Lecture 5

Question 1

What is stimulus substitution?

Answer 1

Conditioned response to the CS often resembles the unconditioned response elicited by the US

Question 2

What was a study looking at pigeons?

Answer 2

• Pigeon is either hungry or thirsty, red button = food, green = water, looked at the autoshaped response to the keylight, everytime it went to the shutter it was recorded and the force of the peck
• Keylight associated with food is pecked with open beak and open mouth
• Key light associated with water with closed beak
• Nature of conditioned response to CS reflect the nature of the unconditioned response = looks like stimulus sub = peck the CS (light) the same as the US (food/water)

Question 3

What is the first problem?

Answer 3

According to stimulus sub = nature of conditioned response to bell should only reflect what animals do to food BUT the conditioned response represents the properties of food, but the bell also = which isnt stimulus sub

Question 4

What was an experiment looking at problem 1?

Answer 4

• Conditioned stimulus is a wooden block, followed by food
• Had another rat in a box and a ppt rat would get food = do animals do same animal response to the wooden block and the rats = varying nature of conditioned stimulus
• When you pair the rat with ppt rat = shows lots of social contact with the other rat instead of biting it, no social contact to wooden block

Question 5

What is problem 2?

Answer 5

• Take a measure assume its measure the construct - if present, they have it, if absent, they do not = they may have the construct but they cant show it in their behaviour
• Different measures for conditioning provide the basis for drawing the opposite conclusions about associative strength
• Rescorla said V has an ordinal relationship with behaviour

Question 6

What was the study with sign tracking and goal tracking?

Answer 6

• Lever comes out to box, goes away and then food delivered into well, rat plays with lever (sign tracking - playing with sign - CS), other rat puts head into food well (goal-tracking)
• There are individual differences across rats in their tendency to do one or other of these responses
• Depending on measures used = show opposite associative strength if you ignore one type of tracking = must classify the rats into their tracking group and track their history with learning
• Goal tracking show most of their learning via goal tracking and vice versa with sign-tracking = just depends what the measure is

Question 7

What is the violation of ordinal assumption?

Answer 7

• Cannot decide if V is greater with rats differing with tracking
• Theory needed where relationship between V and different forms of conditioned behaviour is both specified and provides an analysis of the basis for individual differences in those behaviours

Question 8

What Is experiment on lick suppression?

Answer 8

• Diff groups of animals that can condition suppression = intensity of CS is changed from group to group
• Influences rate of learning AND asymptote (not the US)
• Rescorla says asymptote is same and dependent on US, but this exp shows Asymptote is dependent on CS

Question 9

What is HeiDI?

Answer 9

• Model for pavlovian learning and performance with reciprocal associations
• When unconditioned = CS activates some response, US also activates some response (different) but these can also overlap
• When conditioned, There is a reciprocal association between CS and US
• Reciprocal associations allow conditioning to result in changes in behaviours related to the properties of both the CS and the US
• Backward association is dependent on CS intensity, the US and CS determine the asymptote
• TO the extent animals perceive that CS is really intense = will show most of what they learn through Sign tracking or CS related behaviour and vice versa for US and goal tracking behaviour, if intensity where US is larger than CS, you see more goal tracking than sign tracking