Chapter 3- Pavlovian Conditioning

Question 1

Consists of an unconditional stimulus and an unconditional response. This kind of reflex is largely inborn and usually permanent. Virtually found it all members of a species and varies little from individual to individual

Answer 1

Unconditional reflex

Question 2

A reflex acquired through Pavlovian conditioning and consisting of a conditional stimulus and a conditional response. Not present at birth and must be acquired through experience and is relatively impermanent. Varies considerably from individual to individual

Answer 2

Conditional reflex

Question 3

The stimulus that elicits an unconditional response. Often called an unconditioned stimulus

Answer 3

Unconditional stimulus

Question 4

The response elicited by an unconditional stimulus. Often called an unconditioned response

Answer 4

Unconditional response

Question 5

The stimulus part of a conditional reflex; the stimulus that elicits a conditioned response. Often called a conditioned stimulus

Answer 5

Conditional stimulus

Question 6

The response part of a conditional reflex; the response elicited by a conditional stimulus. Often called conditioned response

Answer 6

Conditional response

Question 7

Is the presentation of the two stimuli independent of the behaviour of the animal in Pavlovian conditioning? Provide an example

Answer 7

Yes, the presentation of the two stimuli is independent of the behaviour of the organism; the CS and the US are presented regardless of what the organism does. Second, the behaviour involved is a reflex response

Question 8

Provide an original example illustrating that an organism whose behaviour is subject to Pavlovian conditioning is more likely to survive then an organism whose behaviour is not subject to such conditioning

Answer 8

The ability to develop conditional reflexes would give any organism a much improved chance of surviving in a changing world.

Example: an individual who reacts with fear to the sounds of an impending earthquake and learns to protect themselves is more likely to survive

Question 9

Describe Graham and DesJardins study in which the experimenters used Pavlovian conditioning to influence the mating behaviour of male rats

Answer 9

The exposed male rats to the vapours of wintergreen just before exposing them to a sexually receptive female rat. Therefore, they paired two odorous astimuli, one of which was a US for the release of hormones. After pairing the two stimuli each day for 14 days, the researchers presented the CS alone. They found that the blood levels of sex-related hormones were now as high when the rats were exposed to wintergreen as they had been when they were exposed to the female rats

Question 10

A variation of Pavlovian conditioning in which a stimulus is paired, not with a US, but with a well-established CS

Answer 10

Higher-order conditioning

Question 11

Describe Froliv’s demonstration of higher order conditioning

Answer 11

Trained a dog to salivate at the sound of a ticking metronome by pairing the metronome and food. When the metronome was well-established as a CS for salivating, he paired it with another stimulus, the sight of a black square. He held up the black square and activated the metronome. After several pairings of the two stimuli, the dog began salivating when it saw the square. The black square had become a CS for salivating even though it had never been paired with food

Question 12

Why does higher-order conditioning increase the importance of Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 12

It means that many more stimuli can come to elicit conditional responses

Question 13

Describe stats and stats classic experiment of verbal higher-order conditioning

Answer 13

Asked college students to look at nonsense syllables as they were flashed on a screen and at the same time, the students repeated words spoken by the experimenters. For some students, the experimenters paired nonsense syllables with positive words and another syllable with negative words. For other students, the associations were reversed. After this, the students rated each nonsense syllable on a seven point scale rating from unpleasant to pleasant. The results indicated that the nonsense syllables came to elicit emotional responses similar to the emotional value of the word with which they had been paired

Higher order conditioning appears to play an important role in the emotional meaning of words

Question 14

In Pavlovian conditioning, the amount of learning can be measured by the interval between the onset of the CS in the first appearance of saliva. This is called: why is it problematic?

Answer 14

Latency of the response or response latency.

Can be problematic because the interval between CS onset and the appearance of the US is so short that using response latency is a measure of learning is very difficult

Question 15

In Pavlovian conditioning, the procedure of presenting the CS on some occasions without the US to determine whether learning has occurred

Answer 15

Test trials

Learning is thus represented as an increase in the frequency of the conditional response

Example: pairing bright light with eyeblink on every few trials

Question 16

Another way to measure Pavlovian learning is to measure the

Answer 16

Intensity or amplitude of the CR

The first CRs are usually apt to be very weak but with repeated trials the responses to the CS increase

A person may blink when presented with a bright light and a clap very weekly at first, but after a few trials person blinks very hard when presented with a bright light

Question 17

The tendency of a neutral stimulus to elicit a CR when presented after a US has elicited a reflex response. Apparently due to sensitization

Answer 17

Psuedoconditioning

A strong stimulus can sensitize you to other stimuli so that you react to them more or less as you would react to the strong stimulus

Poses a problem in measuring Pavlovian conditioning when a stimulus has been paired with a strong US because you don’t know if the behaviour that occurs is a conditional response or is the result of the earlier exposure to a strong stimulus

Researchers can overcome this problem by presenting the CS and US to control group subjects in a random manner so that the stimuli sometimes appear alone and sometimes appear together. The performance of these control subjects is then compared with experimental subjects for which the CS and US always or at least usually appear together

Question 18

A Pavlovian conditioning procedure in which the CS begins and ends before the US is presented

Answer 18

Trace conditioning

Example: giving a person and electric shock and then a few seconds later making their eye blink in response to a clap

Question 19

A Pavlovian conditioning procedure in which the CS starts before, and then overlaps with the US

Answer 19

Delayed conditioning

Example: begin the shock for two seconds and then for the last two seconds of the shock clap to make the persons eye blink

Question 20

A Pavlovian conditioning procedure in which the CS and US occur together in time

Answer 20

Simultaneous conditioning

Example: both clapping and electric shock which makes a person blink begin and end at exactly the same time

It is a weak procedure for establishing a conditional response

Question 21

A Pavlovian conditioning procedure in which the US proceeds the CS. The CS follows the US

Answer 21

Backward conditioning

Example: The clap that makes the person blink is followed by The electric shock

It is very difficult if not impossible to produce ACR with backward conditioning

Question 22

A dependency between events. And event may be dependent on the appearance of a stimulus or on the appearance of a behaviour

Answer 22

Contingency

Question 23

Describe Rescorla’s experiment that demonstrated the importance of the CS-US contingency in the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning

Answer 23

Exposed rats to a tone followed by mild shock, in additional trials the US sometimes appeared alone. In one group, the shock occurs in the absence of the CS in 10% of the additional trials; in second group, the US appeared alone in 20% of the trials, and 40% in the third group.

Results showed that the amount of learning depended on the degree to which the CS predicted shock. When the CS was nearly always followed by the US, conditioning occurred. When a shock was about as likely to occur in the absence of a CS as in its presence as in the 40% group, little or no learning place

Question 24

In every day life, do we generally encounter high or medium-low degrees of contingency between the CS and the US?

Answer 24

Probably medium to low degrees of contingency because a stimulus will sometimes be paired with a particular US and other times will appear alone or with other stimuli. This not only makes for less than ideal learning conditions but may also account to some extent for the ambivalent reactions we have

Question 25

Nearness of events in time or space. In Pavlovian conditioning, usually refers to the interval between the CS and US

Answer 25

Contiguity

Question 26

How does contiguity influence the effectiveness of classical conditioning? Does the type of response being conditioned influence CS-US contiguity? Are short intervals or long intervals more effective in Pavlovian conditioning

Answer 26

In general, the more contiguous to CS and do US, the more quickly a CR will appear. However, the simultaneous procedure, with no interval at all, is very ineffective.

The kind of response being learned is important. For instance I blink responses the ideal interval is about one half second, but long CS-US intervals in studies of taste aversion obtain good results

The optimum CS-US interval also varies according to the type of conditioning procedure used, with short intervals generally being less important in delayed conditioning then in trace conditioning. However, even in trace conditioning, extremely short intervals may not work well

Question 27

Two or more stimuli presented simultaneously, often as a CS

Answer 27

Compound stimulus

Example, both a red light and a buzzer are presented at the same time

Question 28

Describe the experiment that one of Pavlov’s assistants conducted with a compound stimulus on a dog, including the results of the experiment

Answer 28

Simultaneously presented cold and tactile stimulation to a dog, followed by a few drops of mild acid in the mouth which is a US for salvation. Then tested the dog with the cold stimulus alone, the tactile stimulus alone, and the compound stimulus.
Results: revealed that although both the tactile stimulus and the compound stimulus were effective conditional stimuli, the cold stimulus alone was utterly ineffective. Maybe because of overshadowing, the effect of one stimulus was found very commonly to overshadow the effect of the others almost completely

Question 29

Failure of a stimulus that is part of a compound stimulus to become a CS. The stimulus is said to be overshadowed by the stimulus that does become a CS

Answer 29

Overshadowing

Question 30

What features of a stimulus when presented as part of a compound stimulus are responsible for overshadowing

Answer 30

Intensity:Strong stimuli overshadow weak ones

Question 31

How does prior experience with a CS influence the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 31

It might take longer for the neutral stimulus to become a conditioned response then it would have without the previous experience. The appearance of a stimulus in the absence of a US interferes with the subsequent ability of that stimulus to become a CS

Question 32

In Pavlovian conditioning the failure of a CR to appear as a result of prior presentation of the CS in the absence of the US

Answer 32

Latent inhibition

Question 33

Failure of a stimulus to become a CS when it is part of a compound stimulus that includes an effective CS.

Answer 33

Blocking

Resembles overshadowing in that one stimulus interferes with the ability of another to become in CS. In overshadowing, however, the effect is a result of differences between the stimuli in characteristics such as intensity; in blocking, the effect is due to prior experience with one part of a compound stimulus

Question 34

A procedure in which two neutral stimuli are paired, after which one is repeatedly paired with a US. If the other stimulus is then presented alone, it may elicit a CR even though it was never paired with the US

Answer 34

Sensory preconditioning

Question 35

Describe the relationship between the number of parings of the CS and US on Pavlovian conditioning. Is the relationship linear? What are the implications of this for survival of a species

Answer 35

In general, the more often the CS and US if you’re together, the more likely a conditional response is to occur. However, the relationship between the number of stimulus pairings and the amount of learning is not linear: the first several pairings are more important than later ones. Conditioning usually follows a decelerating curve

Survival: the curvilinear relationship makes excellent cents. If important stimuli are reliably associated, the sooner the organism adapts the better.

Question 36

The interval separating the trials of a discrete trial procedure

Answer 36

Inter-trial interval

The gap between successive trials which can vary from about a second to several years

In general, experiments comparing various inter-trial intervals find that longer intervals are more effective than shorter ones. Whereas the optimum interval between CS and US is often a second or less, the best intertrial interval may be 20 or 30 seconds or more

Question 37

What other variables affect Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 37

Age, temperament, and stress

Age, some experiments show that learning was not effective in establishing a conditional response in the oldest subjects

Temperament: some dogs are highly excitable where as others are much more sedate, the more excitable dogs learn faster

Stress: anxious students acquired conditional response is more quickly than those who are more relaxed. In general, stress facilitates Pavlovian learning

Question 38

In Pavlovian conditioning, the procedure of repeatedly presenting a CS without the US.

Answer 38

Extinction

When, as a result of extinction, the CR no longer occurs or occurs no more than it did prior to conditioning, it is said to have been extinguished

Question 39

How does Pavlovian extinction differ from forgetting?

Answer 39

Forgetting refers to a deterioration in performance following a period without practice. For example, after a dog has learned to salivate at the sound of a metronome, we might discontinue training for a day, week, or a decade, and then test it again with a ticking metronome. If the dog no longer salivates at the sound, we may say that forgetting has occurred

With extinction, the practice sessions continue, but it is a form of conditioning in which the CS is paired with the absence of the US. The dogs could be said to be learning the not salivating response

Question 40

The sudden reappearance of a behaviour following its extinction

Answer 40

Spontaneous recovery

Question 41

Does extinction completely reverse the effects of Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 41

Although extinction may reduce the frequency of a CR 20, it does not entirely undo the effects of conditioning. Extinguished behaviour remains sensitive to environmental cues. In other words, events that occurred during training can trigger CRs reappearance after extinction

Question 42

Describe the work of Edwin Twitmyer and conditioning the patellar reflex. Explain why he was unsuccessful in getting attention for his work

Answer 42

When studying the knee-jerk reflex, he would ring a bell to alert the person that the hammer was going to fall. One day he unintentionally rang the bell without releasing the hammer and the subjects feet shot forward as if his knees had been hit with a hammer

Was unsuccessful because his session was running into the lunch hour after other sessions went late and he spoke to an audience that hundred less for knowledge and for food. They didn’t have any questions. He was devastated and considered his effort a failure and never did another experiment on conditioning

Question 43

In Pavlovian conditioning, the theory that the CS substitutes for the US. Assumes that the CR is essentially the same as the UR

Answer 43

Stimulus substitution theory

Problem: there is evidence that the CR and that you are are not always the same. The conditional response is weaker then, occurs less reliably then, and appears more slowly then, the UR. There are often qualitative differences between the conditional and unconditional responses.
And even more serious difficulty is the finding that the CR is sometimes the opposite of the UR

Question 44

The theory of Pavlovian conditioning that proposes that the CR prepares the organism for the occurrence of the US

Answer 44

Preparatory response theory

Example: when a dog response to a bell by salivating, this behaviour prepares the animal for the food that is about to come. By salivating before the food arrives, the dog prepares to digest the food that it will receive

Question 45

What prediction does preparatory response theory make regarding the conditional stimuli involved in the development of tolerance to drugs? Explain using Lightfoots the study of beer drinking

Answer 45

The conditional response prepares the unconditional stimulus by compensating for the effects of the US. The organism prepares for the drug by suppressing the body’s response to it. This means that when people repeatedly take a drug in a particular setting, aspects of the setting maybe come CS is for reduced responses to the truck. Accounts for the phenomenon of drug tolerance and also predicts that drug tolerance will not occur if drugs are taking in the absence of the conditional stimuli

Lightfoot study: had male college students drink a substantial amount of beer in a 30 minute. On each of five consecutive days. The first for drinking sessions took place in the same location. On the 50, some students drink beer in the familiar setting where as others imbibed in a new place. All the students then took tests of intellectual and perceptual motor skills after drinking. Those who drink in the familiar setting scored higher on the tests, indicating they were less inebriated, although they had The same amount of alcohol

Question 46

Describe the evidence related to Pavlovian conditioning and awareness

Answer 46

When asked to explain Pavlovian conditioning, many people say the dog associated the bell with food. When the bell rang, the dog knew food was coming and that made it salivate which assumes that an awareness of the relationship between the CS and US is essential to, and must precede, the appearance of the CR

Research with human participants has demonstrated that conditioning sometimes occurs without awareness that the CS and US are related. Another problem for the awareness model arises when simple animals undergo conditioning such as roundworms and flatworms.

Question 47

Explain how preparatory response theory can account for fatal drug overdoses in which the dose should not have proved fatal

Answer 47

The deaths are sometimes due to the absence of stimuli normally present during drug use.

Question 48

What were the psychic secretions that became a focus of Pavlov’s work? Why did Pavlov shift the focus of his work from digestive processes to psychic secretions? In what respect did Pavlov’s identity suffer due to the shift in his attention to psychic secretions?

Answer 48

The psychic secretions was the tendency for the dogs to begin salivating before anything was put into its mouth after being fed a number of times. Pavlov and others assumed these psychic secretions were caused by the thoughts, memories, or wishes of the animal

Pavlov shifted his focus to these secretions because he was very interested in why the dogs did not salivate when they were first brought into the laboratory but only after being fed there repeatedly

His identity may have suffered because he was a physiologist who might go into talking about products of the mind