_Conditions of Conditioning

Question 1

What happens if you increase time separating trials

Answer 1

Fewer trials are needed for learning to occur

Question 2

What is the optimal temporal contiguity for taste aversion learning?

Answer 2

Longer. Short CS-US intervals do not produce good conditioned taste aversion

Question 3

Is contiguity sufficient?

Answer 3

No if the CS-US occur close together this is not enough to produce learning. Shown by Rescorla who said correlation is also needed.

Question 4

How does Overshadowing work?

Answer 4

Mackintosh - Loud noise overshadowed what the rats learned about the light

Question 5

What effect does the interval : CS duration ratio have on learning?

Answer 5

If it is high (long time between USs relative to CS duration) then the number of trials needed for learning is lower.

Question 6

How did Rescorla prove correlation is needed too?

Answer 6

He showed that a truly random trial will not produce learning where the CS-US have THREE PAIRINGS but there are also USs randomly scattered throughout the intervals. And a perfectly paired trial with THREE PAIRINGS will produce good learning!

Question 7

What does a low suppression ratio tell us

Answer 7

A lot of learning has occurred - the animal fears the CS a lot

Question 8

what does a stand for in △V=aB (L −Va)

Answer 8

Salience of the CS

Question 9

what does B stand for in △V=aB (L −Va)

Answer 9

Salience of the US/ motivation

Question 10

what does L stand for in △V=aB (L −Va)

Answer 10

How much the behaviour can be sustained? A tasty food pellet would have a high L and sustains a lot of learning. Usually 1 if food delivered every trial

Question 11

what does Va stand for in △V=aB (L −Va)

Answer 11

The starting value, has conditioning already occurred? usually 0 in trial 1

Question 12

What is delay conditioning?

Answer 12

the US is presented when the CS ends

Question 13

What is the optimal interval for eye-blink conditioning

Answer 13

4 tenths of a second

Question 14

Optimal interval for conditioned suppression

Answer 14

180 seconds

Question 15

What is trace conditioning?

Answer 15

CS-US separated by a gap (a trace). It is some neural trace of the CS that is paired with the US

Question 16

How do we know that conditioning gets worse as the trace increases?

Answer 16

If you add a second stimulus in the trace or intertrial interval, either stimulus will increase the conditioning that occurs to the CS

Question 17

What is backwards conditioning

Answer 17

CS is presented AFTER the US. The CS can then come to signal ‘No US’ i.e. be a conditioned inhibitor. Or the CS can be associated with the offset of the US (for example it is associated with relief if the US is a shock)

Question 18

What is simultaneous conditioning

Answer 18

CS and US presented at the same time - leads to weak conditioning

Question 19

What makes simultaneous conditioning hard to measure

Answer 19

Most of responses help an animal deal with an upcoming US so this can lead us to UNDERESTIMATE the amount of learning that occurs in simultaneous conditioning

Question 20

What is a spaced-trials procedure

Answer 20

When trials are spread out in time

Question 21

What is a massed-trials procedure

Answer 21

When trials are close together in time

Question 22

Why might spaced-trials result in better learning?

Answer 22

Because maybe learning requires the subject to rehearse the CS-US together in memory after each trial and a new trial would interrupt this

Question 23

To improve learning could we increase intertrial interval and CS duration by the same factor?

Answer 23

No this would not work as the ratio is the same. We’d need a higher ratio - i.e. longer time between trials