Classical Conditioning

Question 1

What is classical conditioning?

- example?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What is Pavlovian Conditioning?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What is second order conditioning?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

What is acquisition and extinction?

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

How does exposure therapy relate to extinction and acquisition?

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

What is Thorndike’s Law of Effect and how did he come across this?

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

What is instrumental conditioning?

Answer 7

Instrumental conditioning is a process in which animals learn about the relationships between their behaviours and their consequences.

Question 8

What are reinforcers and secondary reinforcers?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What are the different types of instrumental conditioning?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What do the types of instrumental conditioning involve?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What are the different schedules of reinforcement?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Differences between classical and instrumental conditioning?

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

What is shaping/principle of successive approximation?

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

What is stimulus control and S-R learning?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What is Skinner’s Tripartite Contingency?

Answer 15

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?

Question 16

What is generalisation?

- Albert B

Answer 16

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

Question 17

What is the generalisation gradient?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Generalisation in humans

Answer 18

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:

1. Fashion, Vase, Chill, Wave (semantically similar)
2. 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.

Question 19

What is discrimination and a discriminative stimulus?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

What is discrimination learning?

Answer 20

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)

Question 21

What is social learning?

- What did Bandura theorise?

Answer 21

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:

1. Attention - one must pay attention to what they are observing in order to learn
2. Retention - one must be able to retain the behaviour they are observing in memory
3. Initiation - the learner must be able to execute the learned behaviour
4. Motivation - observer must want to engage in observational learning

Question 22

What is social facilitation?

Answer 22

Social facilitation: when a member of a group learns something it increases the likelihood of others learning it themselves

Question 23

What are examples of social facilitation (not considered social learning)?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

How can classical conditioning occur by observation?

Answer 24

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

Question 25

What are mimicry, emulation and imitation?

Answer 25

Mimicry: copying without reference to a goal
e.g. baby copying parent’s actions

Emulation: understanding there is a goal but not using the same method to gain access to the goal

Imitation: copying with reference to a goal
A replication of the same response made by the performer.
e.g. infants solving two-action tasks in the same manner the demonstrator did

Question 26

What is the two action test in regards to imitation?

Answer 26

Where a learning task can be solved in two ways, often to get a reward. If observers copy the demonstrators method, then imitation is implied, however if the observers are equally likely to use both methods and are equally likely to solve the task, then emulation is implied, as only the outcome is copied.

Question 27

What is modelling?

Answer 27

The idea that changes in behavior, cognition, or emotional state result from observing someone else’s behavior or the consequences of that behavior.

Question 28

How did Bandura demonstrate modelling?

Answer 28

Modelling is reinforcement dependent. 
Bandura took three groups:
1. Model rewarded
2. Model punished
3. No consequence 
With two tests: no incentive and positive outcomes.

Found that positive incentive was consistently better

Question 29

What are factors that affect conditioning?

Answer 29

1. Frequency: As you increase the number of pairings of the CS and US you get an increase in the CR during the CS.
2. Intensity
   - salience of the CS/Sd: An intense CS means the CR will be learnt faster.
   However, weak and strong CS both reach the same asymptote but stronger gets there faster.
   - salience of the US/reinforcer: Intensity of US impacts on the asymptote that is reached. A weaker reward (US) sustains a lower level of conditioned responding.
3. Contiguity (how far apart the events occur) :
   |S| = Inter-stimulus interval = time between CS ‘on’ and US ‘on.’

4: Contingency: a future event that is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty
CS must increase the probability of US
Higher contingency = better learning

Question 30

What is learning and the forms of learning?

Answer 30

An enduring change within an organism brought about by experience that makes a change in behaviour possible.

The two simplest forms of learning are:

1. Habituation: decreased responding produced by repeated stimulation
   e. g Rat jumps less with each presentation of a loud noise

Habituation is NOT

• Fatigue: occurs when muscles become incapacitated so the organism can no longer perform the response
• Sensory adaptation: sense organs become temporarily insensitive to stimulation (by bright light or noise)

2. Sensitization: increased responding produced by increased stimulation
   e. g. Rat runs more in response to the same amount of cocaine when they are pre-exposed to cocaine

Question 31

Behaviours that learning may be mistaken for

Answer 31

Reflexes: these changes in behaviour are innate and automatic. 
Food = salivation
Knee tap = knee jerk 
- The Reflex Arc
    Sensory (afferent) nerves 
    detect stimuli
    Motor (efferent) nerves 
    stimulate muscles  

Instincts: a behavioural sequence made up of units which are largely genetically determined and, as such, are typical of all members of a species
Instincts are more complicated than reflexes.

Maturation: these changes in behaviour are brought about by ageing
Maturation refers to changes that take place in your body and in your behaviour because you are getting older
e.g.’ learning’ to walk

Fatigue: this change in behaviour is not stable
Fatigue is a usually transient state of discomfort and loss of efficiency as a normal reaction to emotional strain, physical exertion, boredom or lack of rest - not evidence of lack of learning

Question 32

What is motivation?

- Hebb’s analogy

Answer 32

Motivation is why individuals initiate, choose, or persist in specific actions in specific circumstances.

Hebb’s analogy
Engine provides power for actions and steering provides direction - motivation provides power (whether its innate or learned determines direction)

Question 33

How are instincts motivated?

Answer 33

Instincts are innate patterns of behaviour that are not a result of learning.
They are not directly motivated by considering the end goal but elicited by a combination of environmental and biological circumstances.

Facial expressions may be innate? Raised eyebrows upon identification of someone

Question 34

What is a fixed action pattern?

Answer 34

Fixed action pattern: describes an instinctive behavioural sequence that is highly stereotyped and species-characteristic.

• It is often regulated by specific biological states e.g. breeding season, nesting, development
• Can be the sign stimulus for a reciprocal response in another individual e.g. mating rituals

Question 35

What is a sign stimulus?

Answer 35

A sign stimulus is the essential feature of a stimulus which is necessary to elicit a response.

For example, a red belly (characteristic of courting male sticklebacks) is the sign stimulus necessary to provoke an attack from a rival male.

Question 36

What are drives and how do they motivate behaviour?

Answer 36

Drives: flexible systems that organise behaviour around a basic need

Drive theories

• The drive sensitizes the individual to stimuli important to satisfy/reduce the drive
• They then motivate the individual to behave in a way to satisfy (reduce) the drive

For example, when you’re hungry you have the drive to find food

Question 37

Explain habit formation in terms of drive

Answer 37

Habit formation: A behavior that reduces drive will be reinforced and associated with the situation (Sd): S-R “habit”

E.g. a rat is placed in a skitter box after having had a big meal - rats become more energetic when they are hungry and perform actions until they perform one that satisfies the drive (pressing lever for food) - a habit starts to form so when they are placed in the box again, the internal drive will cause them to do the action again, quicker.

Question 38

What are biological sources of motivation?

Answer 38

proximal: Maintaining homeostasis - Facilitating survival of the organism
distal: Maintaining reproductive success - Facilitating survival of the species

Question 39

Advantages of general drive theories over specific drive theories

Answer 39

Specific drive theories suffer from circularity and the homunculus problem

General drive theories explain reinforcement as drive reduction

• The organism learns to reduce drive
• Not necessary to infer specific drives for each biological need

Question 40

Examples of drives

Answer 40

Evolutionary Fitness
Limited resources/competition for resources means that individuals best suited to their environment will survive

Darwin recognised that the ability to produce offspring is a critical factor in natural selection

Drive for Sex?
There is no immediate biological need for sex - sex is a non-homeostatic drive
AS AN INHERITED TRAIT
- Behaviour is not pulled towards the future but driven by past events
- Rather you have a sex drive because having a sex drive helped your parents to successfully reproduce and you inherited this trait from them

Question 41

Limitations of drive theories

Answer 41

1. Drive reduction is not necessary for reinforcement (e.g. saccharin)
2. Stimulating a drive can be reinforcing e.g. searching for a mate - going out and flirting with someone drives you to go there again
3. Ignores role for qualitative differences between reinforcer (e.g. liking) - two flavours of ice-cream both satisfy a need for calories but doesn’t tell us why people prefer chocolate over vanilla or vise versa

Question 42

What do harlow’s monkeys tell us about drive?

Answer 42

Two toy wire and cloth mother surrogates - monkeys spend almost no time with the wire mother - only go there to eat but spend all their time attached to the cloth mother as there is more comfort (fur) even though the wire mother provides biological needs (food).
Even though biological needs were satisfied via the write surrogate, the monkeys preferred the cloth surrogate

Maternal deprivation: the pure reduction of a drive is not the only motivation for behaviour

Question 43

What is incentive motivation?

Answer 43

Incentive motivation: focuses on rewards ‘attracting’ the subject’s behaviour

The incentive value of an outcome: 
- Can be acquired through conditioning
- Moment-by-moment incentive value determined by:
     - Liking (hedonic value)
     - Biological need
     - Current arousal, preferred 
     activity

Question 44

What is delayed reward discounting?

Answer 44

Rewards display economic principles

• Value of rewards decreases with delay
• Choices are sensitive to financial needs
• Correlated with impulsivity and disorders of abuse

DRD refers to a person’s preferences for smaller immediate rewards versus larger delayed rewards.

Question 45

What are projection tests?

Answer 45

Projection tests, pioneered by Henry Murray, are used to study people’s needs and goals, assuming they project these onto their interpretations of ambiguous images.

1. Rorschach Test
   - inkblot test where subjects look at inkblot images and say what they see in the image
2. Thematic Apperception Test
   - shown a series of images of people and the subject has to come up with a story

Question 46

What is the need for achievement?

Answer 46

Achievement (nAch) is apart of long term human needs. People in executive positions tend to score higher on nAch.

Predictions that

• the positive feeling from succeeding in a task should increase the harder it is
• however, actually found that those with high N-Ach tend to choose moderately difficult tasks, feeling that they are challenging, but within reach.

Question 47

What is the expectancy value theory?

Answer 47

Expected utility of an action = value of goal x probability of obtaining goal

If the probability of success is high, then the utility of success is low (easy tasks aren’t satisfying) and vise versa.

Question 48

Why do people with nAch choose moderately difficult tasks?

Answer 48

According to McClelland, people high in nAch will tend towards tasks that:

• Provide personal responsibility for solving problems
• Sets moderate goals (not too hard or failure too likely, not too easy or success brings no satisfaction)
• Needs concrete rapid performance feedback