26.5 - Learning and Conditioning

Question 1

Describe how Pavlov’s conditioning procedure works.

Answer 1

(Pavlov, 1927):

• Conditioned dogs to salivate upon hearing a bell
• By playing a tone before the food is given to the dog, the dog begins to associate the tone (conditioned stimulus) with the food (unconditioned stimulus) regardless of whether the tone is played

Question 2

What is extinction? What causes it?

Answer 2

• The loss of conditioning (e.g. a dog no longer associating a bell with food).
• It occurs gradually when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

Question 3

What is spontaneous recovery (in conditioned stimuli)?

Answer 3

• When a conditioned stimulus (e.g. bell sound) is presented without the unconditioned stimulus (e.g. food), the strength of a conditioned response is weakened
• However, spontaneous recovery is the way in which the strength of the conditioning recovers slightly following an interval after the CS is presented alone
• The first diagram shows that there is a short-term habituation-like process that causes a decline in response between the two trials on that day. Then there is spontaneous recovery between the days. There is a gradual long-term decline due to extinction.

Question 4

What are paraphilias and how can they occur? Give some experimental evidence.

[EXTRA]

Answer 4

Rachman (1966):

• A coloured photographic slide was repeatedly projected on a screen immediately prior to the presentation of slides of sexually arousing nude women.
• This conditioned the participants to find the boot itself sexually arousing within around 10 trials.

Question 5

What is contingency learning?

Answer 5

The idea that humans gain knowledge by gathering associations between a certain behaviour and a specific consequence:

• It may seem as though conditioning only happens when a conditional stimulus becomes associated with an unconditional stimulus (e.g. a bell sound becomes associated with food being given)
• However, the brain takes into account times when either or both of these stimuli are not presented
• So we can calculate:
  
  • Fraction of times when the unconditioned stimulus is present in situations where the conditioned stimulus has occurred (e.g. the proportion of times when there is food given that there has been a bell sound)
  • Fraction of times when the unconditioned stimulus is present in situations where the conditioned stimulus has NOT occurred (e.g. the proportion of times when there is food given that there has been NO bell sound)
• We can substract one fraction from the other to essentially tell us how strong the conditioning will be
• If the number is greater than zero, then there will be positive conditioning
• If the number is zero then the conditioned event (e.g. the bell) doesn’t seem to predict whether the unconditioned event will occur, so there will be no conditioning

For example, if you ring a bell 10 times and 7 of these times you also give the dog food, then this equates to a fraction of 0.7. If you don’t ring a bell 10 times and 7 of these times you also give the dog food, then this also equates to a fraction of 0.7. There will be no conditioning since 0.7-0.7=0, or in other words the presence of the bell does not predict whether there will be food given.

Question 6

Describe the learning curves for conditioning in situations where:

• Conditioned stimulus is correlated with the unconditioned stimulus (i.e. the occurrence of the stimulus is a decent predictor of the occurrence of the unconditioned event)
• Conditioned stimulus is not correlated with the unconditioned stimulus (i.e. the occurrence of the stimulus is NOT a predictor of the occurrence of the unconditioned event)

[SEE PREVIOUS FLASHCARD FOR MORE INFO]

Answer 6

• When there is a positive correlation, the conditioning gradually develops and the response to context fades away.
• When there is no correlation, there is no conditioning based on the conditioned stimulus because the brain recognises that it doesn’t predict whether the unconditioned event will occur. Thus, the response to the conditioned stimulus fades away. However, the response to context (e.g. the room the animal is in, etc.) is strengthened gradually.
• In other words, these are reciprocal judgements

Question 7

Give an example of a condition where contingency learning is impaired.

Answer 7

• Contingency/causal learning is a marker for mental health
• People with symptoms of low mood or depression are insensitive to learning about absent events and serotonin treatments influence this type of causal learning.

Question 8

Describe the concept of overshadowing in conditioning and learning.

Answer 8

When two conditional stimuli are presented alongside an unconditional stimulus, then the learning about each of the conditional stimuli is reduced.

Question 9

Describe the concept of blocking in conditioning and learning. Who studied it?

[IMPORTANT]

Answer 9

(Kamin, 1969):

• Conditioned rats to associate a conditional stimuli with an unconditioned stimulus
• After this, attempted to condition the rats to associate a second conditional stimuli with the unconditioned stimulus
• However, the learning of this second conditional stimulus was weakened
• This is the concept of blocking

Question 10

How does schizophrenia relate to conditioning and learning?

[IMPORTANT]

Answer 10

• Schizophrenia patients appear to have deficits in blocking (see previous flashcard)
• This means that they forms lots of associations between stimuli, which normal people do not since there are already existing associations
• This can lead to a range of symptoms such as paranoia/ delusions, etc.
• Treatments include dopamine antagonists, which are thought to help blocking and inhibit the learning of new associations

Question 11

What is conditioning related to phobias?

Answer 11

• Early work on conditioning used child learning as model for human phobias (i.e. showed that phobias are often created by conditioning)
• There has also come about the idea of biological preparedness, which explains why people tend to develop phobias towards some things more than others (e.g. spiders)

Question 12

How can we treat phobias created by conditioning?

Answer 12

Extinction can be induced by presenting the conditional stimulus without the unconditional stimulus.

Question 13

Describe how a phobia of pickles may develop.

Answer 13

A person may have a bad childhood experience where they associate the sight of a pickle (conditional stimulus) with the horrible taste of a pickle (unconditional stimulus).

Question 14

What is ANV?

Answer 14

Anticipatory nausea and vomiting:

• Chemotherapy (unconditional stimulus) produces nausea (outcome)
• Over time, just the sight or thought of the clinic (conditional stimulus) can elicit AVN
• The evidence for this being due to conditioning:
  
  • AVN only occurs in those who have had at least one chemotherapy session (Stockhorts, 1998)
  • Severity of ANV depends on severity of initial reaction to drugs

Question 15

What is the white coat effect?

Answer 15

• It is the increase in blood pressure in many individuals whenthe reading is taken in a clinical setting rather than at home.
• It is explained by the sight of the white coat triggering anxiety in patients

Question 16

What are the two types of placebo effect?

Answer 16

• Positive effect (placebo) -> When a sugar pill is given and the patient is told it will give them positive effects, so they experience them
• Negative effect (nocebo) -> Whem a sugar pill is given and the patient is told it will give them negative effects, so they experience them

Question 17

Describe the placebo effect in analgesia and Parkinson’s treatment. What evidence is there that conditioning is involved?

Answer 17

• Placebo analgesia drives endogenous opioid release (Benedetti, 1999)
• Placebo response in Parkinsonism drives dopamine release (see Price, 2002)
• However, these events are dependent on having previously taken the actual medication, so that the individual is conditioned to release opioid/dopamine

Question 18

What are the two types of associative learning (conditioning)?

[IMPORTANT]

Answer 18

• Classical conditioning (Pavlovian) -> When an conditioned stimulus is associated with an unconditioned stimulus
• Operant conditioning -> When a certain behaviour is associated with a reward or outcome

Question 19

What is learned helplessness and who came up with the concept?

[IMPORTANT]

Answer 19

Seligman:

• Learned helplessness is behaviour exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control.
• It was initially thought to be caused from the subject’s acceptance of their powerlessness: discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously presented.
• Over the past few decades, neuroscience has provided insight into learned helplessness and shown that the original theory actually had it backwards: the brain’s default state is to assume that control is not present, and the presence of “helpfulness” is what is actually learned.

Question 20

What is agoraphobia?

[IMPORTANT]

Answer 20

• An anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no easy way to escape.
• These situations can include open spaces, public transit, shopping centers, or simply being outside their home.
• Being in these situations may result in a panic attack.
• Those affected will go to great lengths to avoid these situations.
• In severe cases people may become completely unable to leave their homes.

It is somehow related to learning and conditioning?

Question 21

Describe how OCD may be partly explained by maladaptive learning and conditioning.

Answer 21

• Mary recalled that as a seven-year-old child she developed a fear of contracting cancer from an aunt with terminal carcinoma who came to live with her family.
• The aunt had a favorite chair she always sat in that Mary associated with her fear of cancer, so that eventually simply the site of the chair provoked dread in the child.
• Thus, by means of classical conditioning the chair became a conditioned stimulus for fear and anxiety.
• However, in OCD, the conditioning does not stop with just one association of a neutral and feared stimulus. It continues by means of higher order conditioning to include more and more situations, objects, and events.
• Continuing with Mary’s example — other people sat in the aunt’s chair; and by means of higher order conditioning they too became conditioned stimuli for fear.
• Furthermore, the aunt sat on other furniture and touched other objects in the house. So a kind of fear conditioning contagion took place that transformed many non-fearful situations, events, circumstances, people, etc. into conditioned stimuli for fear.

Question 22

What physiological changes occur during conditioned morphine tolerance?

Answer 22

Vasoconstriction + increased renal filtration can lead to poorer distribution + faster clearance of drug -> reduced effects.

Question 23

What is conditioned morphine tolerance?

Answer 23

Contextual cues are associated with the onset of physiological responses in anticipation of drug taking = leads to a conditioned morphine tolerance.

Question 24

What event does the conditioned morphine tolerance explain?

Answer 24

Overdosing in places where drugs have not been taken before (tolerance is lost as the context disappears, so there is no physiological protective mechanism in place).

Question 25

How may reinforcement have a role in drug addiction?

Answer 25

*Positive reinforcement - drug taken to experience euphoria associated with it.
*Negative reinforcement - drug taken to stop negative consequences of withdrawal.

Question 26

What issue does AVN pose in cancer treatment?

Answer 26

Its a major burden on pharmacological non-compliance and severe unpleasantness of the drug effects, and needs to be considered to make the chemotherapy as easy as possible for the patient.

Question 27

How can classical conditioning lead to phobia development?

Answer 27

A traumatic experience can lead to a particular object becoming associated with severe anxiety and fear
Subsequent expsoure triggers anxiety and avoidance = phobia.

Question 28

How may vestibular problems lead to agoraphobia?

Answer 28

If an individual struggles to use their vestibular system for balance (as is commonly seen in agoraphobia), they are more reliant on vision and smooth surfaced ground, and so an open space can make it harder to stay upright. Going outside, where visual cues can rapidly change to be insufficient or overwhelming, can lead to an increased incidence of falls and therefore condition the patient to expect falls and pain when they leave their home, granting a form of negative reinforcement that drives the phobia further.

Question 29

What was Seligman’s experiment?

Answer 29

One class of dogs were placed in a box and could move to a certain area to remove an electric shock

Another class were placed in a similar box but without a way to remove the shocks themselves – instead receiving shocks at the same time as a paired individual in the first group.

Those in the second group quite quickly stopped looking for a way to avoid the shocks and exhibited helpless behaviours when they associated the shocks with randomness.

Even when the groups were swapped, these dogs continued to exhibit behaviour of helplessness until they were physically moved to the areas that stopped the shocks, and operantly conditioned again to exhibit escape behaviours
(nasty man)

Question 30

Give an example of a predictive conditioned response

Answer 30

learned taste aversion where a very strong stimulus (typically in the form of an olfactory or gustatory sensation) becomes associated with a nauseating or otherwise unpleasant physical outcome in a single trial
Phobias in a clinic

Question 31

How does temporal contingency act as a constraint on learning?

Answer 31

Can be beneficial and drive learning but can act as a constraint if the association is not regular enough or the delay between the stimuli become too great
(learn about the context of the cue)

Question 32

What is the difference between temporal pairing and contingency?

Answer 32

Temporal pairing = occurs when events are consistently paired together within a critical interval
Temporal contingency = probability of reinforcement in the presence of a conditioned stimulus, divided by probability of reinforcement of any other conditions.
It represents whether the CS is more likely to occur alongside the US than at baseline, regardless of other contexts given over time
(see if there is a sustained link between the two stimuli)

Question 33

What is contingency?

Answer 33

a future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty

Question 34

How may conditioning be extinguished?

Answer 34

Presenting the conditioned stimulus (bell) without the unconditioned stimulus (food)

Question 35

How can social learning effect health related behaviours? How does this work?

Answer 35

Health promotion campaigns which use models that are perceived as similar or relevant can increase imitation
Health professionals learn from observing and (selectively) imitating the behaviour of senior staff
Positive role models in patient support groups

~Social learning more likely to take place if the person who is seen to be rewarded is high status or similar to us~

Question 36

What is the social learning theory? Give an example of a famous experiment

Answer 36

States that we can learn by observing and imitating others
Bandura showed that when children observed an adult being aggressive towards a life sized doll they were more likely to do the same when playing with it

Question 37

What is negative punishment?

Answer 37

Removing appetitive stimulus following a behaviour
Discourages undesirable behaviour by linking it to the removal of something WANTED
(becoming grounded for being rude - less likely to do this later)

Question 38

What is positive punishment?

Answer 38

Adding a noxious stimulus following a behaviour
Links behaviour to an unwanted experience
(not drinking to stop hangover)

Question 39

What is meant by ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in behavioural sciences

Answer 39

NATURE OF THE ACTION
“Positive” actions are those that add a factor, be it pleasant or unpleasant, to the environment, whereas “negative” actions are those that remove or withhold from the environment a factor of either type.

Question 40

What is positive reinforcement?

Answer 40

Encourages a desired behaviour by linking it to positive outcomes
(gym because it changes your appearance)
ADDING an appetitive stimulus following a behaviour

Question 41

What is negative reinforcement?

Answer 41

Encourages a desired behaviour by removing unwanted experiences
Applicable to avoidance of escape beahviours
(taking medication to avoid unpleasant symptoms- negative because of the bad consequences which are trying to be avoided)
An averse event or stimulus is removed or prevented from happening

Question 42

What decreases a behaviour?

Answer 42

Positive and negative punishment

Question 43

What increases a behaviour?

Answer 43

Positive and negative reinforcement

Question 44

What is operant learning?

Answer 44

Learning from the CONSEQUENCES of our behaviour and reinforcement.
Behaviour is shaped by its consequences.

Question 45

Define classical conditioning

Answer 45

When a conditioned response is paired with a neutral stimulus.

Question 46

What is the difference between temporal learning and temporal predictability?

Answer 46

temporal learning is about updating predictions based on new data over time, while predictability is about the consistency and reliability of these predictions in relation to the timing of events