Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is a stimulus?
A detectable change in the internal or external environment; conscious and/or pathological; addition or removal.
What are exteroceptive stimuli?
Shared with the people around us (e.g. temperature of room)
What are interoceptive stimuli?
Only felt by the individual (e.g. hunger); state of body/space
What are the different types of stimuli?
Appetitive, neutral and aversive. The distinction depends on the situation.
What is a response?
Quantifiable reaction to a stimulus
What is homeostasis and what is it related to in learning?
The tendency for an organism to maintain an internal equilibrium; a physiological response to the environment; fluctuation around a stable set point maintained by negative feedback.
What do anterior hypothalamus lesions in rats demonstrate?
They are unable to maintain homeostasis; in 5C chamber, baseline body temp reduced by 2C
How do rats in cold environment with anterior hypothalamus lesions vs those who do not have lesions react with lever/heat lamp?
Lesioned rats hold the lever, controlled don’t need to bc their bodies adjust to the temperature
What are some reflexive/homeostatic/autonomic behaviours?
Shivering to warm up, sweating to cool down
What is behaviour?
Generally a set of responses of an organism, usually in reaction to stimuli (predominantly somatic)
What are learned behaviours?
- Adapted to environment
- Flexible and open to modification
- Ex. jacket on when cold, scarf off when warm, fatty foods
What are instinctual behaviours?
Genetically programmed behaviours that occur under appropriate circumstances; no learning (ex. breastcrawl)
What do learned stimuli require?
Experience to become conditioned/learned (ex. Haggis)
Why are animal models useful?
Provide info about origins/mechanisms of human behaviour; NOT replicas (e.g. drug addiction)
- Every experience influences learning, and human’s learning history cannot be controlled
How is learning exemplified?
Change in behaviour
What is behaviourism?
Science that emphasizes analysis of behaviour based on antecedent (previously existing) stimuli and consequences.
- Consciousness/thought are irrelevant
- Built on observations of automaticity of behaviour
- Stimuli trigger response/behaviour
What is radical behaviourism?
Ignores everything not observable
What does ‘anthropomorphize’ mean?
Give human attributes to animals being tested
What was behaviour thought to be based on before the 1600s?
Volition/free will. We determine and guide our own fate. Emerges from conscious volition.
What did René Descartes find?
People do some things automatically (but still hung on to notion of free will)
What is Cartesian Dualism in general terms?
Combination of involuntary and voluntary behaviour.
Involuntary - automatic reactions to external stimuli (reflex)
Voluntary - conscious intent to act (capacity for thought only capable by humans)
What are the reasonable aspects of Cartesian Dualism?
1 - stimuli are perceived by sense organs
2 - Nerves relay info to brain
3 - Brain responds using nerve signals to initiate involuntary response (reflex)
What are the less reasonable aspects of Cartesian Dualism?
1 - Mind observes body through pineal gland
2 - Mind can signal body to perform voluntary actions (consciousness/mentalism)
- Sensory inputs and motor outputs used same nerves
- Nerves were hollow to allow movement of gasses (animal spirits) released by pineal gland
- Gasses caused muscles to swell and create movement
What is the pineal gland?
Endocrine gland that secretes melatonin, regulating circadian rhythms
What is Nativism?
- Mind-based theory
- Descartes believed mind connected to body through pineal gland
- Mind contains innate ideas (ex. God, self, basic geometric axioms like shortest distance)
What is Empiricism?
- John Locke
- All ideas are acquired directly/indirectly after birth
- Tabula rasa (blank slate)
- Simple sensations combined into more complex ideas by associations (ex. smell/touch of mother, words to pictures)
What is contiguity?
If 2 events repeatedly occur close together in space and time, they’ll become associated.
What did Descartes suggest about ‘free will’?
- Some human behaviour is involuntary
- Voluntary behaviour is initiated by the mind
- Mind operated w/out rules/order (how much free will do we have?)
What did Thomas Hobbes say about ‘free will’?
- Agreed w/ distinction b/n human voluntary/involuntary behaviour
- mind operates ‘lawfully’/predictably
- Hedonism - people do things to pursue pleasure/avoid pain
What is Hedonism?
People pursue pleasure and avoid pain (Thomas Hobbes)
How did Charles Darwin contribute to comparative cognition?
- Created continuity b/n human and non-human animals
- Mind is a product of evolution
- Suggested non-human animals have mental capacities (e.g. attention, memory, reasoning, imitation, curiosity)
How did George Romanes contribute to comparative cognition?
- Operational definition (how to measure) of intelligence
- Ability to learn to make new adjustments/modify old ones in accordance w/ result of its own experience
- Don’t try same way if it didn’t work
What is the Law of Effect and who came up with it?
- Edward Thorndike
- Learning happens by trial and error
- Behaviours leading to desirable outcomes are repeated
- Behaviours leading to undesirable outcomes are not repeated
- Hobbes’ notion of hedonism is extended
- foundations of operant conditioning
Who discovered that sensory inputs and motor outputs did not use the same nerves?
Charles Bell and Francois Magendie
- separate nerves
- Cut sensory input, motor output remains and vice-versa
Who discovered that animal spirits are not released by the pineal gland?
John Swammerdam
- Nerves can function independently from brain input
- Irritating a nerve can produce muscle contraction
Who discovered that animal spirits do not enlarge muscles for contraction?
Francis Glisson
- Gasses do not expand muscle size
- a contracted muscle has same volume as relaxed muscle
What did Ivan Sechenov discover about reflexes?
- Stimuli do not always elicit reflexes
- Sometimes a stimulus releases inhibition of response (vigour of a measured response will not reflect intensity of releasing stimulus)
What did Ivan Pavlov discover about reflexes?
- Not all reflexes are innate (new reflexes to stimuli can be learned through associations)
- Responses to stimuli can change as a result of experience (ex. dogs salivate when seeing lab assistant)
What is nervism?
All key physiological functions are governed by nervous system - the discovery of hormones damaged this theory a bit (as well as tripartite synapse)
What is the main concept of behavioural neuroscience?
The study of learning operates most thoroughly when conducted in conjunction with study of the nervous system
Does learning equal performance? Why/why not?
- No
- Performance is determined by factors in addition to learning (e.g. motivational state - salt when salt-deprived)
- Learning can happen without evidence of performance
Does learning equal maturation? Why/why not?
- No
- Behavioural patterns can shift with physical growth of body/nervous system (ex. not enough myelin)
What is the presumption of causality?
- Assume that manipulation causes the change
- Is change of behaviour due to learning rather than changes in motivation/sensory development/hormone fluctuation/fatigue/etc?
- Requires systematic manipulation to confirm
What is the General-Process Theory?
- Extrapolating the shared processes of learning across species and situations because they DO generalize
- Universal laws of associations that are investigated according to particular ethological needs of species (e.g. visual acuity, key peck/lever press)
- Salience of reinforcement does impact degree of response
What are psychological instincts?
- William James
- Psychology is a system of instincts
- Instincts can be overridden by experience and by each other (many are in conflict)
- Instincts = motivators of behaviour
- Behave in ways that promote survival
- Instincts = impulses from within organism that lead to behaviour
What are biological instincts?
- Kondrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen
- Instincts are behaviours
- they exist bc they have/had survival value
- ## Controlled by genes (not learned)
What is ethology?
Fixed/modal action pattern that occurs in response to certain stimuli
- stereotypical behaviours
- complex
- inborn
- exhibited by most members of a species
- basic unit of behaviour
What are appetitive instincts?
- Biological
- Searching behaviours
- Flexible, adapted to environment, subject to modification (learning)
- early components of behaviour sequence
- ex. pressing lever to get mate
What are consummatory instincts?
- Fixed patterns of responding to specific stimuli
- Rigid, insensitive to environment, stereotyped and independent from learning
- Fixed/modal action patterns
- End components of behaviour sequence
- ex. copulation of rats
How are biological instincts affected with a lesioned hypothalamus?
Consummatory instincts are affected (e.g. rats cannot copulate)
How are biological instincts affected with a lesioned basolateral amygdala?
Appetitive instincts are affected (e.g. rats cannot press lever to get mate)
What’s an example of a reflex (stimulus-response)?
Knee-jerk
- Stretch tendon/sensory receptors
- Excites motor neuron and interneuron in spinal cord
- Interneuron inhibits motor neuron to flexor muscles
- Contraction of extensor muscle, relaxation of flexor muscle
What are modal/fixed action patterns?
- Response sequences typical of a particular species
- i.e. rooting/sucking, net building, territory defence, imprinting
What are stimulus-evoked instincts and what is an example?
Newborn birds memorize shapes/calls of parents, but can show same behaviour with non-parental object (i.e. imprinting).
- Man allowed birds to imprint on him.
- Chicks imprint with computer-generated shapes (avoid different colours)
Why does imprinting happen in chicks?
They have 2 distinct visual pathways:
- Tectofugal (recognition of colours, shapes and motion of objects)
- Thalamofucal (visual learning)
These pathways work together for imprinting.
Why do babies elicit a longing to ‘cuddle’?
- Surge of activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to infant faces (not adult)
- Directly related to saliency of structural features of infant face
What can repeated stimulation trigger?
- Decrease in behaviour through habituation
- Increase in behaviour through sensitization
- Simplest forms of learning
What is habituation?
- Behaviour varies across repetitions
- Stimulus specific (same stimulus)
- Food-evoked responding (salivation decreases after a while)
How did the lemon/lime taste study exhibit habituation/dishabituation?
- Given lemon or lime which elicit salivation (habituation) (10 times)
- Dishabituating stimulus was opposite (1)
- Responses to habituating stimulus after dishabituation are restored to normal levels (didn’t last)
- With chocolate dishabituator (no salivation), still dishabituation
- Dishabituation does NOT require response elicitation itself
- Dishabituation also occurs with distraction
Does dishabituation need to elicit response itself?
No (ex. chocolate during lemon trials)
Does dishabituation occur as a result of distraction?
Yes (ex. video games)
Is distraction sufficient to prevent habituation?
Yes (ex. video games)
What’s an example of stimulus specificity in habituation?
Eat more turkey dinner bc same stimulus isn’t repeated like in pasta
What’s an example of stimulus attention in habituation?
When watching TV while eating, we eat more because we are distracted
How does complexity affect habituation?
More complex stimuli elicit an initial increase in attention and slower habituation
- Response to novelty is greater (more dishabitutation) when stimulus is complex
- Dishabituation obtained when original pattern is retested after complex, not simple, patterns
How is the acoustic startle response affected by habituation (novelty)?
- Rat jumps less with habituation
- New noise, dishabituation
How does delay affect habituation/dishabituation?
Startle response returns after 3 days without stimulus (i.e. dishabituation occurs)
How does frequency affect habituation/dishabituation?
The larger the interstimulus interval, less habituation (i.e. more startle response)
When is sensitization likely to occur?
Fear-potentiated startle
- Ex. those who think they are going to get a shock show activity in sympathetic NS, but less when there is no threat
- Ex. rat has greater fear when light is paired with shock
Drug-evoked locomotor sensitization
- locomotor activity increases with each cocaine injection
What is the Dual-Process Theory?
One underlying neural process produces decreases in responsiveness, and a second underlying neural process produces increases in responsiveness
In what system is habituation assumed to occur?
- Stimulus-response system
- shortest neural path
- each presentation activates S-R system and causes buildup of habituation (ex. knee-jerk)
In what system is sensitization assumed to occur?
- State system (state of organism/circuit)
- Parts of NS determining general level of arousal
- Ex. caffeine
When are the S-R system and the state system activated?
S-R System - every eliciting stimulus State System - only arousing events - Ex. quieter background noise = habituation, louder noise = sensitization
What produces the sensitization/habituation effects?
Net effect of combining sensitization/habituation processes is what produces observed effects
- Effects =/= Processes
How does the sea slug exhibit sensitization/habituation?
- Repeatedly applying touch to mantle/siphon results in habituation of gill withdrawal reflex
- Stimulus specific - i.e. mantle has no effect on siphon pathway
- Tail shock enhances gill withdrawal through sensitization
- Activation of state system
- Sensitization involves facilitatory interneurons releasing serotonin to prolong AP (inactivation of K+ channels)
How is habituation related to neurotransmitters?
- Habituation is caused by decrease in neurotransmitters from sensory neuron
- Reduction of vesicle pool
- Inactivation of calcium channels (by calcium itself)
How does sensitization relate to neurotransmitters?
- More Ca2+
- More vesicles in sensory neuron
- 5 shocks = growth of new synapses in sensory neuron
What is classical/pavlovian/associative conditioning based on?
Learning the orderly sequence of events in the world and acting in anticipation of that knowledge
What did Aristotle contribute to associations?
3 Principles for establishing associations
- Contiguity (proven)
- Similarity (true to some extent)
- Contrast (no evidence)
What is contiguity?
If 2 events repeatedly occur together in space/time, they will become linked/associated
What is similarity?
Some things will become associated if they are similar (i.e. both red)
What is contrast?
Some things will become associated if there are some strikingly contrasting features (NOT TRUE)
Are habituation/sensitization able to predict outcomes?
- Limited
- Knowledge of cause/effect relationships is necessary
What is Pavlov’s dog experiment?
Food elicits salivation in dogs, and when a tuning fork is sounded at each feeding, the two stimuli become paired and the tuning fork elicits salivation
What is the conditional stimulus?
- Learned
- Effectiveness to elicit response depends on pairing it with US
- E.g. tuning fork
What is the unconditional stimulus?
- Effectiveness to elicit response does not depend on any prior training
- E.g. food
What is the conditional response?
- Elicited by conditional stimulus (does not need to be the same as UR)
What is the unconditional response?
- Elicited by unconditional stimulus (i.e. salivation)
How does a CS become linked with a US?
CS is presented before US, terminated at intro of US. After multiple trainings, CS evokes response
What did Edwin Twitmyer discover?
Human reflexes (knee jerk) can be conditioned (BEFORE PAVLOV)
- Paired hammer with bell
- Repeated pairing = kick with bell ringing
Describe eye blink conditioning
US - puff of air to eye CS - Tone UR - Eye blink CR - eye blink - Equate experience with stimuli (same # of puffs), just different timing
Describe fear conditioning
US - Foot shock CS - Light/tone/context UR - Jumping CR - Freezing - UR =/= CR - Fear with stimulus, not context
Describe place conditioning
US - Drug/novelty
CS - Environmental context
UR - Depends on drug effect/play
CR - Approach/avoidance
- Need to be distinguishable
Pre Test Phase: access to both compartments
Place Conditioning: Alternate b/n US and no-US compartment pairings
Test of Preference: Access to both compartments and measure time spent
- Depends on salience and developmental dependence
Describe taste conditioning
US - Illness
CS - Flavour
UR - Nausea/negative effect
CR - Nausea/negative effect
- Taste aversion = Taste of food (CS) with illness (US)
- Selective for novel tastes
- Ex. LiCl paired with novel food in rats = eats less
What is Conditioned Place Preference?
Pairing of context with US evokes approach response to CS
What is Conditioned Place Aversion/Avoidance?
Pairing of context with US evoked an avoidance response to CS
What is latent inhibition?
CS preexposure slows/prevents association with US (schizophrenia = impaired latent inhibition)
What is sign tracking?
Approach behaviour to ‘sign’ (CS)
What is goal tracking?
Approach behaviour to ‘goal’ (US)
When pigeons are placed in a long box, do they sign-track or goal-track?
- Sign-track
- Miss food, still sign-track
When rats are presented food and a lever (CS), do they sign-track or goal-track? Why?
- 1/3 sign track
- 1/3 goal track
- Due to different dopamine signalling phenotypes
What is a conditioning trial?
Each configuration of the CS and US
In classical conditioning, is a single trial or multiple trials used?
- Typically multiple trials (appetitive conditioning)
- One-trial fear conditioning and taste aversion are possible (salient enough stimuli)
What is an intertrial interval?
End of US to start of CS
What is an interstimulus interval?
Start of CS to start of US
What is short-delayed conditioning?
- CS starts trial
- US presented after brief delay
- CS may continue or terminate when US begins
What is trace conditioning?
- US presented some time after CS ends
- Gap = trace interval
What is long-delayed conditioning?
- US delayed much longer (hours) (long CS)
- No trace interval
- Latent inhibition
- How much exposure prevents association?
What is simultaneous conditioning?
- Contiguity
- CS and US at same time, same duration
- Weaker conditioning
- Less predictability
What is backward conditioning?
- US occurs shortly before CS
- Tends to cause inhibitory conditioning
- CS predicts no US
- ISI is reversed
What should the relative timing of the CS/US look like for strong conditioning?
- CS should precede US
- Remain on until US occurs
How do you test if classical conditioning has worked?
- Present CS alone to assess behaviour
- Test for:
- > Magnitude of CR
- > Probability of CS eliciting CR
- > Latency of CR after CS (one association = quicker response)
What is pseudoconditioning?
- Sometimes a behaviour can be elicited by seemingly innocuous stimulus w/out prior association
- Controls needed to expose animal to all CS presentations and all US presentations
- Occasionally animal will create association that doesn’t exist
- False conditioning
What is truly random control?
A procedure that randomly presents all CS and US presentations
What is explicitly unpaired control?
CS and US are presented far enough apart to prevent association
- more effective as control
- most common
- may result in formation of conditioned inhibitor bc US never follows CS
What is conditioned excitation?
CS becomes an excitor of behaviour (CS+)
What is a conditioned inhibitor?
Indicates/signals absence of US
What is required for conditioned inhibition?
There needs to be an excitatory context/background for US in order for conditioned inhibitor to acquire meaning
- CS 2 becomes an inhibitor of behaviour (CS-) rather than neutral
What is differential inhibition?
CS 1 -> US CS 2 -> no US - Excitatory conditioning CS1 becomes CS+ - Inhibitory conditioning CS2 presented with no US CS2 becomes CS- - A and B-type trials are intermixed, CS- will gradually acquire inhibitory properties
What is conditioned inhibition?
CS 1 -> US CS 1 + CS 2 -> no US - Excitatory conditioning CS1 becomes CS+ - Inhibitory conditioning CS1 and CS2 co-presented with no US CS2 becomes CS- - A and B-type trials are intermixed
What is negative CS-US contingency?
CS 2 -> no US
- Explicit unpairing of CS/US
- CS begins to predict absence of US
- Excitatory context/background is environment in which US is experienced
- Truly random control = occasional contiguity
What are the 2 tests of conditioned inhibition?
1 - Summation
2 - Retardation-of-acquisition
Why are both tests of conditioned inhibition necessary?
- Summation alone could be result of too much attention paid to CS-, diverting attention away from CS+
- Retardation alone could be result of too little attention paid to CS-, previously unreinforced in first stage of training (habituation)
- Eliminates alternative explanations
What is ‘Feature Negative’ Conditioned Inhibition? What is an example?
- CS will not be followed by US (similar to conditioned inhibition)
- Nicotine trials: Light CS, no US
- Saline trials: Light CS, Sucrose US
- Measure # of times rat goal-tracks
- Rats goal-track during CS only in non-nicotine sessions, as nicotine indicates that CS will not be followed by US
What is the summation test of conditioned inhibition?
Present CS2 along with CS3 (a CS+) = CR attenuated
- inhibition transfers with CS2
What is the retardation-of-acquisition test?
CS2 -> US = CR will develop slowly
- slower acquisition of response = better CS-
What does the retardation-of-acquisition test reveal about the nicotine conditioned inhibition trials?
- Rats trained with nicotine as negative feature, or chlordiazepoxide (Control)
- Rats all then switched to excitatory nicotine CS conditioning w/ sucrose
- Acquisition with nicotine was slower than with control
What does the summation test reveal about the nicotine conditioned inhibition trials?
- Rats trained with nicotine as negative feature, or pseudoconditioning with nicotine (control)
- All rats then switched to excitatory white noise CS conditioning
- Then injected with nothing, nicotine or drug control
- Feature Negative showed lower rates of seeking (combination reduced tracking)
What is attenuation?
Decreased response (habituation)
What is potentiation?
Increased response (sensitization)
What is an example of a stimulus that can be a CS or a US?
- Sucrose
- Lever CS with Sucrose US
- Sucrose CS with LiCl-inducd nausea (avoidance)
- Depends on environment
What is an example of how novelty affects classical conditioning (CS Preexposure)?
- CS-Preexposure effect
- Rats trained to lever press for sucrose
- 2 groups received intermittent noise CS presentations during sucrose-seeking
- One group had no CS exposure
- Conditioning with noise CS - shock US
- Those with no previous experience of the CS learned the association fastest
What is a suppression ratio?
CS/(CS+preCS)
Lower than 0.5, reduction of behaviour so CS evokes a change
What is the US-Preexposure effect?
- Rats given bacon or chocolate pellets
- Autoshaping (10s lever CS followed by US)
- Measure lever pressing
- Lever pressing developed more readily for CS associated with novel food
- Learning occurs more slowly with familiar stimulus
What is the effect of US salience on conditioning?
- Trained to press lever for food
- Auditory CS
- Pretest with CS alone to confirm lack of response
- 4 CS presentations terminated with different voltages of footshock
- Highest voltages acquired CR more readily than lowest voltages
- Salience of US affects rate of acquisition
What is the effect of US salience on extinction?
- Extinction = CS fades with trials
- CS presented alone until no CR
- Salience-specific rates of extinction
- Lower voltages extinct more readily
How is CS intensity related to conditioning?
- Rats lever press for food
- 3 levels of auditory CS
- 4 CS presentations terminated with footshock
- Strong CS group acquired CR most rapidly
- Weak CS group acquired CER slower
How is CS/US Relevance seen in conditioning?
- Taste/audiovisual stimulation with shock/sickness and measured effects on drinking
- Shock learn stronger aversion to audiovisual CS than flavour
- Illness paired with food and injury paired with audiovisual clues (‘belongingness’)
What is higher order conditioning?
CR can transfer across stimuli First-order CS = Tone Tone ----> Food - Tone induces salivation Second-order CS = Light Light ----> Tone - Light induces salivation
What is the difference between higher order conditioning and conditioned inhibition?
Depends on how stimuli are presented
- 2nd order conditioning is sequential (Phase 1, Phase 2)
- Conditioned inhibition is intermixed trials of each
What is sensory preconditioning?
Sensory preconditioning = Tone Light (creates audiovisual stimulus)
Conditioning =
Tone —-> Food
Test = Tone induces salivation as well as light
What is S-R Learning?
- Stimulus-Response
- Formation of association b/n CS and response
- CS presentation directly elicits appropriate response
What is S-S Learning?
- Stimulus-Stimulus
- Formation of association b/n two stimuli
- CS presentation elicits representation of US which triggers response
What happens when the S-S association is dominating behaviour and there is devaluation of the US?
- CR evoked by CS is reduced
- Ex. too full or sick, reduces appetitive value of food
- Train association b/c CS and US have to elicit response
- Goal-directed
What happens when S-R association dominates behaviour and there is devaluation of the US?
- CR evoked by CS is not reduced
- Does not need to pass through US
- Dorsal = motor activation
What is the conditioned compensatory/preparatory response? What are some examples?
- Learning to respond to CS helps organism adapt in anticipation to changes brought by US
- US is biological event
- Physiological mechanisms to compensate (i.e. homeostasis)
- Associated stimuli evoke conditioned preparation for impending stimulus
- Ex. salivation in Pavlov’s dogs, drug dependence, etc.
What is the opponent process model?
Response is net effect of 2 responses
- sum of a and b process
- a = stimuli
- b = homeostasis
How does the conditioned compensatory/preparatory response change with many stimulations?
- Stimulus stays the same
- Response is faster and stronger
- Increased CR to prepare
- Decreased manifest response (net change)
- Ex. drug tolerance is built up with repeated consumption
What are some factors that may contribute to a conditioned compensatory/preparatory response?
- Environment
- Paraphernalia
- People
- All conditioned stimuli
What is cue reactivity in regards to heroin consumption?
CS
- stimuli that elicit craving/withdrawal symptoms
CR
- Autonomic arousal (no control over)
- Motivational arousal (desire for drugs, mood changes)
- Behavioural arousal (drug seeking)
- Neural activation (limbic system )
What happens when cocaine users are introduced to drug-associated CSs?
- Increased HR (same direction as UR)
- Decrease in skin temp (opposite to UR), body anticipates temperature increase
What happened when heroin-experienced rats were injected with heroin in a different context?
- 2x mortality in those with new context than similar context
- Those with no previous heroin use exhibited even greater levels of mortality
- Cue change increased drug sensitivity
- Cues help produce tolerance
What is the clinical importance of cue changes?
- Overdose on morphine with context change
What is the Rescorla-Wagner Model?
- mathematical expression of surprise
- learning will occur only when subject is surprised (what happens is different than expected)
- acquisition of associative learning is mapped pretty well
- qualitative predictions
What does a blocking experiment (pairing of two CSs with US after US has been paired with one CS has no CR) tell us about conditioning?
- Conditioning is not an automatic result of CS-US pairings
- For conditioning to occur, CS must be informative and US surprising (second CS is not providing new info)
What were Leon Kamin’s contributions to conditioning?
- CS/US Salience
- Blocking
What is V in the Rescorla-Wagner Model?
- Associative strength
- Change in V diminishes as Vmax is reached
- Acquisition/learning curves
What can learning curves differ in terms of?
1 - Vmax
2 - Rate of acquisition (steepness)
What is k/alpha-beta in learning curves?
Magnitude of the US and CS
How does salience affect learning curves?
More salient, faster the acquisition (steep curve)
What happens when two CSs are used in the R-W model?
- association/expectation at beginning of trial would be sum of strengths of each stimuli
What is the V of the blocking group at the end of Phase 1 in the R-W model?
VL = 1, or Vmax (because of extensive L conditioning)
When the light and tone are presented in combination on trial one of Phase 2, what happens (during blocking, according to R-W model)?
- V = VL + VT = Vmax
What is the amount of conditioning to T in blocking group after conditioning with compound stimulus?
- 0, because nothing novel happened, the curve was already at maximal strength
What does (lamda-V) mean in the R-W model?
- level of US surprise or difference b/n what occurs and what was predicted
What is prediction error?
When the brain encodes predictions and finds errors
What happens to dopamine levels when monkeys receive fruit juice?
Dopamine increases
What happens to dopamine firing when fruit juice is paired with a light stimulus?
- there is a gradual shift of DA signal at time of reward to predictive CS association
- Increase in DA with predictor, along with a decrease in DA with reward
- When the reward is not presented, there is a dip in DA levels
What is prediction error dependent on?
- Time
- If the timing is not consistent, associability drops
- Surprising changes are encoded in DA signals
What are nonsense syllables?
- 3-letter combinations that do not have any meaning
- Measured ability to remember
- Used by Hermann Ebbinghaus
What is nervism?
- Pavlov
- All key physiological functions are governed by nervous system
What is fatigue?
Physical exertion results in gradual reduction in vigor of response because individual becomes tired
What is maturation?
- occurs in absence of training/practice
- a change in behaviour caused by physical/physiological development of organism in absence of experience with particular environmental events
How is learning investigated?
- Only with experimental methods
- Experimentally vary presence vs absence of training experience
What is performance?
An organism’s activities at a particular time
What does a reflex involve?
2 closely related events: eliciting stimulus and corresponding response
What is a sensory/afferent neuron?
Transmits sensory message to spinal cord
What is a motor/efferent neuron?
Activates muscles involved in reflex response
What is an interneuron?
Impulses from sensory to motor neuron are relayed through interneuron
What is the reflex arc?
Afferent neuron, interneuron, and efferent neuron
What is the respiratory occlusion reflex?
Stimulated by reduction of air flow to baby - baby pulls head back, move hands in face-wiping motion, cries.
What’s a sign/releasing stimulus?
Few essential features for pecking on part of chicks
- specific feature of an object/animal that elicits modal action pattern
What is a supernormal stimulus?
Exaggerated sign stimulus
- abnormally large modal action pattern
What is the foraging response sequence (animals obtaining food)?
- General search mode
- Focal search mode
- Food handling and ingestion mode
What is spontaneous recovery?
- Trials administered again after habituation
What is sensory adaptation?
Sense organs become disabled (NOT habituation)
What is drug tolerance?
Habituation of primary drug reaction; decline of effectiveness with repeated exposures
What is object learning?
Association of one feature of an object with another (i.e. dog associates visual features of sand with orosensory features)
What is conditioned suppression?
Suppression of ongoing behaviour
What is lick-suppression procedure?
If fear CS is presented, water-deprived rats suppress licking behaviour, and take longer to make # of licks
What role does the hippocampus play in learning?
Important role in spatial learning, trace conditioning, episodic memory
What role does the cerebellum play in learning?
Motor coordination and motor learning
What are bidirectional response systems?
- change in opposite direction from baseline (e.g. heart rate, respiration, etc_
What is autoshaping?
Same as sign tracking
What is conditioned analgesia?
Diminution of UR (aversive conditioning)
- CS elicits physiological processes that serve to counteract effects of US
What is conditioned reproduction and fertility?
Changes in responding to US in appetitive conditioning situations
What role does the amygdala play in conditioning?
- Limbic system
- emotional conditioning
- regulating fear-related behaviours/attention
What is the periaqueductal gray (PAG)?
Plays role in regulating fear-related behaviour (e.g. freezing) and pain
What is the relative-waiting-time hypothesis?
Comparison is between how long one has to wait for US during CS vs how long one has to wait for US during intertrial interval
- When US waiting time during CS is shorter, I/T Ratio is high (CS is highly informative, high levels of responding)
What is the comparator hypothesis?
Conditioned responding depends on not only what happens during CS but what happens in other aspects of experimental situation
