CHARLES HUGHES: In this next segment, I'll continue to talk about what behavior is and then begin to talk about the interaction of behavior with environmental stimuli and responses, which will lead us to one of the first discoveries of behaviorism, and that is respondent conditioning.

Public behavior. Public behavior is behavior that can be observed by others, even though sometimes, special instruments may be required. So public behavior is behavior that can be observed by others, even though sometimes special instruments may be required. Private behavior, also now known as private events, is behavior that cannot be observed by others. It is only accessible to the organism engaging in the private event. So private behavior, also known as private events, is behavior that cannot be observed by others. It is only accessible to the organism engaging in the private event.

So movement of the large or skeletal muscles is obvious and public behavior. For example, walking is obvious public behavior. It is very observable. Smaller muscles used with talking are less obvious, but are still public. Now, what about smooth muscle movement found in organs and are associated with things such as breathing, digesting, heart beating, and so on? Well, they're not very obvious, but they can be measured and observed using some medical instruments.

So how about silent reading? We can observe the person holding a book. Their eyes are moving, and maybe a slight vocal cord movement. Do we know that they're actually reading from these indicators? Is it a public event? Well, not really. Now, up until recently, silent reading would clearly be considered a private event. Now, it's not so clear.

So using brain imaging things such as positron emission tomography or functional magnetic resolution, FMRs, imaging techniques, these types of things-- we can observe and actually quantify things such as the burning of glucose in different language centers of the brain during activities such as silent reading. So it's getting a little less clear. So now we can at least indirectly measure what used to be seen as very private behavior.

So now let's move on to the environment. The environment is the total constellation of stimuli which can affect behavior. Our environment is both outside the skin of an organism as well as within. So the environment is the total constellation of stimuli which can affect behavior, and the environment is both outside the skin of an organism as well as within. So to a behaviorist, especially a radical behaviorist, the environment also includes stimuli that occur within the organization as well as outside of it.

As I mentioned before, in ABA we are very concerned about environmental events which impact behavior. We call those changes in the environment stimuli. So a stimulus is a change in the environment which can affect behavior. It is an environmental event. So a stimulus is a change in the environment which can affect behavior. It is an environmental event.

It is common to talk about the onset and offset of a stimulus and the magnification versus attenuation of a stimulus. So when we talk about stimuli, it's common to talk about the onset and offset of a stimulus and the magnification versus the attenuation of the stimulus. So from this definition, we see that, like behavior, a stimulus has a beginning, or onset, and an end, or offset.

We are also interested in the magnitude or strength of the stimulus. At its essence, a stimulus is a change in the environment that affects behavior, and there are two basic types of stimuli. The first one is antecedent. An antecedent stimuli is a stimulus that precedes a response. So an antecedent stimulus is a stimulus that precedes a response.

The other type of stimulus is called a consequence, which is a stimulus that follows a response. So a consequence stimulus is a stimulus that follows a response. Identifying and understanding both antecedent and consequence stimuli becomes very important when conducting a functional analysis of behavior, which is a technique that will be discussed more than once in these upcoming courses.

Contiguity is the nearness of events in time and space. Contiguity is the nearness of events in time and space, so it's the nearness of stimuli to behavior. So the magnitude or strength of a stimulus is often impacted by its nearness in time or space to the behavior. So for example, temporal contiguity plays a part in how much a consequent stimulus impacts behavior. That is, the sooner a consequence follows a behavior, the stronger the impact. Now, we'll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about the principle of reinforcement.

Now what we're going to do is we're going to start talking more about the interaction of environmental stimuli and responses. And first, I'm going to define what a contingency is, followed by the different types of contingencies, and then finally explain how there are two basic types of behavior, respondent and operant.

So contingency is a dependency between events. Contingency is a dependency between events. A contingency is said to exist between events when one depends on the other. So a contingency exists between events when one depends on the other. A contingency is kind of an if-then statement. So, a contingency is kind of an if-then statement.

An event that is stimulus-contingent is one that occurs if a particular stimulus occurs. So an event that is stimulus-contingent is one that occurs if a particular stimulus occurs. An event that is response-contingent is one that occurs if a particular response occurs. That is, the event is dependent upon the response. So an event that is response-contingent is one that occurs if a particular response occurs. That is, if the event is dependent upon the response.

So there are two types of behavioral contingencies. One occurs when a stimulus brings about a behavior, such as a red traffic light brings about braking behavior. And the other type relates to a response or behavior affecting a consequent event. For example, if I study hard, the likely consequence is that I'll get good grades. Let's talk about the relationship of stimuli with the two types of behavior.

Respondent behavior. Respondent behavior is unlearned. It occurs or is elicited in response to a stimulus. So respondent behavior is unlearned. It occurs or is elicited in response to a stimulus. Respondent behavior is solely under the control of antecedent stimuli. So respondent behavior, one of the two types, is solely under control of antecedent stimuli.

Antecedent stimuli come before the behavior. The functional relation involved is described as a stimulus-response relationship. So the functional relationship involved in respondent behavior is described as a stimulus-response relationship.

Operant behavior, the second kind, acts or operates on the environment and is emitted rather than elicited. So operant behavior acts or operates on the environment and is emitted rather than elicited. Operant behavior is at least partially under the control of consequences. Operant behavior is at least partially under the control of consequences. Many operants are under the control of both antecedents, stimuli that come before, and consequences, which are stimuli that come after the behavior.

The key points here are that respondent behavior is unlearned, and it only occurs in response to an antecedent stimulus. This relationship is referred to as a stimulus-response or is sometimes written as S-R. For example, in your text, the stimulus-response relationship is illustrated by the example of when a bright light, which is the stimulus, is directed at your pupil and your pupils shrink, and the shrinking is the response. So stimulus-response.

Operant behavior, on the other hand, is learned, and it actually acts or operates on the environment. Operant behavior is under the control of consequent stimuli or consequences, but it also needs some form of antecedent stimulus to actually occasion the behavior. So does this chart look familiar?

Now, remember the three-term contingency that Skinner developed that I presented earlier. It's just like the stimulus-response functional relationship I just mentioned that represents respondent behavior, only with operant behavior, an additional letter is added after the R.

Now, the letters in the top row stand for stimulus, response, and consequence. That is, an environmental stimulus occurs, which then occasions a behavior that then results in another stimulus or consequence, and that consequence can impact whether the behavior will occur or not in the future. Now, the most common way you'll see this presented is using ABC. A stands for antecedent. B is for behavior, and C is for consequence.

Now, in-depth descriptions of how antecedents and consequences can be used to increase or reduce behaviors will be provided later in this course, as well as throughout the series of courses, but it is important to remember that this three-term contingency statement forms the basis of much of what we do in ABA. It is at the heart of techniques such as functional analysis, which is used in many, many ABA programs.

Now, what I'd like to do now is to describe two ways to classify functional relations in terms of the way that stimuli or environmental changes acquire their effectiveness to change behavior. So first, we have phylogenic provenance. That is the effect of the stimulus on a specific response may be innate due to the evolutionary history of that species.

So phylogenic provenance, or the effect a particular stimulus might have on behavior, is when the effect of the stimulus on a specific response may be innate due to the evolutionary history of that species. These innate functional relations are called unconditioned or unlearned. So they're either unconditioned or unlearned.

In addition, the effect of a stimulus on behavior may be due to ontogenic-- some pretty fancy words here-- ontogenic provenance. That is, the effect of the stimulus on a specific response may be learned due to the experiential history of the organism. So in addition, the effect of a stimulus on behavior may be due to ontogenic provenance-- that is, the effect of the stimulus on a specific response may be learned due to the experiential history of the organism.

So these learned functional relations are called conditioned. So here's an example to illustrate unlearned or unconditioned or phylogenic and learned or ontogenic behavior relations. So earlier, I noted that responded behavior is unlearned and is always elicited by a stimulus.

For example, if I had a meat baster and I squirted a puff of air into your eye and you blinked, the puff of air is the stimulus, and the blink is the response. No learning required here. Your eye automatically does it, which means that it is phylogenic.

To illustrate how a stimulus may affect behavior in the ontogenic province, I could ring a bell right before I puffed the air in your eyes. So I ring a bell, puff the air, and your eyes would blink. Later on, if I kept doing that, just hearing the bell would be sufficient to make you blink. In this case, the behavior of blinking is now learned or conditioned.

Now, let's begin to focus on respondent functional relationships by discussing what a reflex is. We will use this information as a prelude to describing a process called respondent conditioning. A reflex is a simple relationship between a specific stimulus and an innate involuntary response, also called an unconditioned reflex. So a reflex is a simple relation between a specific stimulus and an innate involuntary response, also called an unconditioned reflex.

In a reflex, a response is elicited by a stimulus. Reflexes are highly stereotypic. That means they occur the same way every time it happens. So in a reflex, a response is elicited by a stimulus, and reflexes are highly stereotypic. Although some reflexes involve the skeletal, sometimes called the striped or striated, muscles, most reflexes involve the smooth muscles and glands. So although some reflexes involve the skeletal muscles, most reflexes involve the smooth muscles and glands. Smooth muscles change the dimension of various internal organs.

Not all reflexive responses involve muscles. For example, sweating, crying, and salivating are responses involving glands. So smooth muscles change the dimension of various internal organs. Not all reflexive responses involve muscles. For example, sweating, crying, and salivating are responses involving glands. Reflexes are mediated by the autonomic nervous system. So reflexes are mediated by the autonomic nervous system.

So when I refer to something as a reflex, I'm referring to both the stimulus and response. Remember that-- both the stimulus and response. I'm also referring to something that is innate or hard-wired-- that is, instinctual. When these reflexes occur, the cerebral cortex, which is the thinking part of the brain, is bypassed, and everything is handled in the spinal cord and the hypothalamus, which is referred to as the autonomic nervous system.

The types of responses involved in a reflex are often related to changes in organs and glands, but can also include more obvious movements via the skeletal muscles. So some common reflexes include the patellar reflex. Think of going to the doctor and when they tap your knee to see whether your leg jerks-- that's the patellar reflex. Hey, this is actually a good time for a little quiz. What do you call the time between when the doctor taps your knee and when the knee actually jerks? Good remembering. That would be the latency. The time between the stimulus and the response. Sorry about that.

So other reflexes are the gag reflex. You stick something into your throat. You automatically gag. Infants have a sucking reflex. We have a startle reflex, where if somebody comes up behind you and screams and you, as they say, jump out of your shoes, that's a startle reflex. The pupillary reflex-- if somebody shines a light in your eye, your retina automatically constrict.

OK, so I am now going to define some terms related to respondent behavior that will be important to understand when we began to talk about respondent conditioning. A stimulus which elicits an unconditioned response without prior learning that is due to innate capacity to do so, also called an unconditioned stimulus. It is abbreviated as US, and those are capital letters. It is the stimulus part of a reflex.

So an unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus which elicits an unconditioned response without any prior learning. That is, it's due to innate capacity to do so. It's also called an unconditioned stimulus. It's abbreviated as US, and it is the stimulus part of a reflex.

A response which is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus without prior learning-- that is, due to phylogenic provenance-- also called an unconditioned response. It is abbreviated as UR. So now we're talking about an unconditioned response. So that is a response which is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus without any prior learning, because it's due to phylogenic province. We call it an unconditioned response, and it can be abbreviated using UR. It is the response part of a reflex.

The last term here is called a neutral stimulus, which is a stimulus that has no effect on a particular behavior. So a neutral stimulus is a stimulus that has no effect on a behavior. So I'll try to sum that up a little bit. So when the US, the unconditioned stimulus, and the UR, the unconditioned response, are put together, we have a reflex.

So given the patellar reflex described above, the unconditioned stimulus is the tap on the knee, and the unconditioned response is the knee jerk. And the startle reflex, the US, is the loud noise, and the UR is the jumping backwards and increased heart rate and so on. Then, we have the NS, or the neutral stimulus, which at the present time has no effect on the behavior in question.

Now, we're going to talk about conditioned stimulus, and that is a stimulus which elicits a conditioned response. So it elicits a conditioned response due to prior learning. That is, due to ontogenic provenance. It is abbreviated as CS. As we'll see, it is the stimulus part of a conditioned reflex.

And because we have a conditioned stimulus, we have a conditioned response, which is a response which is elicited by a conditioned stimulus due to prior learning-- that is, due to ontological province. It is abbreviated as CR. So a conditioned response is a response which is elicited by a conditioned stimulus due to prior learning. It is abbreviated as CR, and it is the response part of a conditioned reflex.

So notice that the conditioned stimulus, or CS, is created through a learning process, as is the conditioned response, or the CR. So now we have the Us, the UR, and the NR, and now we have also the CS and the CR, all of which are key concepts in the respondent conditioning paradigm. So there's a reason why we've been learning this stuff. So we're going to be talking about the respondent conditioning paradigm. This is also known as classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning. Respondent conditioning is also referred to as classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning.

Now, many of you might already know this but, Yvon Pavlov was a Russian physiologist, and he was researching how the salivary glands of animals function. So for this purpose, he had several dogs with tubes attached to measure to saliva secretions. Now, he started noticing that the dogs started producing more drool or salivation when his lab assistant came into the room, and that this increase in salivation did not occur when anyone else but that lab assistant entered the room.

So he started looking at that. That wasn't what he was after, or his experiments. He just serendipitously observed this. So he thought he'd take a look. So based on further observation, he discovered that his lab assistant was in charge of feeding the dogs. And this got him to thinking about how the lab assistant became a conditioned stimulus for drooling, so he set up a series of experiments and subsequently discovered the principle of respondent conditioning. Now, his basic respondent conditioning experiment is illustrated in the next slide.

So it started off with, before any conditioning occurred, we know that there is a reflex whereby if you're hungry and food is presented, you will salivate. It's true of dogs. It's true of us. So because it's a reflex, we have two things going on. We have an unconditioned stimulus which elicits the unconditioned response. In this case, food is an unconditioned stimulus. We don't have to learn that we want food when we're hungry. And salivation was the unconditioned response. When we're hungry and food is presented, we do that without any prior learning.

OK, now, the respondent conditioning comes into play. And what his experiment was he said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to present the food and measure the salivation, but at the same time I present the food, I am going to ring a bell. Now the bell at this point time was called the neutral stimulus, because at that time, the bell did not have any impact on salivation. So he would present food, ring the bell, and the dog would salivate. And he did that over and over and over again.

And what he found out afterwards was that he could actually eliminate the food, ring a bell, and the dogs would salivate. Now, after the conditioning, you'll notice that we have a conditioned stimulus, the CS, and a conditioned response. The conditioned stimulus was the bell, and the conditioned response was the salivation. So by pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus, you have respondent conditioning where the previously neutral system, now called the conditioned stimulus, can elicit the original response.

This type of conditioning process has actually been used to explain a variety of behaviors-- one of the most common being what psychologists call phobias. A behaviorist describes a phobia as fearful types of behaviors such as physical avoidance, crying, cringing, and so on that are produced by what was once a neutral stimulus. These neutral stimuli have acquired averse properties because they have been associated or paired with other stimuli-- unconditioned stimuli-- that naturally produce fear.

Now, a fellow named Watson conducted a classic, and to be honest, a somewhat disturbing, experiment in which he produced a phobia in a young child name Albert. Now, he did this by placing a white rat, which at the time did not frighten the child-- didn't bother the child at all. So he placed this rat next to the child, and then when he would put the rat with the child, he would start banging loudly on pipes.

The result was the child developed a phobia about rats, where the child-- no problem with white furry critters at all, and now he was deathly afraid of rats and other white furry animals, like cute little bunnies. So whenever a small white animal was placed next to him, he exhibited the same startle behaviors that were associated with the sudden loud noises of the banging the pipes. Now, the good news is that they then reversed the phobia. So can you guess how they might have reversed the phobia?

Yeah. What they did was they started pairing or presenting white furry animals and then would present a pleasant stimulus with them, so that the white furry animals were paired with a pleasant stimulus. And so later on, after the conditioning and pairing, the kid actually liked little bunnies and things like that.

So here are a couple of questions to contemplate about this process of pairing conditioned stimuli with neutral stimuli. And I pose these questions really as a way of stressing that respondent conditioning is not just something done in labs by slightly strange people in white coats.

So think about-- why do commercials include attractive people when the product has nothing to do with their appearance? In terms of responding initially, why are some of us afraid of dentists? They're usually nice people. Why does a dog cringe when you say, bad dog? Does he really understand English? And finally, here's a tough one. Why does a lie detector detect lies? How does that work?

All right. Here's a clue, because it is a little tougher, if you need it. What often happened when you told a lie as a child, actually before you got really good at it? Right. Often times, you'd get caught. What happened when you got caught telling a lie? So I think you can start figuring out why lie detectors can detect physical types of things when people lie, unless the person has absolutely no emotions whatsoever.

So anyway, I have two more pieces of information about respondent conditioning. OK. In higher order conditioning, a neutral stimulus is paired with a previously conditioned stimulus, rather than with an unconditioned stimulus. So in general, the higher the order, the weaker the conditioning.

So we have this thing called higher order conditioning, in which a neutral stimulus is paired with a previously conditioned stimulus rather than an unconditioned stimulus. And in general, the higher the order, or the further away you get from the unconditioned stimulus, the weaker the conditioning is.

Respondent extinction is the process through which a CR is weakened by discontinuing to pair the CS with the US. So respondent extinction is the process through which a CR, or conditioned response, is weakened by discontinuing to pair the CS with the US. That is, repeatedly presenting a CS without the US until the CS no longer elicits the CR.

I hope all this is making sense. So that is repeatedly presenting a CS without the US until the CS no longer elicits the CR. So I think now would be a good time to do another self-evaluation activity, and come on back and go into the next segment when you're ready.