Classical Conditioning Flashcards
What are instances of single stimulus learning?
Habituation and Sensitisation
What is associate learning?
When two events occur together and we learn about the relationship between them
What sorts of associative learning are psychologists primarily interested in?
When the second event is biologically important such that survival may depend on being able to predict this event.
What is the first form of associative learning?
Pavlovian or classical conditioning
What is an unconditioned stimulus?
A stimulus that reliably elicits a characteristic response without prior training
What is an unconditioned response?
The connection between the stimulus and response is unlearned, innate or reflexive.
What is a conditioned stimulus?
Any stimulus that does not initially evoke the unconditioned response
What is a conditioned response?
Response that occurs as soon as the conditioned stimulus is presented.
What is a conditioning trial?
Pairing of the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus
What is the most common way to measure the level of conditioning
To occasionally intersperse trials with a test trial where the neutral stimulus is presented to see if it produces a conditioned response
What is second order conditioning?
When a conditioned stimulus has been fairly well conditioned, the CS itself can serve as the Us and support a new conditioning
What is Sensory preconditioning
Two neutral stimuli are first paired, and then one is separately paired with an US. In the test phase the stimulus that was not paired with the US s presented to see if it will elicit a CR.
What is Appetitive Conditioning?
The unconditioned stimulus is a desirable or appetitive stimulus (e.g food)
What is an aversive conditioning
The unconditioned stimulus is an unpleasant or aversive event e.g. shock
What is Autoshaping?
First reinforcing a response vaguely similar to the target behaviour, then reinforcing a somewhat closer approximation and so on.
What is sign tracking
A form of appetitive conditioning in which a localised stimulus serves as the CS and as a result the subject comes to approach/track and sometimes manipulate this stimulus
What is eyeblink conditioning
When exposed to a brief light or tone CS that is paired with a US that consists of either a puff of air to the corner of the eye or a mild electric shock delivered near the eye that causes a blink. With more pairings, the CS elicits the eyeblink just before the US is about to occur. With typical procedures the conditioned response itself begins to happen regularly after a few hundred CS-US pairings.
What is taste aversion learning?
A form of classical conditioning in which a food item that has been paired with illness becomes a conditioned aversive stimulus
Is taste aversion common or uncommon?
Common
How strong or rapid is taste aversion?
Very strong- can be acquired after a single trial. Can also continue despite long delays between food exposure and symptoms. can happen unconscious
When conditioned stimulus aversions occur when are they acquired extremely rapidly?
When the CS food or taste is novel.
When conditioned stimulus aversions occur when are they acquired retardedly?
When the organism has prior safe exposure to the food.
What is the nature of an aversive unconditioned stimulus?
Has prototypically been a nausea-inducing drug or exposure to X-ray radiation.
What did the study by Garcia and Koelling (1966) reveal?
Rats were allowed to drink a distinctly flavoured water solution for 20 mins and then exposed to x-rays that would make them ill. After rats recovered they were given choice between flavoured and normal water and flavoured was substanially reduced
In the experiment with rats by Garcia and Koelling, what was the NS, US and UR
NS= flavoured water US= Xray UR= Nausea
In the experiment by Garcia and Koelling, what was the CS and CR
CS= flavoured water CR= Nausea
What was the limitation of the study by Garcia and Koelling
No direct measure of the conditioned response was available; the experimenters could only infer that the flavour make the animals feel ill based on the fact that they refused to drink it
What was the study by Gustavson in 1974
Inducing conditioned aversions in coyotes by producing illness after eating meat. When they were again offered the meat they all avoided it and some vomited, suggesting the taste of meat elicited a conditioned state of nausea.
What is the link between food aversion learning and cancer anorexia
Foods eaten before each treatment become aversive through conditioning, leading to a reduction in amount consumed.
This is supported by work done by Bernstein.
Nausea is the critical variable in the development of food aversion
What are the implications of food aversion research
Having patients eat special diet before treatment
What is the study by Broberg and Bernstein (1987)
Used candy as a scapegoat between meal and delivery of chemo to determine whether this would interfere with the development of aversions to meal items.
The scapegoat had a significant protective effect; children were twice as likely to eat some portion of their test meal at assessent if they had received the scapegoat at conditioning than when there had been no intervention.
What are the difficulties with studying fear in animals?
The physiciological responses that measure fear such as heart rate are difficult to record.
What is the conditioned emotional response?
A form of classical conditioning in which a CS acquires the capacity to elicit freezing and other fear related behaviours as a result of being paired with an aversive US.
A fear conditioning procedure is then introuced in which a 30 second tone is followed by a 2 second shock.
the UR may include several different behaviours indicative of dear.
In relation to conditioned emotional responses, what happens with the CS (the tone)
When it is first presented, it may have little effect on the behaviour. However after a few pairings, the rats rate of lever pressing suddenly decreases as soon as the CS is presented because they are frozen.
What is the suppression ratio?
The measurement of the conditioned response. # of CS responses over # of CS responses+ # of pre-CS responses
What is the experiement by Annau and Kamin (1961)
Trained rats to press bar to earn food and the occasionally presented a three minute noise followed by an electric shock and different groups received shock intensities that varied from 0.28 to 2.91 milliamps
Results suggest that more intense shocks produce stronger conditioning of fear and that fear is more likely to endure. With strong shocks, a single conditioning trial was suffieicent to compress almost completely.
