Search Results

A large number of advertisements pair the presentation of a product or brand name with another stimulus that possesses affective value. The pairing of these two stimuli can result in a change in behavior (e.g., attitude, purchasing probability, attention to the product in the marketplace) toward the product or brand name. These pairings resemble the procedure of classical conditioning. This chapter discusses some of the research that has been done in the area of conditioning and advertising as well as some of the recent developments in conditioning theory and research that may assist in advertising research and its application. The chapter addresses such topics as useful parameters for producing conditioning, the roles of affect and cognition, and the role of awareness; and many potentially relevant conditioning phenomena are discussed that might be of relevance to advertising.

The placebo effect in the immune and endocrine system is basically a conditioned response, whereby classical conditioning plays a key role. Conditioned immunosuppression affects a number of immune mediators, like interleukin-2 and interferon-gamma. Some negative allergic reactions may be induced by the administration of nocebos. The responses of some hormones, like insulin, growth hormone, and cortisol, have been successfully conditioned. In addition, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis may represent an important system in placebo and nocebo responsiveness.

This chapter details associative processes involved in reward- and punishment-related learning. It also covers Pavlovian or classical conditioning; representations in the brain of primary reinforcers (taste, pleasure, and pain); and representations of potential secondary reinforcers e.g., visual stimuli. The chapter discusses emotion-related learning: the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and cingulate cortex; motor systems for implicit responses, including the basal ganglia, reinforcement learning, and dopamine, Basal forebrain and hypothalamus; opiate reward systems, analgesia, and food reward; and the effects of emotion on cognitive processing and memory.

Cross-cultural and individual variation in erotic taste indicate that what we find sexually attractive depends on experience. Partner and other environmental cues can acquire sexually arousing (or inhibiting) properties through a variety of different types of learning processes, including imprinting, mere exposure, social learning, verbal relational learning, and operant conditioning. Most laboratory research on sexual learning, however, has employed classical conditioning procedures. Numerous studies demonstrate the impact of such conditioning on a wide range of sexual behaviors in non-humans, yet relatively few studies have shown such effects in humans. The chapter reviews the experimental research on classical conditioning of sexual arousal in humans, highlighting newer studies that use women participants and more diverse paradigms. Individual differences in conditionability and a distinction between signal versus evaluative learning are also considered. Such research has the potential to contribute to the literature on (human) learning theory as well as to enhance learning-based therapies used to alter problematic sexual responding, for example, in the case of sexual risk taking and/or sexual compulsivity.

This chapter reviews existing literature on the biological pathways and mechanisms involved in social interactions and positive emotions and their potential relationship to enhanced health. The first three sections of the chapter focus on the substantial body of research on the neural pathways of affiliative behaviour, maternal-infant bonding, pair bonding, parental care, and some sexual behaviour. The neurobiology of these systems has been largely worked out, and they may also play a role in the neurobiology of positive emotions and behaviours like altruism, spirituality (prayer and meditation), and exercise, where research has only just begun. The final section explains the biology of the placebo effect and hypothesizes that the powerful effects of classical conditioning (learning to associate a certain outcome with a stimulus) may be an intermediate link between positive emotions or behaviour and enhanced health.

This chapter introduces a number of behavioural models of learning, including classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social cognitive theory, and applies these models of learning in the Chinese classroom.

The ways in which healthy habits are formed and maintained over time, as well as the ways in which health-harmful habits can be extinguished, are the topics of this chapter. The principles of classical conditioning as they relate to health behaviors are reviewed. Then, following the operant conditioning framework, the important elements of reward (and punishment), along with the advantages and limitations of various schedules of reinforcement, are discussed. Included in this chapter are many practical suggestions for incorporating habit-changing tools into one’s daily routine, and a discussion of common barriers encountered by those attempting to change their habits—and how to overcome these barriers. The utility of external commitments (e.g., behavioral contracts and contingency contracts), along with the potential risks associated with external techniques (such as the reduction of intrinsic motivation), are reviewed. The importance of social support, choosing supportive environments, self-monitoring, and being mindful are highlighted.

This chapter provides a brief overview of cognitive-behavioral therapy, a broad class of present-focused interventions with a shared focus on changing cognition (thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about the world), changing behavior, and building clients' coping skills. Cognitive theory focuses on the rationality of one's thinking patterns and the connections between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Behavior theory is not concerned with internal mental processes but rather how human behavior, whether adaptive or problematic, is developed, sustained, or eliminated through its external reinforcement. The nature of change in cognitive-behavioral theory is apparent in its hyphenated term. That is, clients can be helped to change in three ways: 1) cognitively, by teaching them how to identify and change distorted thinking; 2) behaviorally, by offering skills training to improve coping capability; and 3) experientially, by helping clients set up natural experiments so they can test the extent to which their beliefs about an event are rational. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is used in the strengths- and skills-based model when people are ready to take action toward their problems and when it appears that a lack of knowledge or skills represent a barrier to more effective functioning.

Evidence supports the view that ‘memory traces’ are formed in the hippocampus and in the cerebellum in classical conditioning of discrete behavioural responses. In the hippocampus learning results in long-lasting increases in excitability of pyramidal neurons that resemble the phenomenon of long-term potentiation. Although it plays a role in certain aspects of conditioning, the hippocampus is not necessary for learning and memory of the basic conditioned responses. The cerebellum and its associated brain-stem circuitry, on the other hand, does appear to be essential (necessary and sufficient) for learning and memory of the conditioned response.

This chapter summarizes some of the key fundamental concepts about the anatomy and physiology of neurons, including the molecular basis of the unusual electrical properties of neurons, different forms of electrical conduction, and transmission of information between neurons. It then shows how these concepts can be put to work toward understanding the cellular bases of basic forms of learning. Three elemental forms of learning that are accomplished within the circuitry of relatively simple animals have served as model systems for the study of memory: habituation, sensitization, and classical conditioning. These studies have provided a clear understanding of the mechanisms of neuronal plasticity that mediate such learning in well-identified circuits of a marine invertebrate.

This chapter describes the way drug use can be thought of in terms of classical conditioning, the ways in which conditioning processes are thought to affect drug taking behaviour, and the implications of the analysis for the development of treatments for addiction. The findings indicate that drug-taking episodes have all the ingredients necessary to promote the occurrence of classical conditioning and that various stimuli have the potential to become Pavlovian conditioned stimulus. When these stimuli acquire their conditioned properties they increase the likelihood of drug taking behaviour mechanisms when they are encountered.

This chapter considers the role of nonfinite clauses in the distribution of Classical NEG Raising (NR). It first considers the literature bias toward finite hosts in standard Classical NR cases, along with proposals in nonsyntactic approaches that the Classical NR phenomenon is purely a function of the interaction of the meanings of the Classical NR predicates (CNRPs) with independent semantic or pragmatic principles. Since it is obscure how the semantic properties of CNRPs could be systematically different in their finite and nonfinite instances, on semantic/pragmatic treatments one expects that the same relations should systematically hold when the negation (NEG) sits in a nonfinite host. The chapter outlines the basics of the distinction between finite and nonfinite hosts and presents examples indicating the lack of a Classical NR reading for a NEG raised into a nonfinite clause and the impossibility of a strict negative polarity item (NPI) in the relevant complement clause. It also discusses the Classical NR Nonfiniteness Condition and composed quantifier cases.

Consideration of the importance of Pavlovian conditioning involving interoceptive stimuli to health-related issues dates back to Pavlov. Despite this long history and its likely importance, the preponderance of empirical and theoretical effort in the drug abuse field has been on exteroceptive conditioning with the drug conceptualized as the unconditioned stimulus. This chapter reviews what research has been done on Pavlovian conditioning involving the interoceptive effects of abused drugs as stimuli (i.e., conditioned stimuli or occasion setters). That research indicates that conditioning not only alters behavior evoked or modulated by drug stimuli, but that it alters the drug state in a manner that likely contributes to addiction. For instance, nicotine and diazepam acquire conditioned reinforcing value by virtue of being repeatedly paired with an appetitive event. Throughout the chapter we highlight translational links between preclinical research on interoceptive drug stimuli and drug addiction, as well as identify gaps in the scientific literature.

Once the genes delegate the responsibility of decision-making to the brain, the most important function of the brain is to develop successful decision-making strategies by incorporating new information about the animal’s environment. The complexity of this process increased during evolution, and in mammals, including humans, the brain utilizes multiple learning strategies to produce the most appropriate motor responses. After illustrating this using response and place learning, this chapter reviews the history of research on animal learning, including a potential conflict between different learning strategies. In particular, the author addresses the important role of classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning in learning.

This chapter discusses the behavioural study techniques of animal vision. The visual consequences associated with disorders within the visual nervous system are assessed through the study of animal vision. In classical conditioning the visual stimulus (the so-called conditioned stimulus) is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus that itself reliably elicits a reflexive (i.e. unconditioned) response. In instrumental conditioning the behaviour of the animal is instrumental in determining the consequences of that behaviour. In a reflex response, the animal's behavioural reaction occurs automatically, i.e. reflexively, in response to visual stimulation. Animals can be trained to perform complex visual tasks involving detection, discrimination, visual memory, and selective attention through the usage of the conditioning regimes discussed in this chapter.

This chapter discusses the result of a 1985 study concerning an incentive motivation model. It discusses the capacity of incentives to arouse motivation and explains the concepts adaptive control and feedback effects. It explores the influence of conditional incentive stimuli on the control of behaviour, the role of classical conditioning between neutral cues and incentives in the control of behaviour, and the role of dopamine in motivational processes.

The placebo effect in the immune and endocrine system is basically a conditioned response, whereby classical conditioning plays a key role. Conditioned immunosuppression affects a number of immune mediators, like interleukin-2 and interferon-gamma. Some negative allergic reactions may be induced by the administration of nocebos. The responses of some hormones, like insulin, growth hormone, and cortisol, have been successfully conditioned. In addition, the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis may represent an important system in placebo and nocebo responsiveness. Overall, the findings within the domain of the immune and endocrine system provide compelling evidence that conscious expectation is not always necessary for a placebo response to occur, and unconscious Pavlovian conditioning may represent the main mechanism.

Chapter 6 argues that when considering potential causative factors for the development of genocidal behavior, there is a middle ground between cultural and historical factors that operate over a very long time-scale and situational factors that impact behavior in a very short time. This middle ground is inhabited by basic mechanisms of learning and conditioning, such as nonassociative learning, classical and operant conditioning, and observational learning. These mechanisms are constant but subtle forces shaping our thinking and behavior. The Nazi regime used its coercive power and control over the media and education to manipulate and shape the attitudes and behavior of the population, effects that were mediated through basic mechanisms of learning and conditioning.

This chapter discusses reading, learning to read, and the components of skilled reading. It outlines cognitive processes and possible brain mechanisms in understanding spoken and written language. It also discusses the processes occurring in skilled reading, including the ability to read without subarticulating and the ability to synchronize eye movements with articulation while reading. The chapter also introduces concepts such as the Hebb rule, classical conditioning, automaticity, and the power law of practice.