I readily admit that I know little about "vicarious classical
conditioning"
but would like to raise the following points:
(1) Not to berate Jeffry Ricker, but outside of anecdotes has anyone
ever shown that watching the shower scene from Psycho in fact produces
shower phobias, especially in people without pre-existing anxiety, fear,
or phobia (or psychotic) tendencies? I'd just like to know there is
actual
data on this and the results have been replicable.
(2) It should be fairly obvious to everyone, I think, that the situation
described below is a case of observational learning and, depending
upon how radical a behaviorist one, neither operant conditioning or
classical conditioning can explain any subsequent responses a person
or animal might make because (a) the observer makes no response
that can be involved in conditioning (I understand that the observer
may have a fear response or anxiety response but it is unlikely to be
as strong if they were in the actual situation; talking from experience,
there is a big difference in watching someone point a gun at someone
else and having them point it at you) and (b) there is the implicit
assumption
that a mental representation of cs-us-ur set of relationships is created
and
activates the equivalent neural mechanisms in the observer (assuming
the us-ur relationship is a reflex). I think we are way beyond
conditioning
at this point.
(3) From a couple of the references I've read on the internet, it seems
best to describe this type of observation learning as an instance of
associative learning that transcends either operant or classical
conditioning,
that is if one still want to maintain a conditioning account in contrast
to a more general cognitive process. I think we are beyond even
second-order classical conditioning
(4) Can someone explain in conditioning terms how one trial learning
occurs with the shower scene? I understand how one trial learning
can occur in the Garcia taste aversion conditioning studies but I am at
a loss to understand what mechanism would cause a phobic response
to taking showers from watching the scene in "Psycho".
Again, I readily admit to being unfamiliar with this phenomenon, so I
may be completely off in my comments above. Nonetheless, it seems
that the usual conditioning paradigms do not readily account for this
(especially if one is a Skinnerian; I think it is even beyond the
informational
approach described by Rescorla)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
--------- Original Message -----------
On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 11:16:29 -0800, Paul Brandon wrote:
The best answer is probably yes.
As usual, both operant and classical conditioning functions are
involved.
I'm not sure how a phobia differs from an avoidance response maintained
by a
conditioned or unconditioned stimulus.
The main question would be the function of the mother's fear response to
the
child.
Does a mother's fear stimulate fear in a child without any prior
conditioning
history?
If so, than it is an unconditioned stimulus, and the child's fear is an
unconditioned response to it.
The phobic stimulus (talking about a shower or a snake, or a snake in
the
shower for that matter) then becomes a conditioned stimulus, and
avoiding it a
negatively reinforced operant response.
The details of the mother/child relationship are the prior conditioning
history
that makes the mother's response an effective stimulus for the child's
behavior.
On Feb 8, 2014, at 12:34 PM, Jeffry Ricker, Ph.D. wrote:
Hi all,
When I was a child, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of
hers
who developed a "shower phobia" after watching Hitchcock's Psycho. (By
today's standards, the scene is quite tame, but it was terrifying to
many
people at the time the movie was released.) It seems obvious that the
woman's
shower phobia developed through vicarious conditioning.
A "textbook example" of vicarious conditioning I have often seen is
the
development of an animal phobia (usually a snake or cockroach) in a
child
after seeing his/her mother express extreme fear upon coming into
contact
with that animal. I wonder, however, if classical conditioning is the
better
way of describing the situation. That is, the mother's expression of
terror
represents a UCS for the child because of the strong emotional bond
between
them. It is not simply the degree of "empathy" the child feels for
another
that leads to the conditioning of the fear response: the expression of
fear
in a parent might be seen as a more direct indication of danger
because of
the parent-child relationship.
I hope I'm communicating this in a way that makes sense. If so, what
are your
thoughts on this: is it better conceptualized as vicarious or
classical
conditioning?
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