Classical Conditioning Flashcards
What is classical conditioning?
- example?
Classical conditioning is the procedure in which a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US). The result is that the conditioned stimulus begins to elicit a conditioned response (CR).
Anticipatory nausea: in chemotherapy treatment often patients feel sick before the drug is administered.
CS = sight and smell of hospital, administration equipment etc
What is Pavlovian Conditioning?
Ivan Pavlov conducted an experiment using a dog in a cage.
The dog experienced food in its mouth and started to salivate and then the dog learnt to anticipate what was coming, and salivated before food was delivered = CR
Then a stimuli of a bell was introduced before giving food. After repeating this multiple times, the dog eventually treated the bell as a signal for food.
What is second order conditioning?
Second order conditioning is a form of learning in which a stimulus is first made meaningful through an initial step of learning, and then that stimulus is used as a basis for learning about some new stimulus.
Pavlov initially gave an auditory cue and paired with food (1st order).
In the second phase with NO food, he might flash a light shortly after the bell is rung.
When the light is tested by itself, the dog starts salivating.
What is acquisition and extinction?
Acquisition: repeated presentations of the CS with the US result in an increase in the CR.
Extinction: repeated CS alone following acquisition results in a reduction in the CR.
How does exposure therapy relate to extinction and acquisition?
Exposing a person to the feared stimulus and allowing them to experience the CS decreases the response.
However, patients can be prone to relapse as it is not ERASING the association. There will be emergence of the CR but not as strongly once the CS is taken away.
What is Thorndike’s Law of Effect and how did he come across this?
Law of Effect: Given a particular situation, if an action is met with satisfaction, the organism will be more likely to make the same action next time it finds itself in that situation.
He studied this through a puzzle box using cats. The cat had to perform a series of actions to get out of the box to the food - trial and error learning.
He observed improvement over many trials rather than sudden insight.
What is instrumental conditioning?
Instrumental conditioning is a process in which animals learn about the relationships between their behaviours and their consequences.
What are reinforcers and secondary reinforcers?
These are events that result in an increase in a particular behaviour and many are intrinsic (primary) e.g. giving a dog food.
Secondary reinforcers acquire their properties through experience e.g. clicker with a dog
What are the different types of instrumental conditioning?
Positive Reinforcement: Response increases
Negative Reinforcement: Response decreases (omission)
Positive Punishment: Response decreases
Negative punishment: Response increases (escape/avoid)
Positive: increasing the action increases the probability of the consequences.
Negative: action decreases the probability of the consequence
What do the types of instrumental conditioning involve?
Positive reinforcement means giving something to the subject when they perform the desired action so they associate the action with the reward and do it more often.
Negative reinforcement is when you’re trying to escape or avoid the consequence by increasing the response.
Positive punishment is where an action leads to something unpleasant happening e.g. child getting yelled at for hitting a sibling.
Negative punishment is where something good that the subject expects is removed because of an action they’ve performed.
What are the different schedules of reinforcement?
Fixed Ratio: there is a fixed relationship between number of responses in jobs such as making clothes
Variable Ratio: the more you do the action, the more likely you’ll get reinforced in the long run e.g. door to door salesman
Fixed Interval: there will be a period after reinforcement where you won’t be reinforced until you are again e.g. clock watching - reinforced at lunch and home time
Variable Interval: nagging is reinforced on a variable schedule depending on context e.g. nagging a housemate to do the dishes - once they do it give it a bit of time before nagging again
Differences between classical and instrumental conditioning?
Classical conditioning usually deals with involuntary responses such as physiological or emotional responses. Instrumental conditioning usually deals with voluntary behaviors such as active behaviors that operate on the environment so the subject’s actions control how event occur.
What is shaping/principle of successive approximation?
Principle of successive approximation: Shaping is the process of reinforcing successively closer and closer approximations to a desired behaviour.
Gradually making the conditions of reinforcement more stringent and more precise can generate entirely new behaviours e.g. dog opening door.
What is stimulus control and S-R learning?
Stimulus control is where an operant behaviour is caused by a stimulus that precedes it.
Instrumental behaviours are “controlled” by stimuli with which they are associated.
Stimulus-response (S-R) learning: habitual actions that we do without thinking
What is Skinner’s Tripartite Contingency?
Skinner proposed 3 conditions that were essential in instrumental conditioning:
Antecedent: the stimulus controlling behaviour
Behaviour: what is the response being reinforced?
Consequence: What is the immediate outcome of a behaviour?
What is generalisation?
- Albert B
Generalization: the extent to which behaviour transfers to a new stimulus.
Watson and Rayner (1920) set out to test generalization of learned fear in an infant, “Albert B”
Placed an infant in front of a white rat that he wasn’t afraid of - then made a loud noise shocking the infant in the presence of the white rat
US: loud clanging noise
UR: fear/shock
CS: white rat
CR: fear elicited by the rat
What is the generalisation gradient?
A graph marking the similarity or difference between two stimuli versus the similarity or difference in their elicited responses. In general, the more similar two stimuli, the more similar the responses
Generalisation in humans
Generalization in humans has been theorised in linking physical attributes to past events and semantic similarity in language
Words (CS) paired with food (US) = salivation CR
Style, Urn, Freeze, Surf = trained CSs, then tested responses to:
- Fashion, Vase, Chill, Wave (semantically similar)
- Stile, Earn, Frieze, Serf (phonologically similar)
Most CRs to items on the first list.
More generalization from the semantic qualities of the words rather than the physical similarity of stimuli.
What is discrimination and a discriminative stimulus?
Discrimination: the extent to which behaviour DOES NOT transfer to a new stimulus
A discriminative stimulus is the stimulus controlling the operant response
It is consistently used to gain a specific response and increases the probability that the desired response will occur.
What is discrimination learning?
Discrimination can be learned through training with different schedules of reinforcement.
Instrumental example
In presence of high-pitched tone: Response = Rft
In presence of low-pitched tone: Response = no Rft
(Reinforcement is contingent on both the stimulus and response)
Classical example
(the US is only contingent on the CS but CRs will differ anyway)
Will play a metronome and monkey has learnt that this means there is food.
Differentiation - can train classical conditioning responses in the presence of ONE stimulus (metronome but with different paces)
What is social learning?
- What did Bandura theorise?
The Social Learning Theory poses that individuals can learn new responses and behaviours by observing others.
Bandura theorized that observational learning consists of four parts:
- Attention - one must pay attention to what they are observing in order to learn
- Retention - one must be able to retain the behaviour they are observing in memory
- Initiation - the learner must be able to execute the learned behaviour
- Motivation - observer must want to engage in observational learning
What is social facilitation?
Social facilitation: when a member of a group learns something it increases the likelihood of others learning it themselves
What are examples of social facilitation (not considered social learning)?
Goal enhancement: Getting access to some wanted goal might facilitate trial and error learning
e.g. English blue tit learns to open milk bottles and steal cream - access to cream which is not readily available
Stimulus enhancement: Observe others and are more likely to approach places that they are
Increased motivation to act: Try more new things in the company of friends and parents
How can classical conditioning occur by observation?
The behaviour of others can act as an US that supports classical conditioning if the behaviour of conspecific (same species) elicits an automatic specific response.
Example: Monkey’s fear of snakes
Lab raised monkeys are not normally afraid of snakes BUT if they see a wild monkey afraid of a snake, it will acquire a fear of snakes (Cook and Mineka 1991)
Observers: lab raised rhesus monkey
Performers: two monkeys with learned fear of snakes
Stimuli: video of performers reacting to stimuli
