(10) Conditioning and Learning

Question 1

What is Learning?

Answer 1

Relatively permanent change in behaviour due to experience

Question 2

What is Reinforcement?

Answer 2

Any event that increases the probability that a response will occur again. The process whereby an event increases the probability that a response will occur again

Question 3

What is a Response?

Answer 3

Any identifiable behaviour

Question 4

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 4

• Discovered by accident
• Ivan Pavlov: Russian physiologist studying digestion
• Studied salivation in dogs when they were presented with meat powder
• Food elicited reflex (salivation in this case): Automatic, non-learned, response
• Pavlov’s key discovery: An arbitrary (or neutral) stimulus (e.g., sound of a bell) paired with the meat powder began to elicit the reflex (salivation)
• Known as Pavlovian conditioning

Question 5

-NS =

Answer 5

Neutral stimulus

Question 6

-US =

Answer 6

Unconditioned stimulus

Question 7

-UR =

Answer 7

Unconditioned reflex or response

Question 8

-CS =

Answer 8

Conditioned stimulus

Question 9

-CR =

Answer 9

Conditioned reflex or response

Question 10

What is Spontaneous recovery?

Answer 10

• Reappearance of a conditioned response (CR) following its (apparent) extinction
• Without further pairings of the CS with US, CR not recovered to full strength however

Question 11

What is Stimulus generalisation?

Answer 11

• A tendency to produce the conditioned response (CR) to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus (CS)
• E.g. association with playing a note of the piano with pain, playing a similar note will produce some anxiety

Question 12

What did Rescorla (1967) find about presenting tones and shocking dogs?

Answer 12

• Exposed dogs to electric shock. On some trials, shock (US) was preceded by a tone (CS)
• Two groups (A and B) presented with same number of temporally contiguous US-CS pairs.
• But only in Group A was a shock ALWAYS preceded by a tone
• Group A learned the association quickly, Group B did not
• Shocks were independent of the tone

Question 13

What is Vicarious Classical Conditioning?

Answer 13

Learning to respond emotionally to a stimulus by observing another’s emotional reactions e.g. child watching parent

Question 14

What is Desensitisation?

Answer 14

Exposing phobic people gradually to feared stimuli while they stay calm and relaxed

Question 15

What is Aversive therapy?

Answer 15

-Treatment of abnormal behaviour: Pair an unacceptable response with a punishment to produce a new, ‘acceptable’, response

Question 16

What did Briggs (1954) find about classical conditioning in humans?

Answer 16

• (Human) participants learned paired associate words (A1-B1, A2-B2…etc)
• Concrete example: ‘pineapple – dog’, ‘desk – cushion’, …etc…
• Then new list of paired associates but first word of previous pairs was presented again i.e., A1-C1, A2-C2,…etc) e.g., ‘pineapple – hammer’, ‘desk – scissors’
• Then presented an A item; participant to say the pair that “came to mind” (-B or -C).
• Due to RI, fewer B item responses than C item responses
• But…24 hours later, participants tested again; now, B item responses more frequent than C item responses (i.e., spontaneous recovery of initial association)

Question 17

1. After classical conditioning the conditioned stimulus elicits the _______________ response.

Answer 17

1. Conditioned response

Question 18

2. When an animal is trained on one stimulus and responds to a similar stimulus, we call it ________________.

Answer 18

2. Stimulus generalisation

Question 19

3. The period during which a response is being learned is called __________________.

Answer 19

3. Acquisition

Question 20

4. Before conditioning has started, the unconditioned stimulus elicits the _________________.

Answer 20

4. Unconditioned response

Question 21

5. When a response comes back after a rest period, it’s called _________________.

Answer 21

Spontaneous recovery

Question 22

Operant conditioning

Answer 22

-Definition: Learning based on the consequences of responding; responses are associated with their consequences

Question 23

What is the Law of Effect (Thorndike)?

Answer 23

The probability of a response is altered by the effect it has; responses that lead to desired effects are repeated, those that lead to undesired effects are not. Stamped into the mind
-Thorndike studied how cats learned to open a latch to get food through positive reinforcement

Question 24

What did B.F. Skinner (1938) do?

Answer 24

• Built a Conditioning Chamber (or Skinner Box): Apparatus designed to study operant conditioning in animals
• Used Response-Contingent Reinforcement: Reinforcement given (only) after a desired response

Question 25

Positive Reinforcement:

Answer 25

When a response is followed by a positive stimulus that makes that response more likely

Question 26

Negative Reinforcement:

Answer 26

When a response is followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus that makes that response more likely, e.g. stopping a shock by pressing a leaver

Question 27

-Punishment:

Answer 27

When a response is either: i) Followed by an aversive stimulus that makes that response less likely ii) Followed by the removal of a positive stimulus that makes that response less likely

Question 28

Primary Reinforcer:

Answer 28

Non-learned and natural; satisfies biological needs (e.g., food, water, sex)

Question 29

-Intracranial Stimulation (ICS):

Answer 29

Natural primary reinforcer; involves direct activation of brain’s “pleasure centers”

Question 30

-Secondary Reinforcer:

Answer 30

Learned reinforcer (e.g., money, grades, approval, praise)

Question 31

-Token Reinforcer:

Answer 31

Tangible secondary reinforcer (e.g., money, gold stars, poker chips)

Question 32

-Social Reinforcer:

Answer 32

Provided by other people (e.g., learned desires for attention and approval)

Question 33

Operant extinction

Answer 33

• Definition: When learned responses that are NOT reinforced gradually fade away
• Negative Attention Seeking: Using misbehaviour to gain attention!
• Not giving attention can extinguish the behaviour (e.g., Williams, 1959)
• Reward in the form of attention, no attention can extinguish undesirable response

Question 34

-Stimulus generalisation

Answer 34

e.g., child petting other dogs following positive reinforcement of petting the family dog

Question 35

-Stimulus discrimination

Answer 35

e.g., Through selective reinforcement of petting only family dog. E.g. can pet the family dog but not other dogs

Question 36

Why is timing important in learning?

Answer 36

• E.g., Rats in a Skinner box show a rapid drop in learning as delay between the response and the reinforcer increases
• E.g. pressing the lever and nothing happening, then later being presented with food. Confusing as to what caused the food to come

Question 37

What is the token economy?

Answer 37

• Ayllon and Azrin (1965): Shaping desirable behaviour on a mental hospital ward
• Access to desirable things e.g. cigarettes etc by doing things to gain them, e.g. tidying room etc

Question 38

The ethological challenge

Answer 38

• Laws of learning not the same in all species
• Ethologists emphasise biological (genetic) predispositions over learning
• Evidence for ethological view:
• Chicken’s instinctive food-gathering behaviour competed with the desired learned response (Breland & Breland, 1961)
• The selectivity of associability in classical conditioning: rats learned an association between taste and sickness but not between a tone and sickness (Garcia & Koelling, 1966)
• E.g. poison (US) > feeling sick (UR) – vanilla (NS) > poison (US) > feeling sick (UR) – vanilla (CS) > feeling sick (CR)

Question 39

What is imprinting?

Answer 39

• There is a critical period for developing attachment behaviours
• Bird songs: Birds have inborn template for acquiring their own species’ song

Question 40

What is the cognitive challenge?

Answer 40

• Learning and intelligence relies on the animal’s inner mental representations of the world
• Kohler (1920s): ‘Insight’ in apes, doesn’t discover by chance
• Mental note-taking in rats (e.g., Olton & Samuelson, 1976) – maze to get food, doesn’t go back to places where they’ve already collected food from