Lecture 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is learning?

A

Relatively long-lasting change in behaviour from experience

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2
Q

What is associative learning?

A

Occurs when change in behaviour results from the pairing of two+ events

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3
Q

What is an association?

A
  • Hypothetical link that allows activity in one entity in the conceptual nervous system to provoke activity in another entity e.g memory of face to memory/response of name
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4
Q

What are they types of associations in animals?

A
  • Pavlovian conditioning: there is a tone played and a delivery of food, animal behaves to the tone like it does to the food (animals salivate when Pavlov waled in - psychic salivation)
  • Instrumental conditioning: press lever and delivery of food - dependent on animals behaviour whereas Pavlovian is not
  • Only difference when food is delivered
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5
Q

Why do we use the associations?

A
  • Tools for analysing the associative learning in animals - not interested in the behaviour itself
  • Allows orderly changes in behaviour that provide ways of building an account of the conceptual nervous system
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6
Q

Why study the conceptual nervous system?

A
  • If we look at the brain we need the behavioural output also = helps understand the real nervous system which we know little about
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7
Q

Why study animals?

A
  • Wealth of information to aid understanding of learning
  • Animals allow humans to have a degree of control that is not present in people
  • Potential for synthesis across levels of analysis
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8
Q

What is the relevance to humans?

A
  • Underlying physical similarity e.g in brain
  • Confronted by similar problems in the world: food, mates, security
  • Convergence between theories of human/animal learning
  • Parallel effects observed in humans and other animals
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9
Q

What are contemporary procedures in studying animals?

A
  • Pigeon autoshaping: Conditioned stimulus is a keylight for a while, Unconditioned stimulus is food = presented, pigeon pecks food, and then will peck keylight without needing to (not controlled from, they are from pigeon catchers - dumber)
  • Appetitive conditioning in rats: bred for training, plays a tone and then food is delivered = when tone plays they approach food in anticipation
  • Aversive conditioning in rats: Presentation of tone, and then shock which is aversive = can control exactly when the rat experiences the shock = tend to freeze
  • Flavour aversion learning in rats: Rats avoid novel flavours, when they drink sucrose and get ill they reject sucrose. Illness can be induced by lithium chloride but this is given at a gap, they still associate it with the sucrose
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10
Q

What is learned during Pavlovian conditioning?

A
  • Conditioned stimulus activates itself in the sensory register via tone etc. which activates a memory of the CS = memory lets CS turn into US = leads to observed behaviour OR CS in memory turns into a response generator through a stimulus-response link.
  • Stimulus - Response: memory of stimulus associated with motor program for approaching site of food delivery
  • Stimulus - Stimulus: memory of stimulus associated with a memory of food: the approach motor program is activated through the memory of food being presented
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11
Q

How to discriminate between these associative structures?(S-R and S-S) (Study)

A
  • Experimental group: noise associated with food, food leads to illness, noise comes on and no food approached due to illness
  • Control: same but no link between food and illness, separate sessions between food and illness, they should still go over to the food when presented with the noise
    RESULTS
  • Animals in exp group are less likely to go over to the food compared to control over a number of sessions
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12
Q

What is further evidence that animals acquire S-S associations?

A
  • Experimental: Tone = food, Light = nothing, Tone = illness, Light = nothing = Less rats eat food
  • Control: tone: food, light = illness, tone = nothing, light = illness
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13
Q

What is sensory preconditioning? Direct evidence that animals acquire S-S associations?

A

1) Stage one: Sugar + Acid and Salt + Bitter
- Stage two: Acid = illness, Bitter = nothing
- Test: How much they drink of salt/sweet = drink significantly less sugar (makes them think of acid either because its aversive or linked to illness)
2) Stage 1: Banana + Salt and Almond + Sugar
3) Stage 2: Salt-free diet and injection of formalin to crave salt
4) Test: drink more banana than almond

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14
Q

What are associations subjected to?

A
  • S-S associations are subject to extinction
  • Compared exp and extinction group: both groups get salt and bitter then one only got bitter alone, then provided the craving of salt, then trying bitterness: only the exp condition drink more
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15
Q

What are contemporary procedures in instrumental conditioning?

A
  • Key pecking in pigeons
  • Lever or bar pressing in rats
  • Chain pulling in rats
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16
Q

What is learned in instrumental conditioning?

A
  • Stimulus- Response: memory of the sight of the level is assoaicted with motor program for pressing the lever (animal doesn’t know why its doing it just knows the stimulus = doesn’t know about the outcome of its actions)
  • Response-outcome: Motor program for pressing the lever becomes associated with the outcome or the reinforcer
17
Q

What was the study looking at outcome devaluation as a way of discriminating between S-R and R-O associative structures?

A
  • Stage 1: Lever press and followed by food, Can pull a chain and they get sucrose
  • Stage 2: Food followed by illness, and sucrose leads to nothing
  • Testing whether rats would pull lever or chain without food or sucrose once responses are learned
  • RESULTS: Chain is valued more than lever as paired with sucrose, some lever pulls mean some S-R learning, or illness might not have been so potent