Lecture 1 - Classical conditioning: theory, applications to behaviour and treatments Flashcards
What are the two main types of learning?
Behaviour changing because of stimulus presentations - Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning
Behaviour changes because of stimulus-response contingencies - Operant conditioning
What is Habituation?
The repeated presentation of a stimulus which leads to a reduction in the unconditioned response
What is the benefit of habituation?
We can zone out any unimportant noise or other sensory input and thus free ourselves from distraction
What is the drawback of habituation?
We may become too accustomed to the stimuli and miss something important - failure to respond for survival
Study of habituation being involved in stopping liking something - Epstein et al. (1992)
- Measures salivation in response to the taste of either lemon or lime juice
- On each trial, subjects rated how much they liked the taste
- Salivation increased from trial 1 to 2, but decreased thereafter
- As the taste stimulus was repeated 10 times, it becomes less effective in eliciting salivation and hedonic responses
- Similar process involved in drug tolerance
Habituation can be involved with processes of…
- Stress (increased tolerance)
- Pain (increased tolerance)
- Eating (getting used to flavours)
- Drug use (tolerance)
- Fear (desensitisation)
What is the process of classical conditioning?
- Unconditioned stimulus produces an unconditioned response
- Neutral stimulus produces no conditioned response
- Unconditioned stimulus paired with the neutral stimulus produces the unconditioned response
- The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus and produces the conditioned response
What is discrimination?
The ability to discriminate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli / the ability to discriminate between two different stimuli of any kind
What is the discriminative stimuli in Pavlovian (classical) discrimination training?
Refers to a conditioned stimulus that is associated either with the appearance of the unconditioned stimulus or with its absence
What is contingency awareness?
An awareness of the pairing between two stimuli - the pairing creates an expectancy
How does extinction occur in classical conditioning?
- For the conditioning to persist, US must be presented with the CS occasionally
- If this does not occur the conditioned response will cease
- The CS returns to neutral and the CR is extinguished
Explain how extinction occurs during exposure therapy
The more the individual is exposed to the stimulus producing the fear, the less fear they face as they become more used to the stimulus, thus causing an extinction of fear
What is spontaneous recovery in extinction?
After a rest period, the conditioned response will occur again when the conditioned stimulus is present, but if the US is not presented then the CR will extinguish quicker than it did the first time around
Fear definition according to the DSM-5
An emotional response to real or perceived imminent threat
Anxiety definition according to the DSM-5
Anticipation of a future event
How is anxiety adaptive?
Increased chances of survival
How is anxiety maladaptive?
If it is excessive and persistent - less of a need for fight or flight in the modern world as no predators etc but people still have anxiety
What is fear generalisation?
When a fear response to a particular stimulus transfers to another stimulus
How is fear generalisation adaptive?
Allows organism to rapidly respond to novel stimuli related in some way to a previously learned stimulus.
How is fear generalisation maladaptive?
If it is a non-threatening stimuli perceived as a threat
How does fear generalisation occur?
The conditioned stimulus (a car) is paired with the unconditioned stimulus (expecting a crash) and creates fear as the memory representation of the unconditioned stimulus. Then, stimuli similar to the conditioned stimuli (e.g., trains, planes, etc) produce a conditioned response (sense of current threat)
What occurred in the little Albert study (Watson 1920)?
- A rat was paired with a loud noise which multiple times which produced a fear response to just the sight of the rat
This fear was generalised to other fluffy objects such as a dog, rabbit, and even Watson’s hair as little Albert associated these with the rat
Evaluation of Watson (1920)
- Unethical - both procedure and outcomes
- Lacks experimental control
- Poor population validity
- Evidence that a lot of conditioning trials were needed and outcomes weak
Overgeneralisation - Dunsmoor et al. (2009)
- Ambiguous faces paired with electric shock
- Neutral faces unreinforced
- DV = skin conductance response
- Greatest generalisation to most fear-intense faces, not to most perceptually similar
