CLASS IS CLOSED.
The door's closed to minimize disruptions from the hallway. Today? Coffee and a bunch of fresh fruit. "All right, behavioral psych. Basically? Someone said, 'Hey, we can study behavior without going into all the deep thought of why they think the way they do.' Some of the big names of behavioral psych are Ivan Pavlov, the guy who's famous for the salivating dog experiment; John B. Watson, who hoped to make psychology a discipline focused solely on empirical evidence and not on thought patterns; and B.F. Skinner, who is, sadly, not the hot A.D. from The X-Files, damn it who gave behavioral psych a large part of its ethical grounding.

Now I'm going to go straight to operant and classical conditioning, as that's what you guys seemed the most interested in when we covered the basics of psychological perspectives.

Okay, everyone who's had a pet knows that they come running when they hear the sound they most commonly associate with a meal, like shaking the food bag or the electric can opener, right? If you say no, then I assume you have the most idiotic pet in the world, because stimulus-response is not something that requires much in the way of thought patterns.

I bring this up because that's the essence of classical conditioning. Stimulus-response. You pair two stimuli together. Ring a bell at the same time as you give a dog food. He salivates due to the food. Eventually, you take away the food and just ring the bell, and guess what? The dog still drools. Believe it or not, this discovery is what made Pavlov famous and is why classical conditioning is also known as Pavlovian conditioning. Classical conditioning generally deals with involuntary behavior.

The next one, operant conditioning, was researched most by B.F. Skinner, and deals far more with shaping voluntary behavior. It deals primarily with reinforcement--that is, a consequence that causes a behavior to recur more frequently--and punishment--a consequence that that causes a behavior to occur with less frequency. Pair up reinforcement and punishment with positive and negative consequences--positive meaning something added and negative meaning something taken away--and you've got the four primary methods of reinforcement for operant conditioning. I've got them copy/pasted from wiki written on the board."

Positive reinforcement occurs when a behavior (response) is followed by a pleasant stimulus that rewards it. In the Skinner box experiment, positive reinforcement is the rat pressing a lever and receiving a food reward.

Negative reinforcement occurs when a behavior (response) is followed by an unpleasant stimulus being removed. In the Skinner box experiment, negative reinforcement is a loud noise continuously sounding inside the rat's cage until it presses the lever, when the noise ceases.

Positive punishment is an aversive stimulus, such as introducing a shock or loud noise.

Negative punishment or extinction removes a pleasant stimulus, such as taking away a child's toy. This occurs when a behavior (response) that had previously been followed by a pleasant stimulus is followed by no stimulus at all. In the Skinner box experiment, this is the rat pushing the lever and being rewarded with a food pellet several times, and then pushing the lever again and never receiving a food pellet again. Eventually the rat would learn that no food would come, and would cease pushing the lever.

"One of the assumptions of many behaviorists is that free will is illusory, and that all behavior is determined by a combination of forces comprised of genetic factors and the environment, either through association or reinforcement. Based on what we've gone over today on classical and operant conditioning, do you guys agree? Or not? Or do you have other questions?"

Useful Links:
Ms. Calendar's Voice Mail
Ms. Calendar's E-Mail
Wikipedia - Behavioral Psychology
Wikipedia - Classical Conditioning
Wikipedia - Operant Conditioning


{{OOC: OCD comment threads going up shortly are up.}}