All right, so Pavlov really kicked something off with his findings. And in fact to some extent he redefined psychology at least the psychology that was going on in North America. I want to be clear that in Europe, that work on perception, a lot of which we, we spoke of in the previous lectures. That was still going on and that continued to be the focus in Europe. But in n, in North America especially, the work originally conducted by Pavlov, of course in Russia was really embraced. And the school of behaviorism really took over. so I want to put that in a little bit of context and, and show you, and begin to show you the bigger picture that emerged from that. Alrighty, so week four lecture three. I've entitled this simply learning. because really learning now became the focus of psychology, especially for those studying the behaviorist approach and that really did dominate in a very big way. Now of course learning isn't a new issue but with all the hype about genetics it became a real counterpoint to the sort of genetic, the nature push that had been starting to, you know, really sweep certainly Europe and the globe more generally. So if we trace back the learning issue, the big proponent that most people talk about is John Locke. Now notice, John Locke was 1600s, late 1600s, when he was having his biggest influence. And the debate that he was involved with is, was really about how again, we come to be the people we are. And John Locke famously proposed this notion of the Tabula Rasa. The idea that we are born as blank slates, which experience then writes on. So that we ultimately are shaped by the experiences, that we experience as we go through life. this was, you know, kind of the notion that the behaviorists latched onto. Now, they didn't necessarily agree with this blank slate notion. it was obvious since the work of Darwin and since Mendel and all the stuff that had happened in genetics, that clearly that genetics plays a role well. But those well in the behaviorist tradition weren't very intrested in that. They were intrested in experience and how experience shapes behavior. In fact, you could say, that even in evolutionary terms were someone like Darwin was thinking about how a species evolved across generations, behaviourists were intrested in how behavior evolved within an individual. And the forces that govern that evolution of behavior within an individual. and so when talking about it. They, they started by saying, okay clearly there are some innate behaviors, that any organism seems to be born with some hard wired inbred tendency that it did not have to learn. and, and here's a few examples by the way. these are typical examples from babies the tonic neck reflex, the gras. You've seen a lot of these. So for example, the grasp reflex, babies typically if you give them a finger, they will, they will grab onto it. If you, even before they walk, put them in an upright position, they will have this natural tendency to step. And at a certain age when laid down they will have this natural tendency to crawl. Even well before this by the way at birth they have a very natural tendency that if you rub on their cheeks at all they will turn towards any stimulation and basically anything near their mouth they will suckle on. So they're born they don't have to learn how to suckle. That would be a real problem if, if they did. they tend to do that naturally from, you know, the moment of birth. so, everybody agrees with that. and sometimes there have been some extreme examples of exactly how complex these innate behaviors can be. Over here, we have Conrad Lorenz Conrad, Conrad Lorenz was very intrested in animals, animal cognition and one of the things that he found early on is that birds especially, show this odd behavior called imprinting. From birth, the first living thing they see on birth, they kind of think is their mother. And they will follow that thing, and so Conrad what there, what you're seeing here is he was very careful to make sure that he was the first thing that all of these geese saw when they hatched. So he was the first living animate individual around them. And as a result now anywhere Conrad goes they follow just like little duckies following the mother. This is something called imprinting. It seems to be a natural, reflexive behavior. They don't have to learn this, they just do it. So you know that tendency the ducks have to follow their mother they didn't have to learn. Kay, so there are some things that are unlearned, that's kind of the starting point. But now, if we think of human behavior we know that as a, as adults, the age that, that we all are, we show a huge range of complexity in our behavior. And so, the question is, how did we go from these simple reflexes to this complexity of behavior. What is the process or processes that govern that evolution? Well, we can break this down a little bit in parts. One part of it is, we don't just learn new behaviors we also learn to get rid of behaviors. So, some of the evolution involves subtraction of these innate tendencies that I was talking about we call that habituation. So I talk about habituation a little bit in the self awareness thing. Let me link back to that in a second. But let's go with this example. So here's a natural example we have, that if a dog was barking towards us, we might originally look at it and have a little bit of fear and apprehension. You know, what's it going to do? But if the same dog keeps barking at us and that's all they do is bark. Eventually we're going to show a little less fear, worry, whatever. Its just that barking dog and if you know if we live with this barking dog for example and this dog barks quite regularly for no good reason eventually we will stop even noticing the dog. We will stop attending, we will stop behaving, so we won't do that natural orienting, we won't check it out. here's a couple of examples. One, I grew up very near an airport. At first anybody in my house would hear that sound and go, what the heck is going on? But after awhile, you literally don't even hear it. I would be on the phone talking to friends, talking away, an airplane would go over, I would naturally shut up. But then my friends would go, my goodness what the heck was that? And I'd have to, I, I hadn't even noticed it. I hadn't even noticed that I'd stopped. It all became natural and then I would say oh, yeah, it was probably an airplane that, that went over. But eventually, even those dramatic sort of startle reflexes. If, if they don't, if they're not appropriate, kay, if, if you got startled every time an airplane went over and there's ten of them going over a day and they never hurt you. Eventually, you just stop reacting to them. And in fact you almost stop perceiving them. They disappear. I mentioned this earlier with the self awareness stuff that for a lot of animals when they see their reflection in a mirror at first they react to it but then eventually they habituate and they just act the reflection is not there. So this is one of the things. It's kind of like our system has these natural reactions to stuff but when it turns out those natural reactions are not appropriate because you're worried for no good reason. Then eventually those unappropriate ones get trimmed out. This is why you no longer hear the heating system of your house or other creaking noises that your house might make when you first slept there the first night, they, they might have kept you awake. Now you don't even hear them. Okay, that's habituation. So that's a reduction of behavior. So certain things that we would react to, we stop reacting to. now of course, the real thrust of, of behaviorism is about additions of behaviors, so drawing new links between certain stimuli and responses. And of course, Pavlov's work fits exactly into this mold. so it's one piece of that, that puzzle. we don't have to go through this all again. This is just another depiction of the basic Pavlovian paradigm where meat makes them s, salivate. A bell ringing, for example, we used a whistle but imagine a bell wouldn't. but then if you pair the two together enough so that the bell starts to predict the food, then eventually the bell will produce salivation. So this is the new link we've created. We've, we've built upon one of these reflexive behaviors. So, so salivating when you have meat or meat powder in your mouth is reflexive, it's natural. You didn't have to learn that. But we're able to build on top of those behaviors using the classical conditioning paradigm. And we can produce new links that weren't there before. I want you to. Sorry, I didn't, I shouldn't have just flashed this at you. [LAUGH] I just flashed it at myself, I was like whoa, where am I going there. I, I want you to understand that classical conditioning is not just about bells and whistles and meat powder. it's around us all the time. one of the, one of the places that it's used a lot is in advertising. So this car did you guys notice there was a car there? this, this car I think the people who created this car are wanting you to think of this as a sexy kind of car that you might, you know, feel kind of lusting after. Oh I would love the, there's a lot of fun positive experiences I could have with this car. And so the way they communicate that sometimes, in a very implicit way, is by pairing it with stimuli that already elicit the response you want. So having attractive women, especially half naked attractive women that you might think of as sexy and fun and wow you could have some great experiences with one of these women. That's a sort of natural reflexive behavior you might have to an attractive member of the opposite sex. Or the attractive member of your desired sex. and, and that's the response they want associated with this car. So if they keep pairing the two together and just like the whistle and the, and the meat powder. They're hoping that eventually, you will start to have the kind of reaction to the car, that you might have to a highly desirable person. You will start to lust after the car. So you know think of Corvettes and think of you know that sort of sports car, Ferraris, those sorts of things. That's the visceral reaction they want you to have. And by simply pairing their, their product, whatever their product is with something that already produces that reaction if they parrot enough. You know, sometimes wonder why do they show that commercial over and over and over again. It's the Pavolivian conditioning. They're just trying to pair that up so that eventually you know you see that product and you have those feelings naturally and you think It's the product that's causing those feelings. Well, it is now but it was done so by association, okay? So, that's just an example I want to give you of how people in the real world are using things like Pavlovian conditioning to produce new behavior, new behaviors are new. New links between stimuli and certain kinds of responses. Alright. I should have had at least one highly attractive half-naked male. My apologies, I'll try to do better in the future for those of you who are attracted to half naked highly attractive males. All right, so a little bit more for you to follow up on. before we get in and start making this whole learning thing a little bit more complex. So, if you've found the Conrad Lorenz stuff intresting here's the link where you can learn more about imprinting about Conrad in general, fascincating guy. sometimes we want dogs to habituate. They're, they're showing a response, is like for example, maybe getting excited every time they see another dog. And we want them not to get excited. so we want them to habituate. To stop showing that response. There are techniques you can use and so this is somebody walking you through one example of that technique, of how you can train dogs using habituation. More examples of real world classical conditioning. If you want to check that out. In your readings again, one that links advertising to classical conditioning. And this one much more explicitly goes through some of the famous super bowl ads and show you how those ads are you using classical conditioning to try to produce these new responses in you? So check those out. By the time you're done with that, you'll have a real good feel with about classical conditioning. Then I'm going to introduce you to operant conditioning and suddenly everything will get confusing. Not really; I'll make it clear. Alright? Have a great day. See you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]
