Midterm 1: Unit 1-3 Flashcards
Rene Descartes Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: mind-body dualism
Mind: controls voluntary actions and only in humans (decide on dinner)
Body: controls involuntary/reflexive actions (sneeze)
Nativism (Descartes)
our tendencies are inborn (prepacked with innate ideas)
Mentalism (Descartes)
concerned with the content and workings of the mind
Reflexology (Descartes)
concerned with the mechanism of reflexive behaviour
John Locke Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: Empiricism (knowledge acquired through experiences &tendecnies learned)
- disagrees with Descartes
- someone’s worth is not predetermined at birth
- we can investigate how experiences change/shape us
Thomas Hobbes Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: Hedonism (seek pleasure and avoid pain)
- says voluntary actions are controlled by hedonism
Thomas Brown Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: association between two stimuli depended on the intensity of those stimuli and the frequency at which they occurred together
Aristotle Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: 3 principles of association (contiguity, similarity and contrast)
Hermann Ebbinghaus Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: Nonsense syllables for association, memory and forgetting
- father of modern memory research
- was his own participant in his study
I.M. Sechenov Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: stimuli do not always directly elicit reflex responses but may instead release response from being inhibited therefore a very faint stimulus could produce a large response
Charles Darwin Theory and Significance to Psychology
Theory: characterize the evolution of both physical traits and psychological abilities
- believed the human mind is also a product of evolution
- natural selection (ability to learn = survival)
Ivan Pavlov
Theory: new reflexes to stimuli can be established through association (dog and digestive reflexes)
- classical conditioning
True or False: reflexes are all innate
False! They can be learned
George Romanes’ Definition of Intelligence
an organism’s ability to adapt to the environment (ability to learn)
Pavlov’s Goal
examine the nervous system and how changes in the nervous system allowed animals to change reflexive behaviour
Define Learning
enduring change in the mechanisms of behaviour involving specific stimuli and/or responses that results from prior experience with those or similar stimuli and responses
Define Performance
refers to all of the actions of an organism at a particular time
**a change in performance cannot be automatically considered to reflect learning
Other sources of behaviour changes
fatigue, maturation and physiological motivation (hunger/thirst)
Maturation
the biological processes involved in an organism’s becoming functional or fully developed
Learning and the 3 levels of analysis
- the behavioural, with a focus on the whole organism
- the neural system or network, with a focus on neural circuits and neurotransmitters
- the molecular, cellular and genetic, with a focus on neurons and synapses
Methodological Aspects of the Study of Learning
- use of experimental methods
2. the general-process approach
Learning as an experimental science
Goal: identify how experience produces lasting changes in behaviour
- behaviour is observed with or without a training procedure, allowing the experimenter to determine if the training procedure produces a behavioural change
- We compare those who receive the training procedure with those who do not (the control group)
A resting neuron has…
- sodium outside (+)
- potassium inside (-)
- 70 mV
How is an action potential triggered?
- sodium ions rush in to depolarize the cell (becomes more positive) = excitatory response and repolarization kicks in
True or false: Experience can change how a neuron operates
True
What happens when an action potential meets the synapse?
axon channels permeable to calcium (Ca++) open
- causes the neurotransmitter containing vesicles to move to the cell membrane and release the neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft
What is the receptor contributing to nearly every instance of learning discussed in the textbook?
N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)
Methodological implications of the general-process approach
general rules of learning may be discovered by studying any species or response system that exhibits learning
What is Classical Conditioning?
process of learning an association between 2 stimuli
Founder of Classical Conditioning?
Ivan Pavlov (1904)
E. B. Twitmyer and his findings
conducted classical conditioning experiments with knee jerk reflexes (bell and hit patellar tendon)
Psychic secretions
the stomach secretions elicited by food-related stimuli, resulting from the expectation or thought of food
Discoveries of Vul’fson and Snarskii
focusing on the salivary glands
- noticed that different substances elicited different amounts of saliva from dogs
Orosensory stimuli
distinctive texture and taste sensations in the mouth
Objective learning
the association of one feature of an object with another (eg. visual features of sand elicit salivation)
True or false:
To study the mechanisms of association learning we have to be able to manipulate the stimuli independently (eg. sight of sand separated from the causal stimuli of sand in the mouth)
CS
conditioned stimuli (ex: the sound of the metronome)
US
unconditioned stimuli (dog food)
CR
conditioned response (salivation to the sound of the metronome)
UR
unconditioned response (salivation to food alone)
Fear/adverse conditioning
the US used is an aversive (unpleasant) event (eg.
electric shock, odour)
True or false: Fear/adverse conditioning is a mechanism of evolution?
True! Impacts our survival
Briefly describe the Little Albert Experiment
Watson and Rayner paired white rat with a loud bang and he then feared not only white rats but other furry white animals (generalizing)
Fear conditioning and rats freezing
signal paired with a brief electric shock, with conditioning, this signal comes to elicit freezing behaviour (white noise was the CS, and then they got a mild foot shock; by trial three, the rats froze almost 70% of the time)
Purpose of rats freezing experiment
investigating whether freezing behaviour in rats
is adaptive to a threat, as predators tend to respond to movement
Define freezing in this instance
immobility of the body (except for breathing) and the absence of movement of the whiskers associated with sniffing
Electric shock and fear conditioning
the aversive US in these studies is a brief electric shock delivered through a metal grid floor, CS may be a discrete stimulus (like a tone or a light) or the contextual cues of the place where the aversive stimulus is encountered
Two other indirect measures of fear-induced immobility in fear conditioning
both involve suppression of ongoing behaviour called conditioned suppression procedures
- licking suppression
- lever experiment
Licking suppression procedure
- rats and mice in these experiments are slightly water-deprived and therefore lick readily when placed in an experimental chamber
- a fear CS (e.g., tone) is presented, the rats licking behaviour is suppressed, and they take longer to make a specified number of licks
Lever experiment
- rats are first trained to press a response lever for a food reward in a small experimental chamber
- fear conditioning is conducted by pairing a tone or light with a brief shock
- As the participants acquire the conditioned fear, they come to suppress their lever pressing during the CS
Eyeblink conditioning: aversive conditioning (rabbits)
rabbits work best since they remain still for longer & don’t blink that much
*Gormezano developed this for rabbits
How eyeblink conditioning works
- air puff (US) is delivered to the rabbit’s eye and it blinks reflexively (UR)
- a tone (CS) is then paired with that air puff, the rabbit will eventually blink to the presentation of the tone (CR), in addition to the air puff
What else can eyeblink be used to study?
- problems in the development
- aging
- Alzheimer’s disease
- fetal alcohol syndrome
Eyeblink conditioning in five-month-old infants
CS tone and US puff of air to infants eye; unpaired
infants (control group) got the same # CS/US
presentations but they were spaced 8 seconds apart;
*shows classical conditioning needs to have a pairing of the CS and US
*shows learning may not always be immediately observed
Graduate students in blinking studies
used the CS tone, but paired with US slap in the face; after many presentations of the CS with the US, his participants began to show the blink response
Define the Engram
the biological memory
True or false: Removal of the hippocampus does not affect the acquisition or retention of eyeblink conditioning
True
What part of the brain is central to eyeblink conditioning?
cerebellum & its afferent and efferent nerves
True or false: CS input travels to the pontine nucleus
True
True or false: Mossy fibres from the pontine nucleus carry the signal to the cerebellum
True
True or false: The neural signal elicited by US presentation is carried to the cerebellum by climbing fibres
True
True or false: Motor output is mediated by projections from the interpositus nucleus to the red nucleus and from there to cranial motor nerves
True
True or false: trace conditioning which has a time delay between CS and US presentations are dependent upon the hippocampus
True
Sign tracking (autoshaping)
is the tendency to approach and make contact with a positive reinforcer such as food (eg. pigeons pecking at dish)
Long box autoshaping w Pigeons
- pigeons received a brief illumination of a plastic disk just before they were presented with food in a food dish
- the pigeons started to instead peck at the disk when it was illuminated, them pecking at the disk had no impact on whether the food was delivered
- *researchers termed this phenomenon sign tracking because they were tracking signals for food
Burns and Domjan (2000) extended this“long-box” procedure in studies of sexual conditioning
a positive reinforcer is now the availability of partner to populate with; CS was a wooden block on one end of the chamber lowered from the ceiling for 30 sec before
female was presented on the other side of
the box;
What does the variability/individual differences of sign tracking in species show…
it is associated with the degree of impulsivity and how vulnerable these animals are to drugs of abuse
Goal tracking
conditioned behaviour that tracks the goal object (eg. food); individual differences in sign/goal tracking have implications in drug reward/dependence research
Rats and Goal Tracking
investigated in rats (CS lever presentation, US food in food cup), show that they could either be sign tracking (approach CS, nibble it), or goal tracking (approach
food cup when CS was presented); 1/3 typically sign trackers, 1/3 goal trackers
Conditioned taste aversion
avoid food if it made you sick before and if you try to eat it makes you feel ill (sensory aspects of food are CS and consequences of eating are the US’s)
Is conditioned taste aversion a form of evaluative conditioning?
Yes, our evaluation (or liking) of a stimulus is changed due to its association with something that we already like or dislike (eg. Advertisers with celebrities)
True or false: Taste aversions can occur through one single trial
True, doesn’t need to be repeated
*one paring of novel flavour/illness
Long-delay learning and taste aversion
can occur even if the food is not immediately associated
with the illness
Taste aversion and cancer patients
Understanding how we learn to select/avoid certain foods is important in research for cancer patients who lose their appetites (eg. chemo-induced taste aversions)
- Eileen Burnstein shows ice cream eaten before and after eating novel flavour
5 Common Pavlovian Conditioning Procedures
- short-delayed conditioning
- trace conditioning
- long-delayed conditioning
- simultaneous conditioning
- backward conditioning
Excitatory Pavlovian Conditioning
organisms learn a relationship between a CS and US Result: the CS comes to elicit a certain response (salivation)
Conditioning Trial
presentation of a CS with the US
Intertrial Interval
the time between the end of a conditioning trial and the beginning of the next trial; typically 2-3 minutes
Interstimulus Interval
the time between the presentation of the CS to the beginning of the US; typically a few seconds
Acquisition
the process of developing and strengthening a conditioned response through repeated CS-US pairings
How quickly acquisition proceeds is
reliant on…
Small adjustments in how the CS is paired with the US; differences in the timing of presentation can impact response
Short-Delayed Conditioning
CS tone is still on while the US is presented (ex: a bell begins to ring and continues to ring until the food is presented)
Trace Conditioning
the CS tone ends before the US shock is delivered; CS before the US, no overlap
Trace interval
the gap in time between the offset of the CS and onset of the US
* how long that trace interval is can impact the strength of the conditioning
Long-Delayed Conditioning
The US is delayed much longer, typically 500+ minutes; CS lasts until the US begins; does not have trace interval
Simultaneous Conditioning
CS and US presented at the same time
Backward Conditioning
US is presented before the CS (least effective)
*can then be taken as a safety signal (eg. shock has ended once they hear the tone)
Example of backwards conditioning
the US (food) is presented to a dog before the NS (a bell). Therefore, the dog does not associate the bell with food and the NS will not become a CS and cause salivation on its own
Temporal coding hypothesis
assumes that good contiguity (i.e., temporal proximity) is sufficient for the formation of an association, and the temporal information that is acquired during training is presumed to play a critical role in determining the nature, magnitude, and timing of the observed conditioned response (ex: blocking, second-order conditioning, and other paradigms)
Which conditioning method is the best?
It is subjective to the goal of the conditioning. Each of them can produce strong learning and conditioned responses, however different behavioural and neural mechanisms are engaged by different procedures
Measuring the conditioned response
Used to quantify conditioning (what is strong/weak); used to make comparisons among various procedures; the most used method for measuring conditioning that is equally applicable to all procedures
3 ways to measure the CR
- Magnitude of CR: how much of it occurs (eg. Pavlov measuring how much saliva)
- Probability of CR: how likely it is to occur (eg. # of trials CR was elicited by CS)
- Latency of CR: how soon CR occurs after the onset of CS
Control Procedures for Classical Conditioning
necessary to conclude that classical conditioning has occurred
- involves delivering the same # of US and CS as the experimental procedure, but in a way that they’re not associated for the animal (one way is random control)
Sensitization
S: increased response to a stimulus (ex: soldiers who have been to war show an enhanced startle response to the sound of gunshots, but also to other loud sounds like doors slamming or cars backfiring)
Habituation
a form of non-associative learning in which an innate response to a stimulus decreases after repeated or prolonged presentations of that stimulus (ex: no longer respond to fav food as when we first loved it)
Pseudo-Conditioning
a response that appears to be a CR is actually the result of sensitization, not conditioning
Random Control Procedure
presenting the US at random times during both the
CS and inter-trial interval, making sure that probability of US is same during the inter-trial interval and CS; seemed promising in early days, but still allows for conditioned responding to occur
Explicitly Unpaired Control
present a CS and US on separate trials; presented
apart, preventing association, but the animal receives the same total # of presentations of CS and US
*more effective, most typically used to ensure the
CS-US association has occurred with classical conditioning
Inhibitory Pavlovian Conditioning
you learn to predict the absence of the US (eg. CS associated with no shock, signals safety = signals when bad things will not happen)
Two Procedures for Inhibitory Conditioning - Pavlov
- Pavlov’s Procedure for Conditioned Inhibition
2. Negative CS-US Contingency or Correlation
True or false: The general rule that inhibitory conditioning and inhibitory control of behaviour occur only if there is an excitatory context for the US in question
True
Pavlov’s Procedure for Conditioned Inhibition
Standard trials involved two CS and two types of conditioning trials: excitatory and inhibitory trials (example of running laps in gym class)
Excitatory Trials
The US (run laps) is presented and is announced by a stimulus labelled the CS+ (going to gym class); after its paired with the US (running laps), the CS+ (gym class) comes to signal the US (run laps), providing an excitatory context
Inhibitory Trials
CS+ (gym class) presented along with a second stimulus CS- (sub teacher); when both the CS+ (going to gym class) and CS- (sub teacher) are presented, the US (run laps) does not occur; CS- (sub teacher) signals the absence of the US (running laps); the US (run laps) does not occur after the CS- (sub teacher arrives)
Important message about inhibitory conditioning?
- **Must first have excitatory conditioning to establish the previous knowledge/associations to make associations so the inhibitory can occur (ex: must experience that gym class means running laps to understand that the sub teacher in class means no running)
- *alternating trials provide the association of the CS+ with the US and the CS- with the lack of the US
Negative CS-US Contingency or Correlation
involves a CS- (sub teacher) that signals that the US (run laps) is unlikely to occur. The CS (gym class) then signals a reduced likelihood that the aversive (bad) US (laps) will occur. This means that each occurrence of the CS (gym class) is followed by the predictable absence of the US (laps), for some period of time.
3 ways to Measuring Conditioned Inhibition
- Bidirectional Response System
- Compound-Stimulus Test/Summation Test
- Retardation of Acquisition Test
Bidirectional Response System
can change in opposite directions (increase or
decrease) from baseline or normal performance (eg. heart rate, respiration, temperature); with bidirectional responses, we can measure the opposite response
after having gone inhibitory conditions
Compound-Stimulus Test/Summation Test
when an inhibitor and exciter are presented together, they summate, inhibitor subtracts from the exciter, overall less conditioned responding when presented
together
Retardation of Acquisition Test
If a conditioned inhibitor is converted into an excitor by pairing it with the US, responding develops very slowly to the CS (acquisition of responding is retarded or slowed) in comparison to when the US is paired with a CS that is not an inhibitor
