Lecture 25 - Flashcards
Selective stimulus controls
Environments often complex - tendency to ignore redundant information even if relevant.
Pigeons trained to peck key
Alternating schedule of reinforcement
Circle with colour and shape enclosed e.g. when red and triangle food is given when button pecked whereas green circle has no positive consequences as it is the extinction stimulus
Pigeons shows clear discrimination between during training
2 pigeons are then taken and have the same compound stimuli, one shows selective stimulus control to colour and one shows selective stimulus control to shape
Each graph is depicting one pigeon
Natural categories or concepts
Can non-human animals form categories or concepts from complex stimuli?
Will make discriminations
Polymorphic stimuli = lots of features that contribute to their categorisation
Variety of experiments using a variety of concepts -
Humans vs no-humans\
Pigeons (various breeds) vs other birds.
Trees vs no-trees & Water vs no-water.
White oak leaves vs other leaves.
Some arguments that these sorts of natural concepts were “genetically pre-programmed” in a species such as the pigeon.
Herrnstein & DeVilliers (1980).
Can pigeons learn the concept “fish”?
Underwater scenes and some images had fish in it and some didn’t
Be careful as they can learn each image (learn each one as a stand alone stimulus) therefore keep adding new examples to each trial to prevent them from learning
Found it easy to discriminate stereotypical fish silhouette
Grouped a sea turtle and scuba diver as a fish - limited experience with seeing fish and underwater scenes hence the difficulty in differentiation of these things
Cognitive performance of non-human animals
Gives us a general understanding about behaviour, perception, and brain functioning in general.
Makes us consider what we think is special about human behaviour?
Advance stimulus control is often the gateway into trying to examine what other advanced cognitive abilities other animals might have in some way or another
e.g. pigeon taught to discriminate between Picasso during his cubist period and the impressionist Monet
Biological constraints on instrumental conditioning
The Misbehaviour of Organisms
Breland & Breland (1961) - using operant conditioning to train animals for advertising gimmicks.
Set up company to teach animals gimmicks for adverts - predominantly live performances
Wife and husband team
Paper described the problems with the conditioning
After conditioning to a specific response, behaviour “drifted” to examples of instinctive behaviour related to food gathering.
Importance of instinctive patterns, evolutionary history, and ecological niche for a complete understanding of behaviour.
Initially no problems, the more training the more problems
With enough training, the task they are being trained to do becomes associated with food so much that it is eliciting the same sort of instinctive behaviours as the food would cause
Breland & Breland (1961)
The Misbehaviour of Organisms
Breland & Breland (1961) - using operant conditioning to train animals for advertising gimmicks.
Set up company to teach animals gimmicks for adverts - predominantly live performances
Wife and husband team
Paper described the problems with the conditioning
After conditioning to a specific response, behaviour “drifted” to examples of instinctive behaviour related to food gathering.
Importance of instinctive patterns, evolutionary history, and ecological niche for a complete understanding of behaviour.
Initially no problems, the more training the more problems
With enough training, the task they are being trained to do becomes associated with food so much that it is eliciting the same sort of instinctive behaviours as the food would cause
Species-specific defense reactions (biological constraint)
Rats learn very easily to press lever for food.
Rats learn very easily to jump out of box, or over hurdle, to avoid electric shock.
However, it is extremely difficult to train rats to press lever to avoid shock?
Why? Fleeing and freezing dominant responses for rats in defensive situations.
Again, clash between instinct and operant. - there is a clash between what is instinctional and what you are trying to teach
Latent learning
Learning from experience when there appears no obvious reinforcement or punishment for the specific behaviour.
Tolman and Hoznik (1930). Rats experience maze without food. Once food introduced, their learning of the maze was much quicker than control groups.
Shows they were learning about max but did not have a good reason to learn until food was introduced
No food - the number of errors slowly and steadily decreases over the days
Food after day 11 - day after first introduction of food shows way less area
Tolman and Hoznik (1930).
Rats experience maze without food. Once food introduced, their learning of the maze was much quicker than control groups.
Shows they were learning about max but did not have a good reason to learn until food was introduced
No food - the number of errors slowly and steadily decreases over the days
Food after day 11 - day after first introduction of food shows way less area
