Classical Conditioning

Question 1

Learning

Answer 1

• Mechanism of behaviour that undergo relatively enduring change based on experience.
  i) Mechanics of behaviour
  ii) Enduring change
  iii) Based on experience
• Adaptive

Question 2

Mechanics of Behaviour

Answer 2

• Because performance does not always capture how much learning has taken place, we need to define learning in terms of the mechanisms underlying a behaviour rather than the behaviours itself.
• Learning is acquired information processing over time, while performance is one’s ability to apply their learning at a particular point in time.
  EX. Fatigue and motivation: A dog learns tricks but when asked to do tricks one day in front of the owner’s friend, the dog falls asleep…why? There can be external factors such as tiredness or illness that limits the dog’s ability to perform even though it has learned many tricks.

Question 3

Latent learning experiment

Answer 3

• A form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response
  EX. Rats 1,2,3…1 put in a maze with food increased performance to get food. 2 put in a maze with no food, no increase in performance. 3 put under the same conditions as 2 but after 10 days, food was introduced. The next day, they performed equally as well as group 1. They were still learning the maze’s layout in the absence of rewards –> food reflected the learning that had taken place.

Question 4

Enduring change

Answer 4

• Change does not have to be permanent, but to be considered learning, it should be retained over time even if the behavior is not performed in that time.
  EX. Riding a bike

Question 5

Based on experience

Answer 5

• Driven by maturation…when an organism develops its behavior over time
  EX. Maturation is necessary for a child to develop the motor control required to produce speech, meaning their vocal apparatus needs to become more functional and language ability develop in tandem.

Question 6

Habituation

Answer 6

• Developed to use habituation, which is a decrease in response to a stimulus when it is presented repeatedly without much consequence.
• Allows organisms to ignore familiar input and prove that there are no consequences
  EX. Clothes on body.
• non-associative learning, because they modify an existing stimulus-response relation

Question 7

Dishabituation

Answer 7

• When an organism habituates to a stimulus but then the stimulus changes, eliciting an orienting response or the recovery of responsiveness.
• Change can signify important new information.
  Ex. Bird chirping, but all of a sudden stop…could mean danger is coming

Question 8

Orienting Response

Answer 8

• Reflexive behaviors/ automatic shift of attention toward a stimulus… evolutionary habituation overtime for survival.
• Signal sudden danger or an unexpected opportunity.

Question 9

Sensitization

Answer 9

• An increase in exposure to stimulus causes habituation thus a decrease in responsiveness, but repeated presentation causes sensitization which leads to an increase in responsiveness.
  EX. watching a horror movie emotions and anxiety builds but this prepares the body for harmful situation.
• non-associative learning, because they modify an existing stimulus-response relation

Question 10

Classical Conditioning

Answer 10

• focuses on associations between stimuli

Question 11

Pavlov’s experiment

Answer 11

• Salivation of dogs, prepping themselves for digestion when they hear bell ring in anticipation of food.

Question 12

Unconditioned response (UR)

Answer 12

• A biologically determined response that is evoked prior to any learning
  EX. Salivation when food is presented

Question 13

Unconditioned response

Answer 13

• Any stimulus that evokes UR
  EX. food

Question 14

Conditional reponse (CR)

Answer 14

• An automatic response established by training (learning) to a once neutral stimulus aka the conditional stimulus (CS)
  EX. when dog hears a bell ring, it associates it with food and begins to salivate because it learned that food is ready when the bell rings.

Question 15

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

Answer 15

• a previously neutral stimulus that, after becoming associated with the unconditioned stimulus (US), now triggers a conditioned response (US)
  EX. Bell

Question 16

Acquisition

Answer 16

• Acquiring the ability to after several trials.
• Only after several conditioning trials where the CS and US are paired together will the CS (bell) elicit a CR (salivation)

Question 17

Contingency

Answer 17

• A term used to describe the association between the CS and the US, because the presence of the CS reliability predicts the presence of the US.

Question 18

Contiguity

Answer 18

• The extent to which the CS and US occur together in time and space.
• In other words, you will learn to associate two stimuli if you experience them together some number of times.
  — Criteria: orienting response and reflexive UR

Question 19

Asymptote

Answer 19

• The strength of the CR grows gradually over successive pairing of the CS and US, but it will eventually plateau. WHY?
  1. Because there is so much CR that can be produced
  2. Reached the maximum conditioning possible with the given stimulus pair.

Question 20

Extinction of the CR (2)

Answer 20

• Acquisition helps organisms anticipate future events, but it is sometimes advantageous to extinguish a learned association.
  EX. explain shock experiment: EX. You were part of an experiment that shocked you every time you see a red light. When you leave, your muscles tend to tense up as a response to seeing red lights during and everyday scenario in anticipation of a shock. Eventually, this response fades away because the CS of seeing red is no longer being paired with the UR of being shocked, which reduced the CR of feeling tense.
  – Therefore, extinction occurs when the CS no longer elicits the UR.

Question 21

Reacquisition

Answer 21

• Pheromone that suggests that extinction does not imply erasing the acquired association.
• It is the reintroduction of conditioning trials after extinction has occurred.
• Reacquisition is faster than acquisition, indicating that some of the original learning is trained following extinction.

Question 22

Spontaneous recovery

Answer 22

• Also suggests that extinction is not the erasure of an acquired association.
• The re-emergence of a previously extinguished CS after a temporal delay.

Question 23

Renewal

Answer 23

• Also suggests that extinction is not the erasure of an acquired association
• Describes when a contingency is extinguished in an environment different from the original environment, but the CR again occurs when the CS is presented in the original environment.
• A rat is inside a blue-colored box and learns that it will receive food when it hears a tone. Eventually, the rat will run to its food tray (CR) as soon as it hears the tone (CS). The rat is moved into a white box and is taught the same exact procedure. Eventually, the researcher extinguishes the behavior by not providing food with the tone and the rat stops going to the food tray. It is more likely for the CR to come back in the blue box which is the original context the rat learned the behavior.

Question 24

Inhibitory Conditioning

Answer 24

• When the presence of the CS (bell) predicts the presence of the US (food)

Question 25

Excitatory conditioning

Answer 25

• When the presence of the CS (bell) predicts the presence of the US.

Question 26

Physiological regulation/ compensatory reponse

Answer 26

• Classical conditioning allows organisms to anticipate and prepare for biologically important stimuli…describes any biological response from the body that maintains homeostasis.
  EX. the dog salivates at the sound at the sound of the metronome because as it prepares its digestive system for incoming food.
  EX. Assume excess glucose (US) elicits the physiological response of insulin release (UR). Now if you introduce a sweet taste (CS) that is usually paired with the influx of glucose into the bloodstream (US)…a lifetime of associative pairing the sweet taste (CS) alone might elicit insulin release (CR) to prepare the body for expected rise in blood glucose.

Question 27

Morphine overdose and environment case

Answer 27

• The stimulation provided by the drug acts as the US, and the body’s natural counteraction to the drug effects acts as the UR. Critically, the environment of drug administration (CS) becomes associated with the drug effects
• Over repeated trails of drug administration in an environment, the environment itself begins to elicit the CR of counteraction via the body’s way of anticipating the drug…creating greater drug tolerance because your body is already prepped.
• Tolerance may be built in a certain environment, but when the same amount of a drug is administered in a different environment, the cues that normally elicit counteraction are not present, leading to overdose.

Question 28

Generalization Gradient

Answer 28

• The process of applying what is learned with a specific set of stimuli to a wider range of similar stimuli is called stimulus generalization.
• The more similar a CS is to the original CS, the greater CR.
• The less it is to the original CS, the less the CR will be.

Question 29

Stimulus discrimination

Answer 29

• An organism’s ability to fine-tune its responding such that a cr occurs in response to one CS, but not to other similar stimuli.
• Occurs through discrimination training.