Paul - Role of Surprise in Reward Learning Flashcards
Define associated learning.
Classical and operative learning - Associating a stimulus or behaviour with a reward or punishment
Describe Pavlovs dog experiment that shows classical conditioning and that an animal is capable of associative learning.
Initially, the meat powder (unconditioned stimulus or US) naturally causes the dogs to salivate (unconditioned response or UR).
Pavlov introduces a neutral stimulus (NS), such as the sound of a bell or tone, which initially does not cause any salivation response in the dogs.
In the first trial of conditioning, Pavlov presents the neutral stimulus (bell sound) immediately before giving the dogs the meat powder.
At this stage, the dogs still salivate in response to the meat, not the sound.
This pairing of the neutral stimulus (bell) with the unconditioned stimulus (meat) is the first step in the process of classical conditioning.
Over repeated trials, the dogs will learn to associate the sound with the upcoming food, eventually salivating in response to the sound alone.
Once this association is established, the previously neutral stimulus (bell sound) becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS), capable of eliciting salivation as a conditioned response (CR).
Describe Kamins blocking experiment that shows the hypothesis that surprise drives associative learning.
Did the same thing as Pavlovs experiment except with rats and lights (CS) and shock (US) and freezing after being shocked at the unconditional reaction. Eventually they would freeze at the light before they were shocked. When sound was added at the same time as the light they still froze and he did this and eventually took away the light and just left the sound but this did not make them freeze. The light-shock conditioning blocked the sound-shock conditioning.
What is an experiment to show the hypothesis dopaminergic neurons encode surprise.
They did a extracellular recording of dopaminergic neurons in monkeys. They gave them juice that made them produce dopamine then put a conditioned stimulus before that and the dopamine levels then increased when the CS happened and eventually they took away the reward and the CS still elicited a dopamine increase.
