Chapter 3 - Nuts and Bolts of Conditioning - Classical conditioning

Question 1

why is S-O Learning (classical conditioning) easier to study than R-O Learning (operant conditioning)?

Answer 1

because we don’t need the animal to respond before presenting a reward and its easier to control the outcomes by the experimenter

Question 2

What was Pavlov’s basic conditioning experiment?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What is an Unconditioned Stimulus (US)?

Answer 3

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)

Question 4

What is an Unconditional Response (UR)?

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

What is a Conditional Stimulus (CS)?

Answer 5

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)

Question 6

What is a Conditional Response (CR)?

Answer 6

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)

Question 7

What is conditioned inhibition?

Answer 7

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!

Question 8

What happens when a CS causes a US and when a CS causes no US?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What are five ways of producing conditioned inhibition?

Answer 9

1. Differential Inhibition (Discriminative inhibition)
2. Conditioned Inhibition Procedure
3. Explicitly unpaired (negative correlation)
4. Inhibition of Delay
5. Backwards conditioning

Question 10

Describe Differential inhibition/ discriminative inhibition?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Describe Conditioned Inhibition Procedure?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Describe how Explicitly unpaired (negative correlation) causes conditioned inhibition?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Describe how inhibition of delay causes conditioned inhibition?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Describe how Backwards conditioning causes conditioned inhibition?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

How is backwards conditioning similar to brushing our teeth and then eating?

Answer 15

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)

Question 16

What are two ways of detecting conditioned inhibition?

Answer 16

these two standard methods rely on the fact that excitation and inhibition are opposite from one another

1. Summation Test
2. Retardation-of-Acquisition Test

Question 17

Briefly describe how Summation test can be a method to detect conditioned inhibition?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Briefly describe how Retardation-of-Acquisition Test can be a method to detect conditioned inhibition?

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

What are some factors that can give a false result on the Retardation- of -Aquisition test?

Answer 19

other factors can also cause retardation of acquisition such as:

1. 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)
2. Very weak CS excitor

Question 20

What is the most effective way of detecting conditioned inhibition?

Answer 20

by using Retardation of acquisition only in combination with a summation test to make sure there isn’t other factors

Question 21

How can we tell the difference between extinction and conditioned inhibition? (2 things)

Answer 21

1. responding will increase towards a stimulus (even more than its previous amount pre-extinction)
2. 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)

Question 22

What is Autoshaping?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

What is latent inhibition?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

explain why latent inhibition can’t be a conditioned inhibitor?

Answer 24

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

Question 25

What is S-R association?

Answer 25

what scientists used to believe was formed in classical conditioning

basically the CS will elicit a UR out of habit

i.e. when dog hears bell, it will drool out of a habit

Question 26

What is S-S learning?

Answer 26

believed by Pavlov

he believed in the stimulus substitution theory where the CS caused a stimulus in the form of a mental representation of the US (food) to cause drooling

i.e. the dog hears a bell, it mentally forms image of food and then it drools to that

Question 27

Briefly describe the test used to find out if S-R learning or S-S learning was the dominant way of learning?

Answer 27

it involves two groups and two phases per group

first group –>
in the first phase they were trained to associate Light with the Klaxon (makes loud noise) and then in phase two, the klaxon was played over and over again until habituated
- the test phase involved testing to see if the CS (light) elicited a fear response or not

second group

• in the first phase the were trained to associated Light with the Klaxon
• in the second phase, they did nothing (no habituation to the klaxon)
• the test phase involved testing to see if the CS (light) elicited a fear response

Question 28

What was the result of the test?

Answer 28

in the first group
according to the S-S learning theory: the light should not have caused a fear response because CS (light) is associated with the US (Klaxon) which is habituated therefore, when the animal thinks of it, there is no fear elicited

according to the S-R learning theory: the light should cause a fear response because CS (light) is associated with UR (fear) therefore, when the animal sees the light it should automatically elicit fear

in the second group, both theories will cause it to elect fear

Question 29

What is suppression ratio?

Answer 29

supression ratio is used to measure conditioned fear

Question 30

How do we measure suppression ratio?

Answer 30

it is measured by taking a base-line value of behaviour, and then condition the animal to fear something and then measure how much lever pressing occurs in the presence of conditioned fear stimulus and compare it to baseline

the higher the suppression ratio the less fear evoked

Question 31

What is the equation to calculate suppression ratio?

Answer 31

(CS lever #) + (baseline)

Question 32

What is the suppression ratio of total fear?

Answer 32

zero

Question 33

what is the suppression ratio of intermediate fear?

Answer 33

between 0 - 0.5

Question 34

what is the suppression ratio of no fear?

Answer 34

0.5