Chapter 3 - Nuts and Bolts of Conditioning - Classical conditioning Flashcards
why is S-O Learning (classical conditioning) easier to study than R-O Learning (operant conditioning)?
because we don’t need the animal to respond before presenting a reward and its easier to control the outcomes by the experimenter
What was Pavlov’s basic conditioning experiment?
This was before the bell-food experiment
Pavlov was interested in salivation
So he started by studying how the dog salivated in response to a number of different things that were put into its mouth. One of the things was sand. When the dog had sand in its mouth it salivated. When the dog was exposed to sand repeatedly over an amount of time, the sight of sand became associated with salivation
this signified that the dog had learned about the sand and had associated the visual features of sand with the fact that it causes salivation
To study this phenomenon, Pavlov separated the neutral cue (sight of sand) with the stimulus (sand in the mouth - that actually caused the salivation)
by separating the neutral cue with stimulus, Pavlov began the conditioning experiments we know today and came up with terminology still used in psychology
What is an Unconditioned Stimulus (US)?
Unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus that elicits a response that is NOT conditional on any sort of training (i.e. food makes us salivate; food is a stimulus that we never were trained to salivate to)
What is an Unconditional Response (UR)?
An Unconditional Response is a response to a stimulus that is NOT conditional on any sort of training (i.e. salivation from food; we never learned to salivate - this is like a reflex)
What is a Conditional Stimulus (CS)?
A conditional stimulus is a stimulus that elicits a response that IS conditional on some type of training (i.e. dogs never innately know that a bell signifies food unless they were trained previously to think so)
What is a Conditional Response (CR)?
A conditional response is a response to a stimulus that IS conditional on some type of training (i.e. even though salivation occurs naturally, it does not occur to a sound of a bell or flickering of a light, if it does, it means its learned)
What is conditioned inhibition?
conditioning that occurs when a CS is associated with the ABSENCE of a US
for example: the CS is the light flickering and the US is candy;
conditioned inhibition is a LEARNED ASSOCIATION between the CS and NOT getting Candy
this is NOT extinction because in extinction you do not learn to stop associating CS with US; you just stop using the paired association over time but the association is still engraved in your head
conditioned inhibition is when a CS signals NO US is going to happen!
What happens when a CS causes a US and when a CS causes no US?
when CS –> US you get conditioned excitation
when CS –> no US you get conditioned inhibition
so in this case the CS could be either a conditioned excitor or a conditioned inhibitor
What are five ways of producing conditioned inhibition?
- Differential Inhibition (Discriminative inhibition)
- Conditioned Inhibition Procedure
- Explicitly unpaired (negative correlation)
- Inhibition of Delay
- Backwards conditioning
Describe Differential inhibition/ discriminative inhibition?
differential inhibition is when light (CS) is repeated paired with a US (i.e. candy) and tone (another CS) is repeatedly paired with no US (i.e. no candy) on other trials
the subject over trials starts to respond (i.e. salivate or stick their hand out) for light (because it signifies candy) and not for tone - therefore discriminating between them
the tone will then become a conditioned inhibitor
Describe Conditioned Inhibition Procedure?
Conditioned inhibition procedure is when one CS (light) is repeatedly paired with a US (food), and then ANOTHER CS (a tone) is repeatedly paired simultaneously with the first CS (light) and NO US on other trials. Therefore, the light and tone together is a compound CS
The subject will then learn to respond to the light, but NOT to the light + tone or tone alone therefore making compound CS and tone conditioned inhibitors
this works faster than differential inhibition and is more effective
Describe how Explicitly unpaired (negative correlation) causes conditioned inhibition?
this is when the CS (light) is presented far away from a US (food) in time
therefore the associations between them won’t get made
Describe how inhibition of delay causes conditioned inhibition?
this is when the CS (light) always ends in US (food) but the CS (light) stays on for a LOOOONG period of time
so for the first few minutes/hours that the CS is on, the subject won’t be doing anything and this is conditioned inhibition
but towards the end of the CS, the subject will start to to respond to US
Describe how Backwards conditioning causes conditioned inhibition?
backwards conditioning is when the US is presented and then the CS follows (opposite of normal) therefore, food is presented and then the light follows
this means that the bell becomes meaningless therefore, the subject does not respond to it and it becomes inhibited
How is backwards conditioning similar to brushing our teeth and then eating?
Brushing our teeth (CS) usually signifies that US (food) will not be arriving for a period of time so we don’t engage in food eating behaviour after we brush our teeth so we are conditionally inhibiting the food eating (US)
What are two ways of detecting conditioned inhibition?
these two standard methods rely on the fact that excitation and inhibition are opposite from one another
- Summation Test
- Retardation-of-Acquisition Test
Briefly describe how Summation test can be a method to detect conditioned inhibition?
Summation test starts by presenting the conditioned excitor (+) with the conditioned inhibitor (-) together simultaneously
In subjects who are already conditioned that the conditioned inhibitor will not result in US, you can expect to see a decrease in CR (conditioned response)
Then, present an excitor with a neutral stimulus (not the conditioned inhibitor) and see if the CR (drooling) is still low. If the CR (drooling) is low, it means that the subject is likely decreasing response to due any random sounds and they have not experienced conditioned inhibition; if the CR (drooling) is high, it means that the subject learned that the conditioned inhibitor is the only CS that will not give rise to a US (food) therefore, when theres a neutral stimulus, it ignores it and focuses on the conditioned excitor which indicates food
Briefly describe how Retardation-of-Acquisition Test can be a method to detect conditioned inhibition?
- this starts by conditioning the first CS (i.e. a tone) to a inhibitor and then conditioning the same CS (i.e. a tone) to be an excitor and then plotting a trials vs. conditioned responding graph to compare the graphs
the graph of the normal CS paired with a US should be a curved line, vs. the graph of a inhibitor now paired with a US is a bumpy, deformed curved graph. This is because the new behaviour of CS paired with US is being learned while the old inhibitor behaviour is being unlearned; this is an indicator of conditioned inhibition
What are some factors that can give a false result on the Retardation- of -Aquisition test?
other factors can also cause retardation of acquisition such as:
- Lack of attention to CS (i.e. if the CS is more salient and attention grabbing then it will be more effective than if the CS was weak and non-salient)
- Very weak CS excitor
What is the most effective way of detecting conditioned inhibition?
by using Retardation of acquisition only in combination with a summation test to make sure there isn’t other factors
How can we tell the difference between extinction and conditioned inhibition? (2 things)
- responding will increase towards a stimulus (even more than its previous amount pre-extinction)
- extinction does NOT get rid of learning (the association is still there even after many years of being extinguished)
when pairing CS1 (light) with US (food) and then pairing CS2 (tone) with US (food) and then extinguishing CS1 by continually presenting it with no US (food) and then presenting a compound CS (light + tone), we see that the responding towards the compound CS actually INCREASES because the subject did not unlearn the association and still paired the tone with the food and light with food so it results in double excitation
rapid reconditioning (acquisition) is observed after extinction and the graph looks more like US paired with CS (lacks bumpy line)
What is Autoshaping?
autoshaping is an example of sign tracking (approaching stimulus when it predicts a good outcome and withdrawing from it when it predicts a bad outcome)
- the point of it was to train pigeons to peck a key to get food but didn’t want to go through the steps of shaping
the process was to illuminate the key for 8s and then provide food (illumination predicts good outcome of food)
pigeons will get so excited for the food that they will peck the key for food
What is latent inhibition?
latent inhibition is when the CS does not predict anything useful and theres a pre-exposure to the CS that predicts nothing important so the person basically habituates to it
explain why latent inhibition can’t be a conditioned inhibitor?
because it passes the RoS curve because it takes a while for the CS to be conditioned with a US so the curve looks the same however, it fails the summation test because it does not show a decrease in CR when paired with an excitor, which tells us that the ‘inhibitor’ is similar to a neutral stimulus and has no effect on the excitor
