The Charlie Hebo solidarity march was for a small number of people killed in horrific circumstances , it provoked a mass of people to turn out on the streets in most cities of France and some outside of France, leaders from countries where there is little free speech or none were shamefully allowed to attend even leaders with blood on their hands .
On Saturday, Boko Haram murdered 2,000 people. Amnesty International called it the “deadliest massacre” in the history of the extremist group. Homes were burnt down and buildings destroyed as corpses of men, women and children lay in the street. A survivor harrowingly spoke of ‘stepping on dead bodies’ as he escaped. Those that could grabbed what they could and fled.
The whole thing in intellectual terms was a moral fiasco at least at the main march in Paris .But there is one thing that stands out for me that of the fact that so many people were prepared to show solidarity for the murdered cartoonists yet a little while back when 250 children were massacred in Gaza by Israel there was no mass march of solidarity for them and hardly any marches for all the innocents killed in Africa .And they even invited the butcher of Gaza .
So why do people only get indignant over certain events and ignore others? I think it is an example of conditioning .
For instance Humans can be trained to crave food in response to abstract prompts just like Pavlov's dogs, reveals new research.
The unconditioned response is the unlearned response that occurs naturally in response to the unconditioned stimulus. In our example, the feeling of hunger in response to the smell of food is the unconditioned response.
In our earlier example, suppose that when you smelled your favorite food, you also heard the sound of a whistle. While the whistle is unrelated to the smell of the food, if the sound of the whistle was paired multiple times with the smell, the sound would eventually trigger the conditioned response. In this case, the sound of the whistle is the conditioned stimulus.
Adult "Learning" seems to be one process that many people take for granted (just assume it happens and happens basically the same way for most people) but know very little about.
So, how do we learn? How do other animals learn? Do we learn the same way? What are our limitations? Can we learn anything? Is there one right way to learn? To answer these questions, we need to first establish a definition of learning. Our definition is comprised of several different components:
On Saturday, Boko Haram murdered 2,000 people. Amnesty International called it the “deadliest massacre” in the history of the extremist group. Homes were burnt down and buildings destroyed as corpses of men, women and children lay in the street. A survivor harrowingly spoke of ‘stepping on dead bodies’ as he escaped. Those that could grabbed what they could and fled.
The attack has been described as “heartbreaking,” “barbaric,” and “senseless”. And it is. But it won’t change anything in Nigeria. But no mass march about this terrible massacre .
So why do people only get indignant over certain events and ignore others? I think it is an example of conditioning .
For instance Humans can be trained to crave food in response to abstract prompts just like Pavlov's dogs, reveals new research.
But whereas Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to drool at the sound of a bell, Jay Gottfried and colleagues at University College London, UK, trained humans to yearn for vanilla ice cream and peanut butter at the sight of fractal-based computer images.
Importantly, the team also showed that the human brain can put a "brake" on the powerful desire for certain foods once the appetite has been sated. This system to turn the "delectable into the distasteful" may be crucial in regulating behaviour, they say. Detecting faults in this system might in future help shed light on compulsive eating disorders and substance addictions, speculates Gottfried, a neurologist.
But if this can be done with food then it can obviously be done with the way we feel, the anger we think we feel or the joy we think we feel.I think this has already been reached with the majority of non-intellectuals , people with medium or low culture who respond like Pavlov's dogs to prepared stimulus very often in the form of prepared propaganda
The unconditioned stimulus is one that unconditionally, naturally, and automatically triggers a response. For example, when you smell one of your favorite foods, you may immediately feel very hungry. In this example, the smell of the food is the unconditioned stimulus.The unconditioned response is the unlearned response that occurs naturally in response to the unconditioned stimulus. In our example, the feeling of hunger in response to the smell of food is the unconditioned response.
In our earlier example, suppose that when you smelled your favorite food, you also heard the sound of a whistle. While the whistle is unrelated to the smell of the food, if the sound of the whistle was paired multiple times with the smell, the sound would eventually trigger the conditioned response. In this case, the sound of the whistle is the conditioned stimulus.
Adult "Learning" seems to be one process that many people take for granted (just assume it happens and happens basically the same way for most people) but know very little about.
.
So, how do we learn? How do other animals learn? Do we learn the same way? What are our limitations? Can we learn anything? Is there one right way to learn? To answer these questions, we need to first establish a definition of learning. Our definition is comprised of several different components:
How Do We Define the Learning Process?
The 4 Factors That Form The Definition of Learning:
The 4 Factors That Form The Definition of Learning:
1) learning is inferred from a change in behavior/performance*
2) learning results in an inferred change in memory
3) learning is the result of experience
4) learning is relatively permanent
2) learning results in an inferred change in memory
3) learning is the result of experience
4) learning is relatively permanent
It is the combination of these 4 factors that make our definition of learning. Or, you can go with a slightly less comprehensive definition that is offered in many text books: Learning is a relatively durable change in behavior or knowledge that is due to experience.
What is Behavior Potential?
This means that behavior changes that are temporary or due to things like drugs, alcohol, etc., are not "learned".
This means that behavior changes that are temporary or due to things like drugs, alcohol, etc., are not "learned".
* Behavior Potential - once something is learned, an organism can exhibit a behavior that indicates learning as occurred. Thus, once a behavior has been "learned", it can be exhibited by "performance" of a corresponding behavior.
It is the combination of these 4 factors that make our definition of learning. Or, you can go with a slightly less comprehensive definition that is offered in many text books: Learning is a relatively durable change in behavior or knowledge that is due to experience.
We are going to discuss the two main types of learning examined by researchers, classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
I. Classical Conditioning
Classical Conditioning can be defined as a type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a reflexive response that was originally evoked by a different stimulus.
A. Ivan Pavlov - Russian physiologist interested in behavior (digestion).
1) Pavlov was studying salivation in dogs - he was measuring the amount of salivation produced by the salivary glands of dogs by presenting them meat powder through a food dispenser.
The dispenser would deliver the meat powder to which the animals salivated. However, what Pavlov noticed was that the food dispenser made a sound when delivering the powder, and that the dogs salivated before the powder was delivered.He realized that the dogs associated the sound (which occurred seconds before the powder actually arrived) with the delivery of the food. Thus, the dogs had "learned" that when the sound occurred, the meat powder was going to arrive.This is conditioning (Stimulus-Response; S-R Bonds). The stimulus (sound of food dispenser) produced a response (salivation). It is important to note that at this point, we are talking about reflexive responses (salivation is automatic).
2) Terminology (if you are still confused by these definitions, please look in the non-Psychology jargon glossary on the AlleyDog.com homepage):
a) Unconditioned Stimulus (US) - a stimulus that evokes an unconditioned response without any prior conditioning (no learning needed for the response to occur).b) Unconditioned Response (UR) - an unlearned reaction/response to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without prior conditioning.c) Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - a previously neutral stimulus that has, through conditioning, acquired the capacity to evoke a conditioned response.d) Conditioned Response (CR) - a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of prior conditioning.*These are reflexive behaviors. Not a result from engaging in goal directed behavior.e) Trial - presentation of a stimulus or pair of stimuli.
Don't worry, we will get to some examples that make this all much more clear.
3) Basic Principles:
a) Acquisition - formation of a new CR tendency. This means that when an organism learns something new, it has been "acquired".Pavlov believed in contiguity - temporal association between two events that occur closely together in time. The more closely in time two events occurred, the more likely they were to become associated; s time passes, association becomes less likely.For example, when people are house training a dog -- you notice that the dog went to the bathroom on the rug,. If the dog had the accident hours ago, it will not do any good to scold the dog because too much time has passed for the dog to associate your scolding with the accident. But, if you catch the dog right after the accident occurred, it is more likely to become associated with the accident.There are several different ways conditioning can occur -- order that the stimulus-response can occur:1. delayed conditioning (forward) - the CS is presented before the US and it (CS) stays on until the US is presented. This is generally the best, especially when the delay is short.example - a bell begins to ring and continues to ring until food is presented.2. trace conditioning - discrete event is presented, then the US occurs. Shorter the interval the better, but as you can tell, this approach is not very effective.example - a bell begins ringing and ends just before the food is presented.3. simultaneous conditioning - CS and US presented together. Not very good.example - the bell begins to ring at the same time the food is presented. Both begin, continue, and end at the same time.4. backward conditioning - US occurs before CS.example - the food is presented, then the bell rings. This is not really effective.b) Extinction - this is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the CR tendency. Extinction occurs from multiple presentations of CS without the US.Essentially, the organism continues to be presented with the conditioned stimulus but without the unconditioned stimulus the CS loses its power to evoke the CR. For example, Pavlov's dogs stopped salivating when the dispenser sound kept occurring without the meat powder following.c) Spontaneous Recovery - sometimes there will be a reappearance of a response that had been extinguished. The recovery can occur after a period of non-exposure to the CS. It is called spontaneous because the response seems to reappear out of nowhere.d) Stimulus Generalization - a response to a specific stimulus becomes associated to other stimuli (similar stimuli) and now occurs to those other similar stimuli.For Example - a child who gets bitten by black lab, later becomes afraid of all dogs. The original fear evoked by the Black Lab has now generalized to ALL dogs.Another Example - little Albert (I am assuming you are familiar with Little Albert, so I will give a very general example).John Watson conditioned a baby (Albert) to be afraid of a white rabbit by showing Albert the rabbit and then slamming two metal pipes together behind Albert's head (nice!). The pipes produced a very loud, sudden noise that frightened Albert and made him cry. Watson did this several times (multiple trials) until Albert was afraid of the rabbit. Previously he would pet the rabbit and play with it. After conditioning, the sight of the rabbit made Albert scream -- then what Watson found was that Albert began to show similar terrified behaviors to Watson's face (just looking at Watson's face made Albert cry. What a shock!). What Watson realized was that Albert was responding to the white beard Watson had at the time. So, the fear evoked by the white, furry, rabbit, had generalized to other white, furry things, like Watson's beard.f) Stimulus Discrimination - learning to respond to one stimulus and not another. Thus, an organisms becomes conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and not to other stimuli.For Example - a puppy may initially respond to lots of different people, but over time it learns to respond to only one or a few people's commands.g) Higher Order Conditioning - a CS can be used to produce a response from another neutral stimulus (can evoke CS). There are a couple of different orders or levels. Let's take a "Pavlovian Dog-like" example to look at the different orders:In this example, light is paired with food. The food is a US since it produces a response without any prior learning. Then, when food is paired with a neutral stimulus (light) it becomes a Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - the dog begins to respond (salivate) to the light without the presentation of the food.first order:
1) light -- US (food)
\--> UR (salivation)2) light -- US (food)
\--> CR (salivation)
second order:
3) tone -- light
\--> CR (salivation)4) tone -- light
\--> CR (salivation )
B. Classical Conditioning in Everyday Life
One of the great things about conditioning is that we can see it all around us. Here are some examples of classical conditioning that you may see:
1. Conditioned Fear & Anxiety - many phobias that people experience are the results of conditioning.
For Example - "fear of bridges" - fear of bridges can develop from many different sources. For example, while a child rides in a car over a dilapidated bridge, his father makes jokes about the bridge collapsing and all of them falling into the river below. The father finds this funny and so decides to do it whenever they cross the bridge. Years later, the child has grown up and now is afraid to drive over any bridge. In this case, the fear of one bridge generalized to all bridges which now evoke fear.
2. Advertising - modern advertising strategies evolved from John Watson's use of conditioning. The approach is to link an attractive US with a CS (the product being sold) so the consumer will feel positively toward the product just like they do with the US.
US --> CS --> CR/URattractive person --> car --> pleasant emotional response
3. A Clockwork Orange - No additional information necessary! If you haven't seen this movie or read the book, do it. You will find it very interesting, and a wonderful example of conditioning in action.
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