Learning: Challenges For The Behaviourist Approach

Question 1

Evolution and ‘preparedness’

Answer 1

Evolution- survival prospects enhanced by conditioning-prediction
But
Behaviourists assumed that anything could be taught using principles of conditioning

Question 2

What is preparedness?

Answer 2

Animals are hard wired to learn certain associations much better than others
I.e. Biological constraints on learning
We have covered nausea becoming associated with food even if the cause was something else (chemotherapy, vodka)

Question 3

Remember learning was best with a short CS-UCS time interval?

Answer 3

Garcia showed that for ‘taste aversion’, animals could reliably learn the food- nausea association reliably with up to a 24 hour delay

Question 4

Garcia and koelling (1966)- rats licking from a drinking tube. Simultaneously exposed to sweet water, light and buzzer. Then irradiated to cause nausea

Answer 4

Would they learn that all 3 stimuli predict nausea and avoid water associated with these?

Question 5

2nd group of rats were given electric shock rather than radiation

Answer 5

Did they fear all 3 cs’s?

Question 6

In nature, it is good and drink that makes us I’ll

Answer 6

It makes sense for a food-illness association to be learned quickly and strongly

Question 7

Food is rarely encountered alongside physical harm

Answer 7

But changes in light and noise are, so same principle applies

Question 8

So, friends tend not to make us sick

Answer 8

We associate vomiting with what we’ve ingested

Question 9

Broberg and Bernstein (1987)- gave child cancer patients a strange tasting sweet before chemotherapy sessions

Answer 9

Associated this with nausea rather than other foods

Question 10

With fear, even unconscious presentation of snakes, spiders and angry faces can be easily paired with an electric shock but

Answer 10

Flowers, houses and happy faces give much weaker conditioning (ohman and soares, 1998)

Evolution or learning?

Question 11

What is instinctive drift?

Answer 11

Some instinctual behaviours are too strong and simply override learning

Question 12

The role of cognition

Answer 12

Behaviourists=stimulus-response (s-r)
Some argued for stimulus-organisms cognitive representation-response (s-o-r)

Kohler’s chimps and insight

Question 13

Tolman and rats in a maze

Answer 13

Trained along 1 path which leads to food, rats are then exposed to many paths. The majority explore a few inches along each and then head for the one which would lead to the same spatial location as the earlier stage

Tolman suggested a cognitive map

Question 14

Latent learning- Tolman also found that rats could learn these cognitive maps with no reinforcer

Answer 14

After 10 trials with no reinforcer, on the 11th trial, rats performed in the maze to the same degree as those who had already had 10 trials with food reinforcement

Question 15

With the latent learning experiment

Answer 15

Learning happened but was not evident until there was a reason (food incentive) to navigate quickly through the maze

Question 16

Expectancy- rescorla (1968)

Answer 16

Rats- bar pressing (for food)
Presented with tone and shock- causes freezing in place(fear response)
Other group also presented with tone and no shock
Group in which tone only predicted shock 50% of the time didn’t freeze to later tones

Question 17

We only condition to stimuli

Answer 17

That consistently act as predictors

Question 18

Kamin blocking effect

Answer 18

Rats get light and shock
Then get light, noise and shock
Haven’t learned noise is a predictor- this association has been blocked by the earlier light- shock association

Question 19

Kamin blocking effect led to

Answer 19

Strength of association=v
Max value that v could reach=¥
Rate of learning=a (e.g surprise)

See slide for equation

Question 20

What is latent inhibition?

Answer 20

Pre-exposure to a CS (e.g. A light) causes a weakening of the association between the CS and a later UCS (e.g. A shock)

Question 21

Rescorla-Wagner predicts this shouldn’t happen (effect of latent inhibition)

Answer 21

As the shock is just as surprising whether the CS has been seen before or not

Question 22

What is latent inhibition?

Answer 22

Habituation to the CS presented on its own

Question 23

Later, when the CS is paired with UCS, the organism pays less attention to

Answer 23

The CS and so conditioning is weakened

Question 24

In r-w, if

Answer 24

A=salience then ok

Question 25

Observational learning

Answer 25

Bandura (1965)- Bobo doll
Children saw adult punch, kick and hit the doll with a mallet
Adult was either punished or praised (3rd group had no consequences)
Children who saw punished adult had less aggressive behaviour towards doll until given an incentive to behave as the modal did (latent learning)