D566 Task 1 Conditioning Examples Paper Example

The Pharmacy Chime, the Sticker Chart and the Sourdough Starter: Three Learned Behaviors in One Household Explained Through Classical, Operant and Observational Learning

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Leavitt School of Health, Western Governors University

D566: Psychology of Learning, Task 1

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Month Day, Year

The Pharmacy Chime, the Sticker Chart and the Sourdough Starter: Three Learned Behaviors in One Household Explained Through Classical, Operant and Observational Learning

Introduction

Most of what people do each day was learned, often without anyone setting out to teach it. This paper describes three learned behaviors from one composite household: a pharmacy technician's stomach-tightening response to a particular alert tone, a seven-year-old's new habit of practicing piano, and a teenager's sudden skill at baking bread. Each behavior is explained through the learning process that best accounts for it, classical conditioning, operant conditioning and observational learning, with every part of the process named at the point where it occurs.

Behavior 1: Classical Conditioning of a Stress Response

Renee, 41, works as a technician in a busy retail pharmacy. The pharmacy's workflow software plays a three-note chime whenever a prescription is flagged for a drug interaction or an insurance rejection. Flagged prescriptions usually mean an upset customer at the counter, a call to a prescriber and a delay in the queue. After about a year, Renee noticed that her stomach tightened and her shoulders rose whenever she heard the chime, before she had even looked at the screen. Recently the same reaction happened at home when her daughter's tablet game played a similar three-note sound.

This is classical conditioning, learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to trigger a response after being repeatedly paired with a stimulus that already produces it. The unconditioned stimulus is the stressful situation that follows a flag: the confrontation, the time pressure and the problem to solve. The unconditioned response is the stress reaction those situations produce naturally, including muscle tension and a tight stomach. The chime began as a neutral stimulus, a sound with no meaning of its own. Through hundreds of pairings with flagged prescriptions, it became a conditioned stimulus, and the tension it now triggers on its own is the conditioned response.

Two further features of conditioning appear. Renee's reaction to the game sound is stimulus generalization, a conditioned response to a stimulus similar to the original one. Emotional responses can be conditioned in this way; in a famous early study, Watson and Rayner (1920) conditioned a fear response in an infant by pairing a white rat with a loud noise and reported that the fear spread to other furry objects. If the pharmacy changed its software so the chime played for routine events as well as problems, the chime would stop predicting stress, and over time the response would weaken through extinction.

Behavior 2: Operant Conditioning of Piano Practice

Renee's son Theo, 7, began piano lessons in the fall. For the first month he practiced only when told to, and often not at all. His teacher suggested a chart: each day he practiced for 15 minutes, he placed a sticker on the chart, and five stickers earned a Saturday trip to a favorite bakery. Within three weeks Theo was practicing most days without reminders. When he refused to practice for several days in a row, his parents took away tablet time on those evenings, and the refusals became rare.

This is operant conditioning, learning in which the consequences of a behavior change how likely it is to happen again. Skinner (1938) described how behavior that is followed by reinforcement becomes more frequent. The sticker is a positive reinforcer, something added after the behavior that increases it. The bakery trip works as a reinforcer on a fixed-ratio schedule, delivered after every fifth practice session. Removing tablet time after repeated refusals is negative punishment: something the child values is taken away to make the behavior, refusing, less likely.

The example also shows why reinforcement plans need attention over time. If the stickers and bakery trips stopped suddenly, practice might decline through extinction. Many families and teachers therefore move gradually from tangible rewards to praise and to the satisfaction of playing a new song, which lets the behavior come under the control of reinforcers that occur naturally.

Behavior 3: Observational Learning of Baking

Renee's daughter Maya, 16, had never baked anything until her aunt came to stay for a month and kept a sourdough starter on the counter. Maya watched her aunt feed the starter, fold the dough and shape loaves several times a week, and she saw how much the family enjoyed the bread. After her aunt left, Maya kept the starter alive, and within a few weeks she was baking loaves on her own, folding the dough the same way and even using her aunt's phrase that the dough needs to relax.

This is observational learning, learning by watching a model and the consequences of the model's behavior. Bandura's work showed that children imitate what they observe; in a classic experiment, children who watched an adult act aggressively toward an inflatable doll went on to copy that aggression far more often than children in comparison groups (Bandura et al., 1961). Bandura (1977) later described four processes that make observational learning possible, and all four appear in Maya's case. Attention: she watched closely because she admired her aunt. Retention: she remembered the sequence of steps and even the words used. Reproduction: she had the physical ability to fold and shape dough. Motivation: she had seen the family's pleasure in the bread, a form of vicarious reinforcement, since she saw the model rewarded for the behavior.

Comparing the Three Processes

The three behaviors differ in what was learned and how. Renee learned an involuntary emotional response through the pairing of two stimuli; she never chose to feel tense. Theo learned a voluntary behavior because of its consequences, and the behavior changed when the consequences changed. Maya learned a complex skill without being rewarded or taught directly at first, simply by watching someone she respected. In real life the processes also overlap: Maya's baking is now maintained by operant reinforcement, the praise and the bread itself, even though it began through observation.

Conclusion

A three-note chime, a sticker chart and a sourdough starter show how classical conditioning, operant conditioning and observational learning shape everyday behavior. Recognizing which process is at work explains why the behavior happens and also suggests how to change it, whether by breaking a pairing, adjusting a consequence or choosing a better model.

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575-582. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045925

Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. Appleton-Century.

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0069608