L6/7 Occasion Setting Flashcards
No L6
What is a ‘hierarchical association’?
An association that seems to activate or inhibit other associations.
What is a discrimination procedure?
A conditioning procedure where an animal has to discriminate between two situations.
One situation usually involving a US, the other does not.
In what situation do hierarchical associations typically seem to be learnt?
What conditioned stimuli are presented serially.
(one after the other)
Rather than when presented simultaneously.
What is a ‘occasion setter’?
Discrete stimuli or contexts that disambiguate operant relations.
In cases where stimuli or responses are “sometimes” associated with events, occasion setters can provide discriminant information that resolves the ambiguity of the antecedent.
In a discrimination experiment, what is the feature?
The feature that differentiates the two trial types (if A is presented every time and B only some times, B is the feature)
What is Simultaneous Feature Positive Discrimination?
When the ‘feature’ is paired with the US.
What typically happens to the ‘feature’ in simultaneous feature positive discrimination trials?
The feature becomes excitatory.
What is a Serial Feature Positive Discrimination trial?
Serial means the stimulus is presented one after the other.
Rather than simultaneously
What happens to stimulus A in this serial feature positive discrimination trial?
A becomes excitatory.
Does B become excitatory in this serial feature positive discrimination trial?
No, it seems to activate the A-> US association but is not excitatory itself.
What is the difference between simultaneous and serial positive discrimination tests and simultaneous and serial negative discrimination tests?
Positive: US is paired with the feature
Negative: US is paired without the feature
Negative is also called conditioned inhibition.
What will Rescorla-Wagner’s model predict for this experiment?
Is it accurate?
A will become excitatory
B will become inhibitory.
This is a correct prediction.
What is a summation test?
You pair the inhibitor with a different excitor.
The inhibitor should suppress the conditioned response generated by any excitor.
What is a retardation test ?
You condition the inhibitor by repeatedly pairing it with the US.
The inhibitor should condition (become excitatory) slowly.
What will Rescorla-Wagner’s model predict on this serial feature negative discrimination model?
Is this a correct prediction?
Rescorla-Wagner would predict B to be an inhibitor, it does not count for presentation order of the stimulus.
It is not correct?
B is no longer inhibitory, it can turn into an excitor.
What does Holland’s theory predict is happening in this test?
B develops a hierarchical inhibitory association that inhibits the A-US association.
a) Which of the trials below does Rescorla-Wagner’s model correctly predict?
b) Which model will correctly predict the others?
a) Only the simultaneous ones.
b) Holland’s hierarchical model.
Why do serial procedures generate occasion setters which don’t become inhibitory/excitatory?
Lack of contiguity.
A longer delay between the occasion setter and the US makes it less likely to become directly associated with the US.
What type of behaviour do rats elicit when they see:
a) Light
b) Sound
What did Ross and Holland’s (1981) experiments on rats show about hierarchy association?
That the hierarchical theory was plausible. The rats wouldn’t react to the tone by itself, but when the light came on after they would use ‘head jerking’ showing that they were reacting to the tone.
The rats were not excited by the light itself, they were excited by the tone primarily.
What did Ross and Holland’s (1984) experiments on rats try to test about occasion setters?
Occasion setters might develop both a hierarchical association and a direct association with the US simultaneously. The two associations might have opposite effects.
Contextual stimuli often become…
Contextual stimuli often become occasion setters.
We learn to perform certain behaviours in some situations and inhibit them in other situations (some behaviours are appropriate only in certain contexts).
Why is it important to determine whether stimuli act directly on the US representation, or are occasion setters?
Contextual cues might act as occasion setters enabling
CS -> anxiety associations in phobias, or CS -> craving/tolerance responses in drug addiction.
Treatments that directly attempt to extinguish the context might not work.
Summarise the difference between
Simultaneous feature negative discrimination (conditioned inhibition)
and
Serial feature negative discrimination (negative occasion setting)
