Phobias and Addiction Paper
Phobias and Addiction
PSY 300
October 22, 2012
Phobias and Addiction
Learning a behavior is gaining knowledge or skills through experience, practice, or conditioning. For example, most people learn to wake up at the sound of an alarm clock. Through the process of conditioning, he or she awakens at the sound of the alarm. The alarm becomes the signal to start the day. Often what happens is that some people condition themselves to awaken at the same time every day without even hearing the alarm. In the late nineteenth century Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was the first to systematically study classical conditioning (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Classical conditioning is a process when a neutral stimulus brings forth a reaction corresponding with a stimulus that automatically brings forth that reaction (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Pavlov effectively produced a conditioned reaction in dogs to a specific stimulus in systematically planned procedure (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Produced in a similar process are phobias, addictions, and the process of extinction. The following considers how phobias develop through classical conditioning, how addictions develop through operant conditioning, how these two types of conditioning differ, and finally covering the process of extinction and how it is achieved in both types of conditioning.
Classical and Operant Conditioning Classical and Operant conditioning are processes in which the brain connects and understands different things. Both depend on the modifications that arise in behaviors when derived from the setting or the behavior itself and necessitate a systematic process. Classical and operant conditioning, otherwise known as associative learning, developed from the behaviorist perspective (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Both procedures share "common features such as extinction, prepared learning, discrimination, generalization, and the possibility of maladaptive associations" (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 193).
PSY 300
October 22, 2012
Phobias and Addiction
Learning a behavior is gaining knowledge or skills through experience, practice, or conditioning. For example, most people learn to wake up at the sound of an alarm clock. Through the process of conditioning, he or she awakens at the sound of the alarm. The alarm becomes the signal to start the day. Often what happens is that some people condition themselves to awaken at the same time every day without even hearing the alarm. In the late nineteenth century Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was the first to systematically study classical conditioning (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Classical conditioning is a process when a neutral stimulus brings forth a reaction corresponding with a stimulus that automatically brings forth that reaction (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Pavlov effectively produced a conditioned reaction in dogs to a specific stimulus in systematically planned procedure (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Produced in a similar process are phobias, addictions, and the process of extinction. The following considers how phobias develop through classical conditioning, how addictions develop through operant conditioning, how these two types of conditioning differ, and finally covering the process of extinction and how it is achieved in both types of conditioning.
Classical and Operant Conditioning Classical and Operant conditioning are processes in which the brain connects and understands different things. Both depend on the modifications that arise in behaviors when derived from the setting or the behavior itself and necessitate a systematic process. Classical and operant conditioning, otherwise known as associative learning, developed from the behaviorist perspective (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Both procedures share "common features such as extinction, prepared learning, discrimination, generalization, and the possibility of maladaptive associations" (Kowalski & Westen, 2011, p. 193).
References: American Psychological Association. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/topics/addiction/index.aspx Antczak, A. (2011). Yahoo! voices. Retrieved from http://voices.yahoo.com/classical-operant-conditioning-phobias-addictions-10159457.html Kowalski, R., & Westen, D. (2011). Psychology (6th ed.).Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.