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Annotated Bibliography: Classical and Operant Conditioning
Department of Psychology, Liberty University
PSYC 365 Psychological Foundations of Learning
Annotated Bibliography: Classical and Operant Conditioning
Bajcar, E. A., Wiercioch-Kuzianik, K., Farley, D., Buglewicz, E., Paulewicz, B., & Bąbel,
P. (2021). Order does matter. the combined effects of classical conditioning and verbal
suggestions on Placebo Hypoalgesia and Nocebo Hyperalgesia. Pain, Publish Ahead of
Print, 2237–2245. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002211
The purpose of this article was to investigate the effects of verbal suggestion,
conditioning, and combined manipulations and how they can potentially induce placebo effects.
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The participants included a total of 419 healthy volunteers, half of them women, aged between
23 and 26 years of age. One factor that this study used to check manipulation the participants by
asking their opinion on the purpose of this study and if there was any association of pain
intensity and colors. The participants who correctly figured out the aim of the study were
excluded from the main analysis. The main analysis was testing the introduction of the placebo
or nocebo and performed separately on pain intensity during the testing phase of the study. The
results of the study had three different controls groups which had complications and lowered the
estimate of possible null effects in said control groups (Bajcar, E. A., et al. 2021). To solve the
problem of three control groups was solved by combining all three control groups into one which
would improve the precision of the study. This study found that with the experiment groups there
were significant effects with conditioning alone as well as placebo suggestion alone. However,
with the obtained findings the result did not confirm that verbal suggestion had been more
effective by reinforced previous experience. On the other hand there was strong evidence that
shown classical conditioning depends on more than the stimuli rather classical conditioning may
be influenced by various learning outcomes and traits, or the conditioning schedule(Bajcar, E.
A., et al. 2021).
Selection for Summative Final
The above article could be selected for a summative final research because it
demonstrates that classical conditioning can be influenced by various factors other than the
stimuli. For instance, in the above study there was verbal suggestion, manipulation, and
induction of placebo effects. The findings were that for the induction of placebo effects to work
is for there to be order of procedures that is crucial to induction of the placebo effect. Moreover,
the results of the study concluded that from a theoretical perspective classical conditioning
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depends not on simplicity of the selected stimuli rather it’s the strength of learning outcome and
traits or the conditioning schedule.
Balea, P., Sanjuan, M. del, & Nelson, J. B. (2018). Learning to learn in conditioning and
extinction in humans. Behavioural Processes, 157, 148–160.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.09.005
This research article discusses learning to learn (LTL) which is the transfer of learning
separate from stimuli generalization that appears across tasks that share similar structure.
In this study three experiments examined both conditioning and extension learning in
humans (Balea, P., et al. 2018). The first experiment was designed to determine whether
previous training would facilitate acquisition and extinction procedures. There were four
phases in this experiment where participants were divided into two groups. The result of
experiment one was that prior extinction learning with a conditioned stimulus amplified
extinction of a different conditioned stimulus. Additionally the effect did not appear in the
first five phases of training with a second stimulus thus this study was unable to obtain
secondary extinction. Rather the transfer effect appeared once the participants had the
opportunity to experience new extinction learning. The second experiment of this study
was to intermix conditioning trials to enhance the transfer of extinction learning presuming
that this training would be more effective at establishing associations between stimuli
(Balea, P., et al. 2018). During the four phases the groups were exposed to conditioning
and extinction and the participants had two phases of each. The results of experiment two
was that there was no transfer in extinction despite stimuli being intermixed with
conditioning. Experiment three was designed to eliminate sources of transfer with a before
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conditioning and extinction. While the second group viewed LTL effect in conditioning.
The results for experiment three lead to two important findings. First, that it is possible to
obtain a LTL-C effects after the first stimuli had been extinguished. The second finding
was the LTL effects observed under conditions of mediation-based processes (Balea, P., et
al. 2018).
Selection for Summative Final
The above article could be selected for a summative final research because while the
experiments did not show LTL effect until the final experiment there were two important
findings that resulted from this research article. First, LTL-C does have an effect meaning
that the conditioning stimuli was still effective even after the stimuli had been
extinguished. The second find was that conditioning was found to be effective under
conditions of mediation. These findings are important because it shows that conditioning
can still have an effect after removing the stimuli.
Bouton, M. E. (2018). Extinction of instrumental (operant) learning: Interference, varieties of
context, and mechanisms of contextual control. Psychopharmacology, 236(1), 7–19.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-018-5076-4
The purpose of this article is to discuss extinction in instrumental or operant learning from
the perspective of retroactive interference. The key phenomenon that was the demonstrator
for this study is the renewal effect. According to this study ABA renewal appears as easily
produced in instrumental learning whereas ABC and AAB renewal are doubted because of
early failures to produce the AAB effect (Bouton, M. E. 2018). There were additional
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contexts that were also mentioned in the renewal effect. Some of the contexts that were
mentioned in this study are stress state, deprivation state, reinforcers, and prior behavior.
Each of the contexts mentioned potentially plays a role in influencing interference. The
summary of the research results was that the studies suggested that extinction in
instrumental learning can inform understanding of general retroactive interference process
(Bouton, M. E. 2018). There was one important not that this article mentions which is
direct context response associated in instrumental learning such as an extinction of a
response stimuli and impact the response. Whereas in Pavlovian response is less effected
by context change and almost always transfers across other contexts. In short, this study
shown that renewal effect is affected by contexts and has a role in influencing interference.
Selection for Summative Final
The above article could be selected for a summative final research because the study bases
extinction in operant learning based on the renewal effect. However the renewal effect of
ABC and AAB were in doubt because of earlier failures in research. For the renewal effect
to work there would need to be varied contexts that could be effective. Additionally, this
research article had shown context of how renewal effect and Pavolovian response differ.
There was one note worthy information that came from this article and that is direct
context response played in instrumental learning and relative to instrumental/operant
learning situations.
Braat, M., Engelen, J., van Gemert, T., & Verhaegh, S. (2020). The rise and fall of behaviorism:
The narrative and the numbers. History of Psychology, 23(3), 252–280.
https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000146
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This research article view American psychology history and the development of the 20th-
century in two ways. The first way is to use analysis tools to analyze 119,278 articles that
have been published in American psychology between the years of 1920 and 1970 (Braat,
M., et al. 2020) Additionally, with there being varied “behaviorists” who have made a
mark on psychology it is difficult to prove when American psychology is rooted. However,
historians have agreed that psychologists in the 1950’s hardly identified as behaviorist.
Then the second argument is if behaviorism was the “dominant” for school of American
psychology is historically misleading (Braat, M., et al. 2020). In this article there are
arguments of where psychology is rooted and how behaviorism in psychology can have
two types one methodological and second radical behaviorism. Methodological
behaviorists believe that psychologists should not speak on mental states, images, or
processes (Braat, M., et al. 2020). Whereas Radical behaviorism deny that mental entities
exist and have an argument for private events to be included in the analysis of behavior.
The results of this article showed that during the time of the 20th century that many
psychologists that were analyzed that the portion of behaviorist were less than third of
most cited authors. There were also graphs in this article that show clusters of what
psychologists believed in the 20th century and how it relates to the rise and fall of
behaviorism.
Selection for Summative Final
The above article would be difficult to use for the final research paper because it speaks on
the analytical side of how psychologist in the 20th century studied psychology but have
much foundational research on behaviorism that went under the umbrella of American
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psychology. On the other hand, if one was to use this research paper then it could be done
by noting that many of the foundational psychologists can also be noteworthy behaviorist.
This would be helpful because operant and classical conditioning also have thousands of
articles that have been written and could go through the analytical process of how each
article plays in the rise of behaviorism.
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