Conditioning and learning
• What is learning?
A relatively permanent change in behavior or mental processes that results from
experience
• Through classical and operant conditioning we learn to associate
- stimuli in the environment
- our own behaviors
Primitive forms of learning
• Habituation
- = a primitive learning process where repeated presentations of a stimulus
results in a decreased response intensity
- E.g. green color on our campus
- Not to be confused with sensitization or sensory adaptation --> receptor level
vs habituation is in the brain
• Mere-exposure effect
- = a primitive learning process in which being merely exposed to a stimulus,
making one prefer the exposed stimulus more than an unknown stimulus -->
familiarity effect
- Merely being exposed to certain stimuli makes them known in the brain & gives
them a little more positive effect (f.ex. you'll be more likely to help someone if
you've seen them multiple times before, even if you've never spoken to them
before, or f.ex. you're likely to like number plates with your own initials more bc
you've written those letters very often)
- No conscious exposure is needed + no conscious recollection is needed of the
stimulus
- Not the same as 'valuing something' --> instead it's pre-attitudinal (attitude: what
I think & like --> a step before that)
- Very simple form of learning (mere-exposure must have its roots in exposure)
- Often used in marketing (side-messages) & product placement
-> sometimes this doesn't work anymore (f.ex. in Times Square --> too much)
- In advertising: positive effect for products we don't know yet, once we know it
better we start associating it with other things on the screen --> can be good or
bad
• What is learning?
A relatively permanent change in behavior or mental processes that results from
experience
• Through classical and operant conditioning we learn to associate
- stimuli in the environment
- our own behaviors
Primitive forms of learning
• Habituation
- = a primitive learning process where repeated presentations of a stimulus
results in a decreased response intensity
- E.g. green color on our campus
- Not to be confused with sensitization or sensory adaptation --> receptor level
vs habituation is in the brain
• Mere-exposure effect
- = a primitive learning process in which being merely exposed to a stimulus,
making one prefer the exposed stimulus more than an unknown stimulus -->
familiarity effect
- Merely being exposed to certain stimuli makes them known in the brain & gives
them a little more positive effect (f.ex. you'll be more likely to help someone if
you've seen them multiple times before, even if you've never spoken to them
before, or f.ex. you're likely to like number plates with your own initials more bc
you've written those letters very often)
- No conscious exposure is needed + no conscious recollection is needed of the
stimulus
- Not the same as 'valuing something' --> instead it's pre-attitudinal (attitude: what
I think & like --> a step before that)
- Very simple form of learning (mere-exposure must have its roots in exposure)
- Often used in marketing (side-messages) & product placement
-> sometimes this doesn't work anymore (f.ex. in Times Square --> too much)
- In advertising: positive effect for products we don't know yet, once we know it
better we start associating it with other things on the screen --> can be good or
bad
