In this week’s Discussion, you examine how classical conditioning influences emotional responses in humans. You begin to see how classical conditioning applies in everyday human life. Behavioral psychologists are interested not only in how classical conditioning affects behavior and emotion. They also are interested in how classical conditioning can be applied to improve well being. For example, a child with asthma may benefit from remaining calm during an episode of wheezing. To bring this about, a parent may give the child a specific stuffed animal to hold at bedtime when the child is sleepy and relaxed. The child begins to pair the feeling of relaxation with the stuffed animal. Then when the parent gives the child the stuffed animal to hold during an asthma attack, the child calms down and the severity of the anxiety is reduced. Chapter 4 in your textbook explains how classical conditioning can influence health in positive and negative ways. Understanding this information can help researchers find new ways to treat physical and mental health issues.
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To prepare for this assignment:
• Review Chapter 4 in the course text, Learning and Behavior. Pay particular attention to the section on taste aversion and immune function.
• Think about a physical or mental health issue of interest to you (one that is not in your textbook).
• Consider how the issue you selected could be treated with the help of classical conditioning.
The assignment (1 page):
• Explain how classical conditioning can help in the treatment of the physical or mental health that you selected.
Support your Application Assignment with specific references to all resources used in its preparation. You are asked to provide a reference list only for those resources not included in the Learning Resources for this course.
Assignment: Part II: Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
In Week 1, you proposed an experiment to simulate the acquisition of a behavior in a rat. You may be interested in what to do if you no longer want your imagined experimental rat, or a real animal or human, to continue to produce the acquired behavior. Chapter 3 in your textbook explains extinction, the phenomenon that Pavlov demonstrated to determine how to reduce and ultimately extinguish an acquired behavior. Your text also explains how to bring that behavior back, which is called spontaneous recovery.
This week you will explain how you would design your proposed experiment to elicit both extinction and spontaneous recovery of the target behavior in your rat.
To prepare for this assignment:
• Review the assigned pages in Chapter 3 of the course text, Learning and Behavior. Focus on the section titled, “Extinction of Conditional Responses.”
• Review the assigned section, Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery, of Psychology, Core Concepts.
• Review the experiments detailed in the Rescorla article to aid you in considering how you will conduct this part of your experiment.
The assignment (1 page):
• Explain the steps you would take to exhibit extinction of the target behavior in your rat. Include how you would know extinction of the behavior has taken place.
• Explain how spontaneous recovery occurs and what it might look like in your experiment.
Support your Application Assignment with specific references to all resources used in its preparation. You are asked to provide a reference list only for those resources not included in the Learning Resources for this course.
Submit your assignments (Parts I and II)
Readings Resources:
Course Text: Learning and Behavior, Chance P. (2014). (7th ed.) Belmont,CA: Wadsworth
Chapter 3, “Pavlovian Conditioning” (pp. 78–92 only)
Chapter 4, “Pavlovian Applications”
Rescorla, R. A. (2001). Retraining of extinguished Pavlovian stimuli. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes.
Thanellou, A., & Green, J. T. (2011). Spontaneous recovery but not reinstatement of the extinguished conditioned eyeblink response in the rat. Behavioral Neuroscience.
Book Excerpt: Zimbardo, P. G., Johnson, R. L., & Weber, A. L. (2005). Learning. In Psychology: Core concepts (pp. 224–269). Boston: Pearson. Retrieved from http://www.ablongman.com/samplechapter/0205424287.pdf (Read only p. 231)
Optional Resources
• Sniffy the Virtual Rat Lite Version 3.0
o Chapter 3, “Phenomena of Classical Conditioning: Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous Recovery” (pp. 29–32 only)
