because I'm still not sure if my answers are correct. And practice won't make perfect if I'm emitting a wrong behavior. =)
After reviewing conditioned and unconditioned responses in nearly every class, it is nice to learn more information. My examples for the positive contingency is that dropping a pan elicited a loud noise, which emitted a jumping response from everyone in the kitchen. For negative contingency my example is a child elicited a yelling behavior, in order to scare her mom. The mom resisted emitting a screaming response because she was startled. Because it would positively reinforce the child's behavior.
The opening of section 3.3 i found just as confusing as everyone else. And im not gonna lie, i tried to give my own examples but feel as though they are completely lacking in the application of their definition. I strongly agree with the others on the blog that this is a section we need to go over in class. It does start to run on together with everything that is thrown at us in this section in further detail. I also think that were getting far enough into the more detailed information about behavior modification that we do need to be going over this in class. I don't think its enough now that we are getting together in groups and are trying to give our own examples. Its happened enough now in groups that people don't have example for every definition anymore and also its sometime complicated to not over think just the ABC's of behavior. I did enjoy reading this section but i would feel alot more comfortable about what im supposed to take away from this class if we went over it in further detail in class. Im not saying that i couldn't think of definitions, i tried. But after re-reading the sections and looking at my examples i feel as though they are completely lacking in their utility of applicability. But thats just my two cents worth about section 3.3. The parts that started to throw me off were the sections about excitatory conditioning and inhibitory conditioning, as well as the positive and negative contingencies that go along with these areas. The descrimination training made perfect sense to me, but putting all these parts together seems a bit too much to grasp without us going over it in class and you giving us specific examples but also delving further into what each of these areas is getting at.
I got a C- in my Intro to Psych class. It was a once a week night class my first semester at college. We sat in the big stadium seated lecture hall in Sabin (R.I.P., kinda) and endured basically a 2 1/2 - 3 hour Powerpoint presentation. The info was usually interesting enough, but the presentation of that info was not enough to overcome my short attention span at that point. We did get a 5 - 10 minute break, which you would think would be nice, but actually just gave me a taste of freedom and made me not want to go back into the lecture hall, and made the 2nd half of that session even more unbearable. As a result, I quit going (there's some behavioral analysis I could probably apply to that whole thing). But one of the few classes I made it to was about Pavlov and his dogs, so the groundwork of this concept has always sort of stuck with me. I remembered the basics, that there were conditioned/unconditioned stimuli/responses, and that the tone was associated with the dog salivating because it was linked with the presentation of food. I understood it enough to make it through my future psych classes, where instructors would ask us if we were familiar with Pavlov. But I'm now reaping what I sowed in the fall of 2006, as I could hardly even keep track of which was conditioned and unconditioned. The correct way is the logical way, that you become "conditioned", and so what occurs after the action of conditioning would be the conditioned response. But because I was lacking confidence, I had to check elsewhere in the text to verify I was doing it correctly, and I used the CER diagram, which changes the unconditioned response to the conditioned response and so forth, and that really screwed me up. For about an hour, I was going through the 5-6 situations where we were supposed to identify the CS, CR, US, and UR, as well as the conditioning type. Everytime I used the example from the CER, it screwed my head up. The pillow/sneeze one has been flipped around on my worksheet so many times that I almost erased through the paper. I'm fairly confident that I understand it now, once I quit being lazy and re-read the first part and thought about it instead of just looking at diagrams for easy reminders.
One thing I'm still having some difficulty with though is the order of CS & US presentations - I was having a rough time figuring out when the Onset and Offset were-I think the exposure to the pillow and feather were simultaneous, but what about the thin mints? My guess is that you were eating them during the movie, so that would be simultaneous as well. I plan on going over this again once I'm done with class this afternoon (which starts in 9 minutes), so maybe some of my confusion will be cleared up then.
This was not only a good review for most psych students (as far as classical conditioning goes), but I think it went a little more in depth than my intro to psych class did as well. Admittedly, it's still all very confusing to me. I think it's easy to over think that situation and therefore you get the terms easily mixed up. For instance, I still over think the difference between unconditioned stimulus and neutral. Positive contingencies and negative contingencies were a bit confusing too.
I see that the classical conditioning is a reoccurring theme, so I should probably put my foot down and just learn it.
Certainly the bread and butter of bmod stuff. I’ve gone over this in tons of classes including philosophy courses. I’d like to hear more about second and third order classical conditioning however. I’ve only briefly heard about the complexity of pairing CS2 with CS-CR to create more complex learning associations. I imagine it follows pretty much the same formula but do you need to continue to occasionally pair the CS with the original US-UR combination to avoid extinction of the CS-CR? In that case how does this work with CS2 and beyond?
Also I remember reading about patients who developed a compulsive “sipping” behavior after just one exposure in Oliver Sack’s An Anthropologist On Mars (I’m emailing a prof of mine to find out more about this). If I’m correct about this then there must be either some sort of mental block, or (more likely) a particular neural pathway (the one that is created, or fires when the conditioning takes place) becomes immediately solidified due to an electro-chemical imbalance of some kind. What impact might this have on this issue? It demonstrates how broadening the scope of research to include cognitive psychology can shed light on behaviorist principles.
I really think Pavlov’s experimental neurosis greatly explains a lot of the neurosis we might experience in everyday life. Think of social anxiety; and lots of various stressful activities. You go into a room and there’s food and drinks, friends and family (the S+), yet you also know that large groups mean’s everyone might notice something about you, more chance of there being someone you don’t like there, or getting robbed, beaten, humiliated, etc. (the S-). Are you supposed to feal excited or inhibited? This would certainly cause tremendous anxiety.
This section was a good review for me. In most of my psychology class we have gone over classical conditioning. The new ideas to me were the positive and negative contingencies. I think this part was confusing to me and not very clear what they meant. Possible clarification in class? I agree with a previous comment to do less group work and more whole class discussion because sometimes when we meet in groups we are unsure if we are giving correct examples.
I agree with a few of the posters above that having the answers ahead of time would help in understanding the concepts a bit better. That being said, contingencies were difficult to understand. I would assume most of the people in the class are familiar with classical conditioning, and adding these new elements was confusing. I think what we did Tuesday with the schedules or reinforcement sheet could be turned around and used nicely trying to identify the contingencies. Doing that in class might help everyone familiarize themselves with the concepts a bit better.I thought The section over the order of CS and US presentations was interesting. I didnt really know there was that much more detail on classical conditioning
This chapter was interesting. I learned some new things. I like the chart of actual occurence helped me to understand things. Positive contingencies are also referred to as Excitatory Conditioning and negative contingencies are referred to as Inhibitory Conditioning. It was interesting to review that a variety of classical conditioning methods are used for animals in modern day labs. These include, but are not limited to, the eye blink conditioning procedure for rabbits where the animal is constrained in a chamber similar to the one below so that only its head is free to move.Conditioning can occur in one trial. This is common with taste aversion of conditioned taste aversion. I would like to go over this section in class just to see what others have to say with their examples.
I'm starting to have trouble with these sections. I would like to take more time - in class - to discuss them. Although there is plenty of time to ask the questions during class, I would like to get an email saying "bring a list of questions that you have to class and we can go through them." I think missing that day the other week really didn't help at all. If it were to happen again, I would much rather prefer that we just flipped the days. Tuesday becomes our online day, and Thursday would be our in class day. I've gone through this section a few times, and I'm going to try again, but I'm just not grasping the material at this point.
I too am having difficulties with the sections. I am not sure why, but I am having trouble understanding some of the information. I also missed class the other day, which could be part of the reason why. The information and material seems to be running together. I am having a hard time with the six examples with determining the conditioning types, stimuli and responses.
I do, however, understand the conditioned taste aversion. The first time I had an eggroll, I got the flu that night. Though the two were not connected in anyway, I can no longer smell an eggroll without getting sick to my stomach.
This section was pretty cool. Positive and Negative contingencies are defiantly part of my behavior modification vocabulary now. Like others I had the most trouble with thinking of negative contingencies. It would be nice if this section had an answer key like the previous sections did.
I thought this section was slightly confusing, but it's just because I think no matter how many times I learn and relearn classical conditioning, I always tend to mess up what's what (like conditioned stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, etc). The contingency part I will definitely have to work on to be more familiar with those, but if we could maybe briefly cover them in class I think that would really just confirm it for me.
I was pretty confused by this section too. The contingency didn't make much sense to me. The neurosis and CER seemed interesting, but cruel. When you don't know how to respond things can get frustrating. I think it will help me greatly to go over this chapter in class.
So, big surprise, I found this chapter really confusing and challenging, too! I have taken many psychology classes and I don't think I have ever learned about the different types of classical conditioning (simultaneous, short-delayed, trace, long-delayed, and backward). When I first saw the little diagrams of those types of conditioning, my first thought was, "Geez ... what on earth are the stupid diagrams good for?!" Then, I started identifying the conditioning types for the scenarios on the next few pages of the text and found myself looking back at the diagrams. So, they actually ended up being much more helpful than I expected. I honestly don't know if I picked the correct type of conditioning for each scenario; I kept going back and forth and erasing my answers.
I did find the portion at the end of the chapter about taste aversion particularly interesting; I do not have any foods that I have a taste aversion to due to drinking-related experiences. However, I have gotten food poisoning a few times (thank you Great Wall and Rialto ;) ) and I know that just the smell of food from either of those places made my stomach turn for months afterward. I'm curious ... is there a smell aversion, too? Because I was hospitalized for 3 weeks a few years ago and there was a sweet pea perfume that I wore when I was in the hospital. I still find that scent aversive because it brings back memories of the hospital.
Thank you for spending more time on this by reviewing in class. I really thought that the classical conditioning example sheets were helpful. I like the tip of finding the unconditioned and conditioned responses in any situation first and go from there to find the unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus. It also helps to know that the response will always be the same for both unconditioned and conditioned.
Section 3.3 was the most confusing section yet! I have learned about classical and operant conditioning in my other classes, but I still don't have a comfortable grasp on the subject. It was nice to see that I wasn't the only student that didn't quite understand it. I also felt that positive and negative contingencies were very challenging and I wasn't sure if I was doing them correctly in the homework assignment. After going over classical and operant conditioning in class I had a better understanding of what these concepts were. The excercises also helped and it was much easier knowing that the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus would always be the same thing. When we broke off into groups was when I learned the most. I really liked the group dynamic aspect of the class and I think that people learn from eachother and that is probably the reason why I caught on in group discussions and did so well on my midterm.