Chapter 4: Classical Conditioning Flashcards
What is appetitive conditioning?
Any conditioning where the stimulus is pleasant.
What does Aristotle have to do with classical conditioning?
Rules of Association: stimuli that are similar in time and space get associated with one another.
What is fear conditioning?
Exposure to shock (US) produces escape/avoidance behavior (UR). It is a type of aversive conditioning.
What is aversive conditioning?
When a conditioned stimulus leads to a conditioned response. This conditioned response reflex helps avoid a noxious unconditioned stimulus.
What is the context test in fear conditioning?
When placed in a context where the rat was previously shocked, the rat doesn’t explore much and shows “freezing” behavior.
What is the tone test in fear conditioning?
When tone is played, the rodent freezes. Meaning that the tone was conditioned to signal the shock in the conditioned stimulus of the box.
How does eyeblink conditioning work?
- US = puff of air
- CS = tone
- UR = blink
- CR = blink (but earlier)
The conditioned response prepares to avoid US
How are the UR and CR different in the eyeblink conditioning test?
The CR is not the same as UR, it takes place before the US and can even be different in speed or form.
What is the temporal progression of the eyeblink response?
- Day 1: CS causes no CR
2. Day 3-5: CR emerges as a slow squeezing shut of the eye prior to the US
What is the conditioned compensatory response? Give an example.
The conditioned compensatory response results in a CR that is different from the UR. For example, a dog that gets injected with adrenaline will have an increased HR. But eventually, being put in the context of an adrenaline shot will decrease HR that will maintain homeostasis against the adrenaline injection.
Explain extinction in classical conditioning?
Breaking the association between the CS and US can extinguish the new CS CR reflex, comparable to habituation. But it never fully disappears. It just conditions a new response to the CS -> “don’t respond”.
What three things can make the CS more effective again? That is, recovery or spontaneous recovery. What does this suggest?
- Stress
- New Context
- Passing of Time
This suggests that there is a distinct ensemble of neurons that activates during extinction and during recovery which survives extinction.
What are the four factors governing Classical Conditioning?
- Timing
- Blocking
- Latent Inhibition
- Associative Bias
What is trace eyeblink conditioning.
Harder to learn, when there is a interstimulus interval (ISI) between CS and US. Optimal ISI is 400 ms.
What is delay eyeblink conditioning?
Best type of learning, occurs when two stimuli that are superimposed, animal learns that at the end of the end of this CS, the US will happen.
What happens when the CS and US are engaging different modalities?
It may be hard to divide attention between two things. (Cross-modal vs unimodal conditioning)
What’s the difference between forward and backward conditioning?
Forwards conditioning means that the CS happens and then the US happens. This is the more effective way to learn since CS predicts US. Backwards conditioning is where CS happens after US. It can work initially and lead to conditioning inhibition (since CS does not predict US). Which means that the CS means nothing.
What is blocking?
When an animal is trained to 2 CS (e.g. tone and light) preceding US (e.g., shock). Both tone and light produce only modest CR (less significant than if only one or the other were trained. Also, when an animal is pre-trained with light, and then trained with light AND tone, the animal will not respond to tone alone. Meaning that when the CS is redundant to what is known, no learning occurs.
What is compound conditioning?
Conditioning in which two or more cues are present together, usually simultaneously, forming a compound CS.
What is overshadowing?
An effect seen in compound conditioning when a more salient cue within a compound acquires more association strength than does the less salient cue and is thus more strongly associated with the US.
What is latent inhibition?
If you pre-expose a group to CS without a US, then later pairings with the US will be inhibited because one stops paying attention to the CS. Meaning, it takes a lot longer for animals that are pre-exposed to be conditioned.
What is associative bias?
Louder, stronger, neutral stimulus (NS) are more likely to become conditioned CS. The NS will also have more chance to become the CS if it is in the same modality as the CR.
What is the CS Modulation (Attentional Approaches) to CC?
Attention to the stimulus is critical for learning. This explains why repeated exposure with no consequences decreases CS-US association (latent inhibition).
What is the US Modulation Theories? (Rescorla Wagner)
Based on learning from errors, we learn best when there is a discrepancy between what is predicted and what actually occurs (explains blocking).