How to Train a Brain: Crash Course Psychology #11
TLDRThe video examines the work of influential psychologists like Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, and B.F. Skinner in studying behaviorism and conditioning. It covers Pavlov's famous dog experiments showing how neutral stimuli can become associated with automatic responses like salivation. It also explains Watson's unethical Little Albert experiment conditioning fear and Skinner's Skinner Box experiments with positive and negative reinforcement of behaviors. Though controversial, their focus on observable behavior helped shape psychology into a more rigorous science.
Takeaways
- 😀 Pavlov's experiments with dogs drooling in response to stimuli like bells laid the foundation for the behaviorist school of psychology focused on observable behaviors.
- 🧠 The processes behind conditioning that allow animals and humans to adapt behaviors to their environment have helped shape experimental psychology over the past century.
- 🐕 Classical conditioning involves forming associations between stimuli, like Pavlov pairing a bell sound with food to condition dogs to drool at the sound.
- 🎯 Operant conditioning involves associating behaviors with consequences to influence the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.
- ✅ Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a reward, while negative reinforcement strengthens a behavior by removing an unpleasant stimulus.
- ❌ Punishment decreases behaviors by adding negative consequences or removing positive stimuli.
- 📈 Complex reinforcement schedules like partial or intermittent reinforcement are more resistant to extinction of conditioned behaviors.
- 🤔 Cognitive processes like thoughts and feelings also influence learning, not just external conditioning as the strict behaviorists argued.
- 😨 Controversial experiments like Watson's "Little Albert" went too far in attempting to condition emotional responses in humans.
- 💡 Our everyday interactions continuely shape behavior through intentional and accidental reinforcement.
Q & A
What field of science did Ivan Pavlov originally train in?
-Pavlov originally trained in medicine and spent nearly 20 years studying the digestive system, earning Russia's first Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on how stomachs work.
What is the process that Pavlov noticed happening with his test dogs?
-Pavlov noticed his dogs would begin salivating or drooling when they smelled food, even before the food was presented. This was an innate response he termed the 'unconditioned response'.
How did Pavlov's work influence psychology and behavioral science?
-Pavlov's controlled experiments with conditioning influenced psychology by suggesting behavioral responses could be studied scientifically through direct observation. This supported the behaviorist school of thought focused on external behaviors over internal mental processes.
What is acquisition in classical conditioning?
-Acquisition refers to the stage in classical conditioning when the association between the unconditioned stimulus (e.g. food) and neutral stimulus (e.g. bell sound) is solidified through repeated pairings, causing the neutral stimulus to become a conditioned stimulus.
What is Little Albert's story in psychology?
-Little Albert was a young child conditioned by psychologist John B. Watson to develop an intense fear of white furry objects. This controversial experiment demonstrated that emotions could potentially be classically conditioned.
Who invented the operant conditioning chamber known as a Skinner box?
-The operant conditioning chamber called a Skinner box was invented by renowned behaviorist B.F. Skinner. It allowed animals like rats to operate levers and buttons to receive food rewards.
What is negative reinforcement?
-Negative reinforcement refers to increasing a behavior by removing an aversive stimulus, like ceasing an annoying beeping noise when you fasten your seatbelt in a car.
How does intermittent reinforcement differ from continuous reinforcement?
-Intermittent reinforcement only rewards a behavior some of the time, while continuous reinforcement reliably rewards every instance of the behavior. Intermittent reinforcement leads to behaviors that are more resistant to extinction.
What criticisms emerged regarding strict behaviorism?
-Critics argued that behavior is also driven by internal cognitive processes like thoughts, perceptions and feelings - not just external conditioning. This led to theories integrating both external stimuli and internal mental processes in learning.
What are some key concepts covered in the script?
-Key concepts include: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, positive/negative reinforcement, acquisition, extinction, shaping, primary vs. conditioned reinforcers, reinforcement schedules, and behaviorism vs. cognitivism.
Outlines
😊 Pavlov's Experiments on Classical Conditioning
This paragraph discusses Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov's famous experiments showing that dogs could exhibit associative learning through classical conditioning. Pavlov noticed how dogs would salivate when food was present, so he started pairing a neutral stimulus like a sound with the food to condition the dogs to associate the sound with food and exhibit the conditioned response of salivating. His work influenced the behaviorist school of psychology focused solely on observable behaviors rather than internal mental processes.
😮 Controversial Behaviorist Experiments on Conditioning
This paragraph talks about some controversial behaviorist experiments influenced by Pavlov's conditioning research. John B. Watson claimed he could condition infants to become anything regardless of their nature. He conditioned a child called "Little Albert" to be afraid of furry things by pairing a white rat with a scary loud sound. B.F. Skinner designed an "operant conditioning chamber" to demonstrate how behaviors could be reinforced. He did not actually put children in the box.
😃 Real-World Applications of Conditioning Principles
This final paragraph explains some of the complexity around conditioning and reinforcement schedules. Unlike in a lab, real life involves partial or intermittent reinforcement. Things like getting a free coffee sometimes or money as a conditioned reinforcer are examples. The paragraph concludes by reviewing key conditioning concepts covered in the video.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡conditioning
💡behaviorism
💡classical conditioning
💡operant conditioning
💡reinforcement
💡shaping
💡extinction
💡punishment
💡cognition
💡associative learning
Highlights
Pavlov's work contributed to the foundation of the behaviorist school of thought that viewed psychology as an empirically rigorous science.
His research helped pave the path for more experimental rigor and behavioral research right up to the present day.
Animals, he found, can exhibit associative learning. That's when a subject links certain events, behaviors, or stimuli together in the process of conditioning.
In fact, the research that's gone into how we're conditioned by our environments has helped shape the science of psychology from a still-kinda-subjective thought exercise into the more rigorous discipline we know today.
This is something Pavlov, especially appreciated, given his disdain for "mentalistic concepts" like consciousness and introspection, championed by Freud.
If classical conditioning is all about forming associations between stimuli, operant conditioning involves associating our own behavior with consequences.
The basic premise here is that behaviors increase when followed by reinforcement or reward, but they decrease when followed by punishment.
Other than maybe Freud, no other figure in psychology seems to be as shrouded in lore and misinformation as B.F. Skinner.
Positive reinforcement, obviously strengthens responses by giving rewards after a desired event.
Negative reinforcement removes the punishing event to increase the behavior. So pain killers negatively reinforce the behavior of swallowing them by ending the headache.
We're gonna talk about how these other things factor into learning next week, when we look more at conditioning, cognition, and observational learning.
It was clear to many of the behaviorists' rivals that our cognitive processes -- our thoughts, perceptions, feelings, memories -- also influence the way we learn.
We want money because we need food and shelter, which are still the primary drivers.
Learning under these conditions takes longer, but it holds up better in the long run, and is less susceptible to that extinction.
Now, Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner's ideas were definitely controversial, as well as the whole scary rat experiment, plenty of folks disagreed with their insistence that only external influences and not internal thoughts and feelings shaped behavior.
Transcripts
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