Please read sections 3.1 (Thorndike) and 3.2 (Pavlov)
After reading the section, think of all the terms and concepts used in all of sections (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2) please respond to the following questions and try to use these terms and concepts as you respond to the following questions.
What are three things you will remember about Thorndike? What are three things you will remember about Pavlov? Who do you find more interesting, Thorndike or Pavlov? Why?
Do you think the work of Thorndike can be applied to the real world today? How so or Why not?
What if anything would you like me to be sure and go over in class when we meet?
Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)
Obviously Thorndike will be easily remembered for his puzzle boxes. Most interesting about these boxes is that they observe animal behaviors that seem correlated with the notion of learning. His Law of Effect is the idea of trial and error. In this I found it interesting how broad of a scope this law truly has. It could be riding a bike or dating, simple to complex behaviors. Thirdly, I found the Law of Recency quite interesting. I instantly thought about how women need time after they give birth before they (usually) will consider becoming pregnant again. The most recent response to giving birth entails pain and exhaustion. Therefore the most likely response would be to think of the pain and exhaustion involved in child birth, rather than the joy of a new being coming into existence.
Pavlov is known for classical conditioning. It is interesting that this idea was observed on accident. I think we can thank him for observing how stimuli effect behaviors. The unconditioned stimulus in a situation would be rain. This stimulus causes most humans to run for cover, which is the unconditioned response. It may be that when it rains you often eat chocolate while you wait for the rain to subside. As time goes on, and you repeat this action, the rain eventually causes you to desire chocolate. The conditioned response in this situation is the desire for chocolate, and the conditioned stimulus is the rain.
I think that Pavlov tends to be more interesting to me because he really defined behaviors and stimuli well. It is easy to bring his work readily to mind, albeit he did many other things but we thank him for his work in bringing classical conditioning to the USA.
Thordike's work is applied to the real world today. His Law of Effect states that when behaviors or responses are followed by positive outcome, the association is strengthened. For instance, praising good work elicits more good work. The association between hard work and praise is strengthened when the scenario is repeated (Law of Exercise).
terms: Law of Effect, Law of Recency, response, classical conditioning, stimuli, behaviors, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned response, conditioned stimulus, Law of Exercise.
Thorndike's section starts out much like a modern day SAW movie would. You get familiar with a crazy contraption that is supposed to impose learning with a subject. The puzzle boxes are by far what I will remember most about Thorndike. There better have been no kitties harmed in the making! The Law of Effect was the very next thing described in this section. This can be described as using 'trial and error' to learn. The cats stuck in his puzzle boxes went through the law of effect to learn how to escape. I will also remember the Law of Recency and Law of Exercise.
Section 3.2 was a bit more complicated. This chapter focused on Ivan Pavlov's early work with salivating dogs. I've learned in previous psychology courses of his accidently findings on conditioning. I will remember the basics for efficient classical conditioning such as making the stimulus salient, or noticable. The stimulus also must have regularity and be presented a sufficient amount of times. This section also broke down the differences between conditioned and unconditioned responses and stimuli. The graph that described the process of associating unconditioned stimuli with conditioned stimuli was particulary helpful.
I personally find the work of Thorndike to be more pleasurable than Pavlov. Though my knowledge of both is quite limited, Thorndike seemed more interested in learning about behavior modification than did Pavlov, who made his initial discoveries on accident. I do admire the complexity of Pavlov's research however. Thorndike delivered that 'mad scientist' approach to the topic, which is entertaining.
I think that the works of both Pavlov and Thorndike can be applied in the real world today. Though more complex versions of their findings have been released, and we have a better understanding of behavior modification, their simplistic (yet ahead of their time) ideas are still observed in everyday life. Driving, for instance, is so second nature to us.
The exercises at the end of Pavlov's section were pretty difficult for me. In a way, it was like solving a puzzle. Though the first few got my guessing, the following ones were much easier once I understood the concepts. It would be nice to go over more conditioning examples in class, and perhaps explain the mechanism for making neutral stimuli into conditioned stimuli.
Terms: Law of Effect, Law of Recency, Law of Exercise, Unconditioned vs. Conditioned Response, Unconditioned vs. Conditioned Stimuli, Neutral Stimuli, Pleasurable,
After reading about Thorndike and Pavlov, I have come to the conclusion that even though both men are interesting and have contributed great findings, Pavlov is more interesting. I may find Pavlov more interesting because I have been learning about his research since I was in high school and just learned of Thorndike last semester in History and Systems. I also find Pavlov more interesting because I think his work is more in depth and complicating!
Thorndike had three main findings (and therefore, these three things are what I will remember):
1. Law of Effect: according to the law of effect, behaviors that elicit pleasurable outcomes are likely to reoccur (reinforcement) while behaviors that elicit aversive outcomes are unlikely to reoccur (punishment).
2. Law of Recency: according to the law of recency, the behavior that is most recently learned is more likely to be repeated/remembered. For example, if you go to the grocery store and forget your list at home (happens to me all the time), you are likely to remember items from your list, particularly the items you wrote down last/most recently.
3. Law of Exercise: according to the law of exercise, learned associations become stronger when repeated frequently. For example, when training my dog, she became better at sitting on command over time because I continually rewarded her for her behavior.
As for Pavlov, I was amazed at how much information about his research is left out in intro classes and it was really interesting to get more in depth knowledge about his studies with dogs. Things I found most interesting include:
1. Experimental neurosis: to my understanding, experimental neurosis refers to potential behaviors that the dogs may emit in response to the classical conditioning process. These behaviors can either be nonresponsive or aggressive – these nonresponsive behaviors are what we now called learned helplessness and aggressive behaviors were described as a tearing at their harnesses.
2. Pavlov Pouch: Throughout my education on psychology, I have heard of Pavlov’s work many of times, but have never heard of the Pavlov Pouch. According to our reading, Pavlov became notorious for this pouch, so I find it strange that I’ve never heard of it. Anyway, this pouch was used to capture the secretions preventing contamination of food.
3. I also learned the specific conditions necessary to turn a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus: stimulus salience, regularity of presentation, and number of presentations. These all make sense to me, but I have never heard them referred to in these specific terms. Stimulus salience refers to the strength of the stimulus (is it noticeable?) In order for the neutral stimulus to become conditioned, it must be salient (noticeable). Second, the stimulus needs to be presented regularly. If the stimulus is presented sporadically, the person, animal, organism, etc. will have a difficult time putting the two together and creating a conditioned response to the stimulus. Lastly, the more frequent the stimulus is presented, the more likely the behavior will be conditioned with the stimulus.
I feel like Thorndike’s work can be applied to the real world today because trial and error learning is frequently used. Obviously, since we can come up with examples of Thorndike’s three laws in the present time, they are still being used! Most relevant to this class is the law of effect because both reinforcement and punishment work on this principle.
Terms used: law of effect, elicit, pleasurable, reinforcement, aversive, punishment, law of recency, behavior, law of exercise, experimental neurosis, Pavlov pouch, conditioned stimulus, stimulus salience, regularity of presentation, number of presentation, response, conditioned response
Three things I’ll remember about Thorndike is the puzzle box used with cats, the law of effect, and trial and error. Three things I’ll remember about Pavlov are classical conditioning, conditioned response/stimulus, and unconditioned response/stimulus. Although Pavlov is highly recognized in the field of psychology, I find Thorndike to be more interesting. I found his puzzle box to be very clever even though it was simply just a box with a latch. It made me think about animal’s intelligence and makes me question if other animals would act the same way the cats did.
I think the work of Thorndike can be applied to the real world today. His theories highly relate to behavior and how learning occurs. Although his work was on animals, I believe that it can be compared to humans and I believe that it has. In class, I would like if you discussed more examples of both Thorndike and Pavlov’s ideas.
Three things I’ll remember about Thorndike is the puzzle box used with cats, the law of effect, and trial and error. These things are important because they showed the basic concepts behind learning – people emit behaviors until they get it right and then continue to emit the same behavior, otherwise known as trial and error.
Three things I’ll remember about Pavlov are classical conditioning, conditioned response/stimulus, and unconditioned response/stimulus. These things are all related because they are ways to elicit behaviors. I think classical conditioning is very important because it shows us that neutral simuli can be used as a way to train a person (or animal) to emit certain behaviors.
Although Pavlov is highly recognized in the field of psychology, I find Thorndike to be more interesting. I found his puzzle box to be very clever even though it was simply just a box with a latch. It made me think about animal’s intelligence and makes me question if other animals would act the same way the cats did.
I think the work of Thorndike can be applied to the real world today. His theories highly relate to behavior and how learning occurs. Although his work was on animals, I believe that it can be compared to humans and I believe that it has. In class, I would like if you discussed more examples of both Thorndike and Pavlov’s ideas.
Terms: emit, behavior, classical conditioning, conditioned response/stimulus, unconditioned response/stimulus, elicit, neutral stimulus,
Three things I will remember about Thorndike are:
1. The way he used a puzzle box to evaluate how cats learn to escape from the box. He was huge on studying animal intelligence.
2. His theory of "trial and error" which said that over a period of attempts, some of these attempts will lead to success, thus those attempts becoming more likely to to be emitted on regular basis/ learned.
3. He found that learning involves "stamping out" behaviors that lead to aversive outcomes, thus weakening the association.
Three things I will remember about Pavlov are:
1. Pavlov's study that found that his dogs would salivate at the sound of footsteps, which lead to discoveries of things like conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.
2. The conditioned response and unconditioned response work are very similar, you just have to address whether or not it was the conditioned stimulus or unconditioned stimulus that lead to it.
3. Pavlov did a lot of great research but at the time american researchers were only interested in his research that related to learning.
I'm not totally sure who I felt was more interesting, but I think Pavlov would be who I would go with. His research was very thought provoking in that it got me pondering on how conditioned stimulus in my own environment may effect the behaviors that I emit on a daily basis.
I believe it is still very relevant today. I perform a lot of "stamping out" in my life, whether that be in video games or in other aspects of real life. I also believe that trial and error are very common occurrences that are necessary in getting through life. What would we ever learn without failures along the way?
The only thing i was wanting to make sure is covered in class would be the questioning of law of recency. I wasn't quite sure how that worked. Other than that I'm good.
terms- law of recency, trial and error, stamping out, emit, behavior, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned response, unconditioned response, emitted, aversive
The three things I will remember about Thorndike are trial and error, law of effect, and law of exercise. First of all, I think trial and error is very familiar concept to us. Also, I believe that it can be applied to the real world today. In the contents of kids play with Lego if they will not fit in or make the blocks what they want at first time, they would emit a diverse of behaviors trying to make it. And then if they could get a positive consequence, they would emit that particular behavior. Both Law of effect and law of exercise are interesting to me. Law of effect means people emit particular behavior that is the most recent response. Law of exercise means repetition of positive behavior makes associations can be strengthened.
The three things I will remember about Pavlov are all concepts dealing with this section. In my opinion, every concept is connected with each other. If there is stimulus, also response exists. Plus, neutral stimulus associated stimulus and response. As situations which are conditioning, stimulus and response can be unconditioned or conditioned.
I believe that the works of Thorndike are more interesting to me. His theories are more relates to people’s behavior in the real world. It made me understand easily and makes me have curiosity about the examples of these concepts.
Terms; trial and error, law of effect, law of exercise, emit, stimulus, response, unconditioned, conditioned.
Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov are two very famous psychologists. They both developed important concepts in the field of psychology. Without their research we would not know the things we know today about certain psychological theories.
Thorndike studied many different things during the time period when behavioral research was at its peak. He used a lot of animal research to conduct his studies. This is one thing I will remember about his research in particular. He used puzzle boxes and cats to study intelligence. He developed the Law of Effect from this series of research. The idea of this law say that if a behavior is followed by a positive outcome the association is stamped in. This uses the trial and error theory of learning. We all use trial and error learning in our everyday life. an example of this is when we learn to play basketball. Once we make the basket we try and shot the ball the same way in our following attempts to make the basket again. Through these concepts the Law of Exercise was also developed. This concept says that through repetition associations are strengthened. So the more we make the basket, the more we associate the positive outcome with the way we are shooting the ball. We learned many things about our behavior from Thorndikes studies.
We also learned a lot about behavior from Pavlov. Most of us know Pavlov from his famous studies on conditions and unconditioned responses. He used classical conditioning in the situation with a bell being associated with food and a dogs salvation response to demonstrate this idea. In this section I also learned about stimuli being salient, or just things in the environment not usually associated with something but are noticeable. Finally this section forced us to use examples in our life that are conditioned stimuli. One example of this is the smell of coffee makes me think its time to wake up in the morning. Even if its in the afternoon I feel like its morning since I make coffee every morning it has just becomed a conditioned response within me.
Terms: Puzzle boxes, Law of Effect, Trial and Error, stamped in, Law of Exercise, conditioned responses, classical conditioning, salient, conditioned stimuli.
I wasn't excited to start the history chapter, but reading about Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov was definitely manageable. I was more interested in reading about Thorndike, because I wasn't familiar with his work. I have been learning about Pavlov since high school and his concepts still confuse me.
Three things I will remember about Thorndike's work are:
1. Law of Effect - when behaviors/responses are followed by a positive outcome, that association is "stamped in." When behaviors/responses are unsuccessful, they will be "stamped out" and are considered unlearned.
2. Law of Recency - the most recent response is the most likely to reoccur.
3. Law of Exercise - through repetition, associations are strengthened.
I think Thorndike's work is applied to the real world. His three laws can still be applied to life today.
Three things I will remember about Pavlov's work are:
1. Experimental Neurosis - Pavlov classically conditioned dogs to discriminate different shapes (for example: circles elicit salivation whereas squares inhibit salivation) and then became making the shapes more similar to each other until the dogs didn't know if they would receive food or not. Pavlov believed aggressive dogs were under control of excitatory neurons and unresponsive dogs were under control of inhibitory neurons.
2. The unresponsive dogs were experiencing learned helplessness (although it wasn't called that at the time).
3. The necessary conditions to make the neural stimulus become a conditioned stimulus are: stimulus salience (must be noticed in the environment), regularity of presentations, and number of presentations.
Terms: Law of Effect, Law of Recency, Law of Exercise, experimental neurosis, classically conditioned, discriminate, elicit, learned helplessness, neutral stimulus, conditioned stimulus, stimulus salience
These sections were a solid review of a well known psychologist, Ivan Pavlov. They also introduced a new psychologist who I do not believe I have heard of before. Edward Thorndike was an early behaviorist from America. He did a lot of work on animal intelligence. The most emphasized about Thorndike was his use of a puzzle box. This was a box with strings and levers that were built into the box, manipulating them in a specific way allowed the cat (which were his main subjects) to escape from the box.
A methological construct is a way to indirectly measure something. Thorndike’s methological construct was that when the cat was attempting to get out, it would use what was later called the Law of Effect. This is a ‘trial and error’ method that meant that each time the cat tried to escape it would associate successful trials with being able to get out, and unsuccessful trials would be ‘stamped out. ’ An example of this in my life would be turning on a shower. Different showers are turned on and off differently. I have a schema of how a shower generally works, so the behavioral class would be functionally similar, but there are different quirks about many different showers. So each time I enter a different shower, like my apartment, my parents house, a hotel or friends house, and shower, I use trial and error to try to fandangle my new shower.
Thorndike also developed two other laws, the Law of Recency, which states that the most recent response is most likely to reoccur. This would be like when my roommate, who often has trouble locking her door, goes through the process of trying to get her door to completely lock before leaving. The last thing she did when she was trying to learn how to lock her door was to prop her leg on the handle and lock it. Since this is the last thing that happened before she succeeded, it is imbedded that this is necessary to lock her door. The other law is the Law of Exercise which states that through repetition the associations are strengthened. So every time my roommate locks her door by propping her leg on the handle, this association this is success is strengthened so that she now firmly believes that it is required to lock her door.
I have been learning about Ivan Pavlov since my high school psychology class. His work with classical conditioning is famous in the psychological world. This work started out as studying digestive processes, using dogs as subjects. Noticing that they begun to salivate as a result of hearing footsteps, Pavlov later took steps to study why this was. He called this salivating psychic secretion and called the research he was doing a conditioned reflex. He used classical conditioning with geometric shapes before using the bell.
Pavlov’s work was later referred to as a stimulus-response relationship. This means that if a stimulus happens then a response occurs. This is different than a response-stimulus relationship, which means that the behavior happens first and is followed by a consequence.
Pavlov learned necessary conditions to elicit a neural stimulus. They are stimulus salience, which means that it is something that will pop out from the background, and catch attention. The next one is regularity of presentations, which means that it has to occur every time during conditioning so that it is turned into a properly associated conditioned stimulus. The last is the number of the presentations, which means it has to happen enough times that it could be logically associated and elicit the correct conditioned response as a result.
I found Thorndike most interesting simply because he was someone I had not heard of before. While I knew the concepts of trial and error I did not know who was associated with them or how these concepts came about. His experiments in putting a cat in a puzzle box is a very interesting way to go about testing animal intelligence, especially with the results he got
I think Thorndike’s work could be applied to the world today because the Law of Recency, The Law of Exercise, and the Law of Effect, although not always known by those names, are still very much used and understood today.
I feel like I understand the chapter, although I would like to go over the CR, CS, UR, US, neural stimulus again just because they always give me a little trouble keeping them all straight.
Terms used: Ivan Pavlov, Edward Thorndike, puzzle box, methological construct, Law of Effect, trial and error, schema, behavioral class, functional, Law of Recency, Law of Exersize, classical conditioning, psychic secretion, conditioned reflex, stimulus-response relationship, response-stimulus relationship, CR, CS, UR, US, neural stimulus, elicit
Three things I will remember about Thorndike include; how he used animals to manipulate strings and levers, The Law of Effect, and the missing info on his graph. The first thing that I found interesting was that he created a positive situation for cats and then rewarded them more to do a certain behavior. Most all cats love strings and doors to play with, I don’t see where deprivation or other categories would come into play to help the research. The second thing I thought was interesting was the law of effect which is similar to trial and error. Because the cat would fling around in the box it may have realized what the positive outcome was and what caused it or they may not relate the two at all. Thorndike thought that the cat would “stamp in” what action caused the outcome and would keep emitting that behavior. The last thing I will remember is for a scientist and researcher his graphs and info was not labeled properly. This makes me not take thorndike seriously if his research is not recorded accurately.
Three things I will remember from Pavlov is his work with salvation, his theory of conditioned reflex, and the relation between unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response. Pavlov first began to thing that dogs being around food made them salivate but then later his work demonstrated how you can condition a certain response by using different stimuli. The unconditioned stimulus is the thing that causes a reaction or a certain behavior, the unconditioned response is the behavior giving to counter the stimulus.
I thing that Pavlov theroies make more sence. When something is rewarded then that behavior that was rewareded will increase and then become expected overtime.
Thorndikes theory of after being rewarded the behavior will increase faster. I like the example of the hot water in the shower. When the toilet is flushed, the unconditioned response is to move away, and by mixing both Thorndike and Pavlovs theories they both help to prove each other right.
Terms; manipulate, law of effect, reward, behavior, emitting, salvation, conditioned reflex, stimuli, unconditioned response, unconditioned stimulus
Thorndike:
1. Use of trial and error learning in regards to real life.
2. Law of effect: when certain behaviors are followed by a positive outcome the particular behaviors tend to be repeated. Those behaviors that have an aversive outcome generally are not repeated.
3. Law of recency: the behavior that was last emitted is the behavior that is most likely to be repeated in the future.
Pavlov:
1. The break downs of classical conditioning and what it takes for a neutral stimulus to become conditioned as well as the rest of the relating material (unconditioned response and stimulus, conditioned response and stimulus)
2. The neutral stimulus must be salient otherwise it will not be effective as a stimulus that is well recognized later on
3. The neutral stimulus has to be present a sufficient number of times to the organism before the association will occur. If it is not presented enough then the organism may not be able to determine one stimulus from another in the environment.
I think I find Thorndike more interesting because I have not studied his work as much as I have Pavlov’s both of these men are very interesting in their work, but I have learned things about Pavlov’s work in other psychology classes in the past. Thorndike is new to me and I am curious to learn more because I don’t believe the short section in this chapter did him a lot of justice for the work he developed.
I think Thorndike can be very applied to the real world today because we participate in his theories all the time. We may not use the theories knowingly or as much as at one point or another, but we do still use them when learning new behaviors, what works and what doesn’t. The laws that Thorndike came up with I am still able to apply to my life. For example the Law of Effect states that behaviors that are followed by a positive outcome are more likely to be repeated in the future, I do not put dirt in my mouth, like I did when I was younger, because it was not followed by a positive outcome (i.e. bad taste, or my mom yelling at me).
As for now the only thing I would like to go over in class would be some real life examples to help with Pavlov’s classical conditioning model. I have done this model in previous psychology classes, but I am a bit unfamiliar with it since I have been out of practice. So if we could incorporate some examples that could be discussed in class with some reinforcement that I am, as well as others, are doing it correctly that would be great.
terms: emitted, postive outcome, aversive, law of effect, law of recency, trail and error learning, classical conditioning, US, UR, Neutral stimulus, CS, CR, salient
After reading both sections, I found myself liking Pavlov more. I have known about both researchers for quite some time, but for some reason Pavlov has always stuck with me more. I think that his research is more interesting and relates to behavior modification more.
One of the things that I will remember about Thorndike is the Law of Effect, which can be explained by behaviors such as punishment and reinforcement, and by using trial and error to make the subject learn. For example, a cat will emit a variety of behaviors, and will either be punished or reinforced for that certain behavior. Another thing I will remember about Thorndike is that the y-axis represents what we are trying to measure, and the x-axis represents the measurement periods.
Lastly, Thorndike developed the Law of Exercise and the Law of Recency. For the Law of Exercise, learned associations become stronger when repeated frequently. The Law of Recency states that the behavior that is recently learned will most likely be repeated.
When it comes to Pavlov, the three things I will remember is, along with Kayla, the Pavlov pouch. I have not ever heard of this, so it was interesting to read about. The Pavlov Pouch is where a pouch was used to capture the secretions preventing the contamination of food. Also, I will remember Pavlov’s use of the regularity in the neutral stimulus’ presentation. If there is no reason for when the neutral stimulus occurs, then an association between the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus will not occur. I think that this coincides with extinction, even though I may be wrong. Lastly, I will remember that Pavlov found that the sound of footsteps relates to dogs and elicits salivation. This leads to discoveries such as conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.
I believe that Thorndike’s concept of trial and error can be used the most in the real world today, being as though we already use trial and error in order to learn. I think an overview of Thorndike’s Laws will be beneficial for the class, because I personally think they could be confusing.
Terms used: Law of Effect, Law of Exercise, Law of Recency, emit, elicit, Pavlov Pouch, punishment, reinforcement
Things that I remember about Thorndike?
1. He focused on animal intelligence, and how they learn and the learning is measured by reaction time they complete a certain task.
2. Law of Effect- this tells us when we try a number of behaviors, the behavior that gave us a positive outcome, is the behavior that we will remember to do next time to get the same reinforcement.
3. Law of Recency and Law of Exercise: law of recency states the response we got for the most current behavior we emitted, is more likely to reoccur. Law of exercise states that the more repeat, practice something, the association will be stronger.
Things that I remember about Pavlov?
1. Classical Conditioning- this occurs when you have an reaction to an indirect stimulus same as you would do a direct stimulus. For example if you usually eat dinner at 6:30, sight of food would make your stomach growl that’s unconditioned stimulus, a conditioned stimulus would be looking at the clock and the time would say 6:30 and your stomach would growl.
2. S/R vs. R/S
When trying to identify between these two we look at what comes first, behavior or what makes us emit the behavior. Example for each is: S/R- Aili sees it is noon, lunch time, and she begins to get hungry. R/S- Aili finds a vending machine puts in her money and gets food.
3. Neutral stimulus must be presents a sufficient number of times before associations occur. If you don’t do it number of times than you wont know if it is conditioned or unconditioned.
Who is more interesting? They both discovered pretty amazing concepts. Pavlov is more interesting to me because I feel like he went great lengths to come up with his conclusions (operation on the dog), he was very precise with his findings. He was careful with measuring and recording data, this gives him good credibility.
Work of Thorndike can be applied in the real world because he used animals to learn the behavior patterns of learning. We did experiments so he can generalize the learning mechanics to human beings.
Terms Used: emit, reinforcement,
First off, I will recall Thorndike and his interest of animal intelligence. He used cats to test intelligence. He also put them in wooden boxes and timed how long it took the cats to learn how to figure out pulleys and levers in order to free them from the puzzle box. From these tests he developed the Law of Effect, which took the concept of trial and error. He believed that if a cat pushed the right button, he would be positively reinforced and do that again. If a cat did things that didn’t work, it would not be reinforced and do that less. Basically the cat would keep doing the things that worked, and stop doing the things that didn’t work. The general idea of the Law of Effect states that states when a behavior is followed by a positive reinforcement, this “association” is stamped into the mind. Even more than that, the association is made stronger. Associations that did not work, would then in turn be stamped out of the mind. Thorndike also tested these cats with the thoughts that what we learned about the cat, would then be related to things about humans. This chapter also used the graph to show behaviors in a visual way. The graph clearly shows that the y-axis is measuring what we are attempting to measure. Thenthe x-axis shows time, or the measurement periods. I found the information on Thorndike very interesting. At first glance we wouldn’t assume that ways of learning about human behavior was learned from placing cats in wooden crates. I think Thorndike is very interesting because he had an idea and worked to learn more about it. It’s creative thinking like this that really bring about break-throughs in science and learning.
First off, we always remember Pavlov for his dogs. However, I was not aware that he was studying this in relation to finding out more about the digestive system. He also came up with the idea of psychic secretion when he observed dogs salivating before the food arrived. I really enjoyed hearing about Pavlov studying the sounds of light footsteps when dogs salivated when they heard footsteps. This was interesting to me and I liked that it gave a little more background to Pavlov than most intro to psych text books do. I will also remember how he found differences between some dogs that would get aggressive without food and others that would use learned helpless and become helpless in a sense. I also will remember that in order for something to become a conditioned response, it would need to be salient. The tone or whatever it may be would need to be noticed in the animals (or humans) environment. This makes a lot of sense. The stimulus must also need to have regularity in its presentation. This basically means it needs to happen at the right time and at the same times during the same conditions to be effective. This also makes a lot of sense. Also, this neutral stimulus must be present to an animal, or human, a number of times that will affect it. A onetime stimulus won’t work. These stimulus must happen a number of times in order to “sink in”.
I would also like to draw attention to unconditioned response and conditioned response. People can have trouble understanding the difference between these two because actually when looked at they appear to be similar in both their topography and their functionality. I would like to use the example that the reading gave of the bunny and the blinking behavior it emitted. We can emit the neutral stimulus of a tone. After the tone the air is blown into the bunny’s face, this is referred to as the Unconditioned stimulus. It then causes the bunny to blink, which is the Unconditioned response. Later, after the neutral response of the air puff is shown to be salient, regularly presented, and then presented consistently a number of times we can start talking about conditioned stimulus and response. Once the neutral response follows the above three criteria the tone will now cause a blinking response in the bunny. The tone will now be called the conditioned stimulus, and then the blinking of the bunny would be called the conditioned response. I really liked the use of this example because it helps to describe UR and CR in a better way for me to remember.
In my opinion I think although Pavlov and his work has probably had a bigger impact on this field, I really enjoyed the chapter about Thorndike. It is possibly because I really liked the thought of a scientist trapping cats in wooden boxes and watching them flip out to observe leaving behaviors. I just found him a little more interesting, and maybe because I feel like I always hear things about Pavlov I just liked a change of character in this field.
To be honest, I don’t know how much of Thorndike’s research can now be applied after all of Pavlov’s work. Although Thorndike did have valid research and ideas, I feel like he is greatly overthrown by Pavlov. In the end I feel that research done by Pavlov will be better suited toward real life situations today.
Terms used: Stimulus, neutral stimulus, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, behavior, emit, reinforce, topography, functionality, positive reinforcement.
Three things I will remember about Thorndike are:
1. Learning is all about self-conditioning to veer away from behaviors that have aversive outcomes.
2. A common form of learning is due to finding out what works and doesn't work. The ways that work are those that are repeated in similar situations.
3. His studies on intelligence of animals and how they relate to that of human intelligence.
Three things I will remember about Pavlov are:
1. Much of his research was overlooked because of the current zeitgeist.
2. The dogs. Conditioned and Unconditioned stimulus.
3. The responses to the conditioned/unconditioned stimuli.
I enjoyed Thorndike more mainly because it got me to think about numerous situations in which I have learned to not do certain things because of aversive outcomes. The old "hand on the hot stove" idea. People everywhere have learned this first hand, whether it be by a Catholic school nun or a disciplinarian father. I have always been more intrigued by punishment, whether it be natural or synthetic.
All of this research, and the findings that accompany them, are still relevant in today's world. Much of these findings seem almost commonplace now. Everyone knows about the general principles behind most that was in this chapter (trial and error, stimulus and response), they just may not know the terminology and intricacies of them.
terms- Trial and Error, Behavior, Conditioned Stimulus, Unconditioned Stimulus, Conditioned Response, Unconditioned Response, Aversive, Stimulus Response
The things I will remember about Thorndike are: That the Law of Effect is basically about learning through trial and error and is easily generalizable to everyday life. 2)The law of recency is that when a new bhavior is learned is often to occur more frequently, for example if a child learns a new word such as no, they will use it pretty frequently. 3)The Law of Exercise is very basic because the more target behavior is elicted and emitted the stronger the associations are.
The three things I will remember about Pavolv are: 1)that Pavolov did more than just contribute to operant conditioning. 2) Stimulus needs to be salent, regular, and occur enough times to achieve association and conditioned response. 3)There are difrernt stages to conditioning it doesn't just go directly from one to the other.
I found it more entertaining to read about thorndike because it just seemed funn having all these cats in puzzle boxes doing all these random things to get out. Pavol seemed very in depth in his research and I felt bad for the animals he used but it was interesting how he had them associate shapes with food and then changed the shapes.
I think the work of Thorndike can easily be applied to the real world because people almost naturally learn from trial and error think about having a new job, you learn what makes the job tolerable and easier relatively fast through the process of trial and error.
Terms used: Law of recency. law of exercise, law of effect, operant conditioning, stimulus, conditioned stimulus, uncontiioned stimulus, emit, elicit, target behavior
The Three things I will remember about Thorndike are Puzzle boxes which are the boxes that he put the cats into to test the Law of Effect. The second thing is the Law of Effect which basically states that when behaviors or responses are followed by a positive outcome that behavior is stamped in. The third thing I will remember is, The Law of Exercise which states that through repetition behaviors are strengthened.
The Three things I will remember from Pavlov are that the UR and the CR are topgraphically and functionally the same but the way to tell them upart is what elicited the resonse. If the CS did then it is CR and if the US did then it is UR. Second thing is that anything can be used as a neutral stimulus but it has to be salient to the subject. In the reading it talks about a tone used on the blinking rabbit. The tone cathches the rabbit's attention breifly but nothing more than that. In other words the subject must be aware of the Neutral stimulus but it must not take up it's full attention. The last things I will remember is that Pavlov talked about Experimental Neurosis and it was about Learned Helplessness and aggressiveness but that Thorndike and other behaviorists took only the pavolvian conditioning part of his research to the U.S.
Personally I find Pavlov to be more interesting than Thorndike. Pavlov did so many more things and had research that was much more in depth than Thorndike. I also kind of feel like Thorndike cut Pavlov a little short of what he deserved to maybe try to make himself look a little better. Throndike's work is mostly looking at positive reinforcement and operant behavior. Pavlov is looking at classical conditioning which to me is much more complex and interesting.
I think Thorndike's work can absolutely be applied today and we do in this class. Even though he really doesn't use the terms is is talking about a target behavior and reinforcing it to make it repeat and then using repetion of this process to make it stronger which is another way of saying Positive reinforcement. Which is a lot of what we have talked about in this class and a lot of what is used in society (i.e schools, prison facilities, jobs, etc).
Terms: Experimental neurosis, positive reinforcement, target behavior, topographically, functionally
Three things I will remember about Thorndike are
1. The three law's that he developed. Which are, the Law of Effect: "when behaviors or responses are followed by positive outcomes, the the association is stamped in" the Law of Recency: "the most recent response is the most likely to reoccur" and the Law of Exercise: "Through repetition the associations are strengthened.
2. When graphing the results of his studies he did on animals he did not use labels that are used today.
3. He used a puzzle box in order to study animal intelligence. A cat was placed inside of the puzzle box and every time there was a decrease in time it took for the cat to escape the puzzle box he said the cat was learning. Getting out was his methodological construct for intelligence.
Three things that I will remember about Pavlov are
1. His work is now known as Classical conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning, or respondent conditioning. It involves a Stimulus and then a Response rather than a Response then a Stimulus.
2. In order for a neutral stimulus to be a conditioner it must be salient (would have to be noticed in the environment), it must have regularity in its presentation (if there isn't a reason for the stimulus to occur at that time then an association will not occur), and the stimulus must be presented a sufficient number of times before it will be associated.
3. There are five parts of classical conditioning. The Neutral stimulus, Conditioned stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned response, unconditioned response.
4. Unconditioned responses and conditioned responses are both topographically and functionally similar.
I find Pavlov more interesting, although more difficult to understand, than Thorndike. This is probably because it seems as if there was more that went into his work. It is also more believable to me than Thorndikes experiments. It could also be due to the fact that Pavlov is talked about more than Thorndike.
I don't necessarily think that Thorndikes work can be applied today. Especially after learning about reinforcement and punishment techniques, it doesn't seem that his work necessarily can be valid when it comes to learning. It might just be their response to the reinforcer and punisher.
Terms: Reinforcer, Punisher, Response, Punishment, Reinforcement, Classical Conditioning, Unconditioned response, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, Law of effect, law of recency, law of exercise
Thorndike's interests were primarily focused on animal intelligence. He was famous for his use of puzzle boxes. He would create these boxes from materials he would find. These boxes had strings and levers in them, that if triggered correctly the door would open. He would measure the intelligence of the cat by the number of successive tries it would take the cat to open the cage. If the number of tries decreased, he thought that it was a sign that the cat was learning.He also came of with the law of effect as a result of his research. It suggests that associations with successful attempts would be stamped in and associations with unsuccessful attempts were stamped out. What is the time frame for law of recency?
Pavlov's most famous for his research with CC and dogs. He used principles of classical condtioning such as conditioned stimulus, response, reflex, and the same for unconditioned. This was done with meat powder. He created a conditioned stimuli, tone, to go with an unconditioned, meat powder, to elicit a conditioned response salivating from the dogs. later he created an experimental neuroses with the dogs by teaching them to discriminate between shapes. The he would change to the shape little by little until the dogs could no longer discriminate and go crazy.
I think thordikes trial and error could be applied today. In fact, thats the way most people learn. If you make a mistake you are less likely to emit the same response.
terms; emit, elicit, response, UC CS CR US UR, puzzle box, law of recency
This section was different than any other section because we focused on a people and their theories rather than topics in psychology. Section 3.1 introduced us to a psychologist named Edward Thorndike who primarily focused on animal psychology. One of his Laws is the Law of Effect which states that associations which worked and emitted a successful attempt were stamped in and the unsuccessful attempts were stamped out. I understand this as when a behavior is emitted and is reinforced, it thus undergoes the reinforcement process and the frequency of the behavior is increased. On the opposite end, when a behavior is not reinforced, it undergoes extinction because that behavior is no longer emitted. Another Law, and the second thing I will remember about Thorndike is his Law of Recency. This Law states that the most recent response is most likely to reoccur. I understand this as if a series of responses is eventually reinforced, the response that was emitted immediately before the reinforcement, that behavior is likely to be repeated. Thordike's last Law is the Law of Exercise which states through repetition, associations between behaviors and responses will be strengthened. This law is similar to the Law of Effect; however,this law is different because it specifically states that the more a behavior is repeated, as long as it is successful, the association is strengthened.
Obviously, one of the main things I will remember about Pavlov is his work on classical conditioning. He was initially working with dogs studying their digestive system and salivation. The dogs were being reinforced with meat powder. The dogs did not need to be taught to salivate to meat powder, thus the meat powder is an unconditioned stimulus and the salivation is an unconditioned response. Once the dog learned that the meat powder is given after the researcher walks in, the dog hears the footsteps and begins to salivate because it understands meat powder is coming soon; thus, the sound of the footsteps become a conditioned stimulus and the salivation is then defined as a conditioned response. The connection between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli and responses called a conditioned reflex is one thing I will remember about Pavlov. A second thing I will remember about Pavlov is that he was able to teach discrimination in animals. By this, the animals were able to differentiate between different geometric shapes and colored discs which were associated with their own responses. The last thing I will remember from Pavlov is learned helplessness. This is what happens when in a treatment, dogs become unresponsive. For example, when a sound rings and the floor produces a shock to the dog, the dog has the option to jump onto a floor that is shock-free. Next, the dog is chained and is unable to escape the shock. After a few trials of this procedure, the dog is unchained, able to move to the safe zone, but it stays on the shock floor.
I found Pavlov to be more interesting. I'm not sure if it is because I really found him more interesting than Thorndike or if it's just because everyone hears about Pavlov and his dogs since their high school psychology classes. I really feel that Pavlov's work is already apparent in today's world. He was able to create an experimental neurosis and classically conditioned dogs and also taught them to discriminate.
Personally, I believe I learn the best by trial and error, one of the theories we can attribute to Thorndike. I try to listen to what people say and learn from their errors before my own, but I would still consider that to be trial and error.
Terms: Law of Effect, emit, reinforce, reinforcement, extinction, response, Law of Recency, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, conditioned reflex, discrimination, learned helplessness, experimental neurosis, and trial and error.