Summary Myers Psychology Book - Chapter 7 Notes

Myers Ch 7

 Learning
o Acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors
o How we adapt to our environments
 Classical Conditioning
o Basic components/how it works
 Learn to expect and prepare for events
 Associative learning
 Respondent behavior is the automatic response to a stimulus
o Unconditioned Stimulus
 Stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned
response
 Such as food causing salivation
o Unconditioned Response
 Unlearned, naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus
 Such as salivating for food
o Conditioned Stimulus
 Originally irrelevant stimulus that is now associated with an
unconditioned stimulus to trigger conditioned response
 Like Pavlov’s bell
o Conditioned Response
 A learned response to a previously neutral, but now conditioned stimulus
 Like Pavlov’s dogs salivating to the bell
o Pavlov
 Behaviorist
 Just before giving the dog food, he rang a bell (neural stimulus)
 The dog would salivate at just the bell
 Salivation is an unconditioned response from the unconditioned stimulus
of food
 Salivation to the bell is a conditioned response from the
conditioned stimulus of the bell
o Acquisition
 Initial stage when one links a neural stimulus and unconditioned stimulus
 So the neural stimulus triggers the conditioned response
 Neural stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus
o Extinction
 Diminishing of a conditioned response
 Happens when unconditioned stimulus does not follow conditioned
stimulus
 Response is no longer reinforced
 Ex: Pavlov rang a bell but gave no food
o Spontaneous Recovery