Unit 6 FRQ AP Psychology

Unit 6 FRQ Many pioneering researchers have devoted their careers to understanding how we learn. These researchers included Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, John Garcia, B.F. Skinner and Albert Bandura. Ivan Pavlov researched classical conditioning. This is a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. Pavlov researched a dog and how it began to salivate at the sight of food, the bowl for the food, the person delivering the food, and even the sound of the person’s approaching footsteps. Pavlov discovered that a neutral stimulus when paired with a natural reflex producing stimulus will begin to produce a learned response. For example at school when the lunch bell begins we begin to salivate. Pavlov’s work laid the foundation for John B. Watson’s ideas. Watson had an idea of behaviorism which said that psychology should be an objective science based on observable behavior. Watson wanted to focus on how organisms respond to stimuli in their environments. John Garcia challenged the prevailing idea that all associations can be learned equally well. Garcia researched the effects of radiation on laboratory animals, and noticed that the rats began to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles in radiation chambers. At first he believed it was classical conditioning but after performing experiments John concluded it was taste aversion. Conditioned taste aversion occurs when a subject associates the taste of a certain food with symptoms caused by a toxic, spoiled, or poisonous substance. For example if you were to become violently ill after eating seafood, you probably would have a hard time eating it again. The taste and smell would become a conditioned stimulus for nausea. B.F. Skinner developed a behavioral technology that revealed principals of behavior control. Skinner designed an operant chamber, popularly known as a skinner box. The box has a bar or key that an animal presses to release food or water, and a device that