Example- When the lunch bell rings, my stomach starts to grumble.

Unconditioned Stimulus: Stimulus or trigger that leads to an automatic response.

Neutral Stimulus: Can turn into a conditioned stimulus over time.

Conditioned Stimulus: Stimulus that was once neutral but now leads to a response.

Outliers: Events that can still influence the learning process

Extinction: Refers to when the conditional stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditional stimulus, resulting in the conditioned response no longer existing.

Generalization: Refers to when you can generalize similar things and respond the same way.

Spontaneous recovery: Sudden reappearance of an extinguished response.

Discrimination: The ability to distinguish between different stimuli.

Operant Conditioning- A type of learning which the frequency of a behavior depends on the consequence that follows that behavior

Example- When I tell my dog to sit, he gets a treat.

Social Observational Learning- Learning from behavior of others.

Example- When I go to sit on my couch, my dog jumps up and sits too.

Albert Bandura: Learning is the product of interaction of the biological, psychological, and social cultural influences.

1. Children sharing toys

Hypothesis- Children who observe an adult sharing toys will be more likely to share their own toys compared to children who do not observe this behavior.

Experiment- Place some children in a playroom that have adults sharing toys, and place the other children in a room with no role models. Observe for 20 minutes, and get results.

2. Teaching children how to wash their hands

Hypothesis- Children who observe an adult practicing proper hand washing will be more likely to wash their hands correctly compared to children who do not observe this behavior.

Experiment- First record the initial status of their handwashing, and get a group of children with similar status in a group. Put one group in a classroom with adults teaching them how to properly wash their hands, and the other without. Watch over a week, and see who made more progress.

NS- Initially dogs don’t scare Melina

US- The Dog bite

CS-After the incident, all dogs scare Melina

CR- Melina now fears all dogs

Example 2: Frannie tries sushi for the first time and gets food poisoning, now whenever she smells sushi it makes her nauseous

NS- Sushi originally doesn’t make Frannie sick

US- Food poisoning

CS- The smell of sushi makes Frannie nauseous now

CR- Frannie now gets sick whenever she smells sushi

Example 3: Kim has a specific ringtone whenever she receives a text from her boyfriend, and it naturally causes her happiness.

NS- Specific ringtone initially doesn’t cause happiness

US- Loving text message

CS- After a bit, the ringtone brings Kim happiness

CR- Regardless of what the text contain, Kim immediately feels happy when she hears the ringtone

In this article, the author attempts to teach behaviorism and how it promotes better studying habits. She begins by explaining the history of behaviorism, she discusses the experiment with the classic conditioning of dogs anticipating food. Nebel then goes on to write about the specific behaviorist techniques, including classical and operant conditioning. For operant conditioning, she talks about B.F Skinner’s idea that behavior influenced by rewards or punishments has an effect. Positive reinforcements add a desirable stimulus, while negative reinforcement removes an unpleasant one. Positive reinforcement removes an unpleasant stimulus, and negative punishment removes a desirable one. Overall, Nebel comes to the conclusion that operant conditioning helps with classroom management and encourages effective strategies for studying. For instance losing points for being on your phone, is a negative punishment. Gaining points for studying well is positive reinforcement.

Reinforcement- Any consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behavior

Positive Reinforcement:

1. A student does good on a test, and their parents praise them

2. Employee works extra hours and does a good job, in return she receives a promotion

3. A child completes all her chores, so they are allowed to hangout with their friends

4. Someone gives a good speech, in response they were applauded

5. An athlete is a positive, strong, and talkative teammate, so they were offered to be the captain

Negative Reinforcement:

1. The car beeps if someone isn’t wearing their seatbelt, so it encourages everyone to wear a seatbelt

2. Parents stop yelling at their child once they cleaned their room, teaching them to keep their room clean

3. Someone gets out of bed to turn their annoying alarm off, showing them to get awake on time

4. A student studies hard to not fail a test, teaching them to study

5. Someone takes an Advil to stop their headache, teaching them to take medicine when they feel sick

Punishment- any consequence that increases the future likelihood of behavior

Positive punishment:

1. A student gets points taken off her test for talking during the test, making it less likely they’ll talk during the test again

2. A driver receives a ticket for speeding, discouraging them from speeding again

3. A dog ate someone’s homework then got scolded, discouraging the dog from doing it again

4. A student receives detention from skipping many classes, so they start going to class

5. An athlete is benched for not doing a good job warming up, encouraging the athlete to have better warm ups

Negative punishment:

1. A teenager is grounded after being caught sneaking out, they now got their phone taken away

2. A child got an F on a test, so they got grounded

3. Siblings get in a fight, so their mom takes away TV privileges for a week

4. After a child yells at their sibling, they get their favorite toy taken away

5. A student gets in a fight, so they get suspended.

Schedules of Reinforcement: Rules stating which instances of behavior will be reinforced.

2 ratio schedules: Based on how many responses have occurred.

2 internal schedules: based on how much time has passed.