381-C2 - Elicited behaviour, Habituation, & Sensitization

Question 1

What was ivan pavlov’s contribution to classical conditioning? what kind of learning did he explore? what system of the body?

Answer 1

he found that dogs would salivate to the sight of the food. this eventually led to the study of associative learning and the nervous system’s role in such?

Question 2

Vul’fson was a student of Pavlov. what did they study?

Answer 2

placed food/non-food in a dog’s mouth, and eventually the sight of EITHER of these stimuli would elicit salivation

Question 3

Snaeskii was a student of Pavlov. what did they study?

Answer 3

they presented dogs with black sour water (a distinct visual difference from regular water). eventually the dogs would salivate to the sight alone of black liquid.

Question 4

Object learning

Answer 4

Learning associations between different stimulus elements of a single object

Question 5

What do these terms mean?
1. unconditioned stimulus
2. unconditioned response
3. neutral stimulus
4. conditioned stimulus
5. conditioned response

Answer 5

1. a stimulus that requires no previous training to elicit a response
2. a response to an unconditioned stimulus
3. a stimulus that initially elicits no response
4. a stimulus that associates with an unconditioned stimulus, and is used to elicit a conditioned response
5. the same response that associates with an unconditioned stimulus, now responding to a conditioned stimulus. as well.

Question 6

what are the 2 types of conditioning research?

Answer 6

1. classical
2. functional

Question 7

1. What was Hollis et al.’s study in Blue Gouramis?
2. How is it a functional experiment in classical conditioning? What functional goal did it study?

Answer 7

1. fish were shown a light then a female either at the same time or at random. eventually the fish that were conditioned/learned that light presentation was paired with a female had higher reproductive success.
2. this studied the functional biological goal of reproductive success

Question 8

1. What was the grasshopper study by ?
2. How is it a functional experiment in classical conditioning? What functional goal did it study?

Answer 8

1. a certain colour or smell was paired with balanced or deficient diets. the grasshoppers that learned to visit the better quality food had a quicker growth rate.
2. this studied the functional biological goal of growth

Question 9

what are some examples of “classic” experimental paradigms in classical conditioning?

Answer 9

1. fear conditioning
2. eyeblink conditioning
3. sign tracking, goal tracking
4. taste aversion learning

Question 10

what factors influence the acquisition of phobias in humans?

Answer 10

• previous traumas to certain stimuli
• biological predispositions to certain fears

Question 11

1. when researching fear in non-humans subjects, what is being studied?
2. how is this quantified?

Answer 11

1. the acquisition of fear/anxiety, the neural mechanisms behind it
2. through movement changes (often freezing behaviour in rats)

Question 12

1. what is the suppression ratio formula?
2. what is the range of its values?

Answer 12

1. suppression ratio = CS behaviour / (CS behaviour + pre-CS behaviour)
2. 0 (full suppression of behaviour, meaning more fear/alertness) to 0.5 (no suppression of behaviour, less fear/alertness)

Question 13

what do we know about conditioned emotional responses?

Answer 13

there is a growing interest in conditioned emotional responses on foundational developments in fear conditioning studies

Question 14

what two subjects are used in eyeblink conditioning?

Answer 14

infants and rabbits (the latter rarely blink, and blinks are observable)

Question 15

What was found in Ivkovich’s studies with babies?

Answer 15

the intentional pairing of a tone to a puff of air to the eye was learned by human babies by the second day of the experiment.

Question 16

what is sign tracking?

Answer 16

interactions with the conditioned stimulus that is associated with the unconditioned stimulus

Question 17

goal tracking:

Answer 17

interacting with the unconditioned stimulus/an element of the unconditioned stimulus

Question 18

what is the difference between sign tracking and goal tracking? explain in terms of mice in an operant box

Answer 18

1. Operant chamber: Lever on the side
   (Interacting with this level doesn’t correlate with the food released, it is just in the same area as the food), Food is received in the middle through a dropbox
2. sign tracking behaviour: Interacting with the lever
3. goal tracking behaviour: Rat is seeing where the food comes from

Question 19

conditioned taste aversion

Answer 19

the acquisition of preference, specifically changing your behaviour to avoid undesired consequences

Question 20

evaluative conditioning

Answer 20

a neutral stimulus becomes more/less liked through its association with something that is already liked/disliked

Question 21

Excitatory conditioning

Answer 21

is the learning of a relationship between the presence of the CS+ and the subsequent PRESENCE of the US

Question 22

Inhibitory conditioning

Answer 22

is learning to predict the absence of a US with a CS-

Question 23

Conditioning trial

Answer 23

Each incident of CS-US pairing

Question 24

Intertrial Interval (ITI)

Answer 24

Time from the end of one trial to the start of the next trial