Pavlovian Conditioning

Question 1

Define Pavlovian conditioning.

Answer 1

The pairing of conditional stimulus and unconditional stimulus in one trial.

Question 2

Define unconditional reflexes.

Answer 2

Inborn/permanent reflex found in virtually all members of a species and varies little across individuals.

Question 3

Define conditional reflexes.

Answer 3

Experiences acquired through experience (i.e., depend on many conditions), impermanent and varies across individuals.

Question 4

Define a neutral stimulus.

Answer 4

Does not elicit a particular conditioned or unconditioned response; conditional stimulus before it is able to elicit the conditional stimulus

Question 5

How does Pavlovian conditioning aid survival?

Answer 5

Pavlovian conditioning would increase survival in a changing world. E.g., a person that reacts with fear to the sight/sound/odour of a deadly spider is more likely to live long enough to pass on its genes, compared to a person that only responds to the feeling of the spider biting them.

Question 6

Define second-order Pavlovian conditioning.

Answer 6

Second-order conditioning uses a well-established CS instead of a US to modify reactions to the NS.

Question 7

Why does higher-order conditioning increase the importance of Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 7

This effect increases the importance of Pavlovian conditioning because it means that many more stimuli can come to elicit conditional responses.

Question 8

How can response latency be used to measure Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 8

Response latency gives an idea of how strongly the items are associated with one another, in that a mental connection between two items (i.e., stimulus and response) will be faster if they are strongly paired. They are negatively correlated.

Question 9

Define pseudoconditioning.

Answer 9

When the conditioned stimulus over sensitizes the individual to other stimuli. It can look like conditioning has occurred when it hasn’t.

Question 10

What are the four ways of pairing CS and US in Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 10

Trace conditioning
Delayed conditioning
Simultaneous conditioning
Backward conditioning

Question 11

Define trace conditioning.

Answer 11

CS begins and ends before the US is presented. This procedure is capable of producing a conditional response.

Question 12

Define delayed conditioning.

Answer 12

The CS and US overlap - the US appears before the CS has disappeared. This procedure is capable of producing a conditional response.

Question 13

Define simultaneous conditioning.

Answer 13

The CS and US coincide exactly. This is a weak procedure for initiating a conditional response.

Question 14

Define backward conditioning.

Answer 14

The CS follows the US. It is difficult, if not impossible, to initiate a conditional response with this procedure.

Question 15

What is a contingency? How does it affect conditioning?

Answer 15

A contingency is when one event is contingent on another event, to the extent that Y occurs if and only X occurs. The effectiveness of conditioning varies with the degree of contingency btw CS and US.

Question 16

In everyday life, do we generally encounter high or medium-low degrees of contingency between the CS and the US?

Answer 16

In real life we experience medium-low degrees of contingency, with stimuli sometimes being paired, sometimes being alone, and sometimes being paired with other stimuli. The lack of perfect contingency makes for less than ideal learning conditions and also lends to the uncertain reactions we have towards people and things.

Question 17

What is CS-US contiguity and how does this contiguity influence the effectiveness of classical conditioning?

Answer 17

Contiguity is the closeness in time/space btw two events; the interval between the CS and US. The more contiguous the CS and US, the more quickly a CR will appear.

Question 18

Are short intervals or long intervals (between the CS and the US) more effective in Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 18

The optimal interval varies according to the procedure being used. Extremely short intervals may not work well, even in trace conditioning. The simultaneous procedure w/ no interval is very ineffective.

Question 19

What is a compound stimulus?

Answer 19

A compound stimulus is when the CS consists of 2+ stimuli presented simultaneously.

Question 20

Describe Pavlov’s early life, career path, and other factors that led him to study the digestive processes and the salivary reflex in the dog.

Answer 20

He had been researching the physiology of digestion for many years, having developed surgical procedures to enable him to study digestive processes of animals over long periods of time. For salivary glands, the duct of a dog was detached from its usual place within the mouth and directed through an incision in the cheek. When the dog salivated, the saliva would flow through the duct and be collected in a small tube. This enabled him to make precise observations of the glands under various conditions.

Question 21

When did Pavlov become interested in psychic reflexes?

Answer 21

He wanted to understand how the body breaks down food into chemicals that can be absorbed into the blood. Saliva dilutes the food and helps to start its breakdown. There was more saliva for solid than liquid foods. Same was true for inedible substances. An animal would salivate before anything was put into its mouth after being fed numerous times.
- He thought that these “psychic secretions” would related to thoughts, memories or wishes of the animal. He was wondering why dogs didn’t salivate when first brought to his lab, but only after being repeatedly fed. This prompted him to switch focus to psychic reflexes.

Question 22

In what respect did Pavlov’s identity suffer due to the shift in his attention to psychic secretions?

Answer 22

He wanted to remain a physiologist, not a psychologist (likely due to the field’s lack of respect and establishment at the time), so he convinced himself that psychic reflexes involved glands and was suitable subject matter for a physiologist.

Question 23

Describe Pavlov’s work with dogs that illustrates Pavlovian conditioning.

Answer 23

He wanted to know how a neutral stimulus would be transformed into a conditioned stimulus, such as the food bowl and the handler who fed the dog eliciting a salivary response. In some experiments he paired food with the sound of a metronome, and after being repeatedly paired with food, it would elicit salivation on its own. He found that almost any stimulus could become a conditional stimulus if regularly paired with an unconditional stimulus.

Question 24

How would Pavlovian conditioning aid survival?

Answer 24

A person that reacts with fear to the sight/sound/odour of something dangerous, like a deadly spider, is more likely to live long enough to pass on its genes, compared to a person that only responds to the feeling of the spider biting them.

Question 25

Is the presentation of the two stimuli (i.e., the neutral stimulus and the unconditional stimulus) independent of the behaviour of the animal?

Answer 25

The presentation of the two stimuli is independent of the behaviour of the animals, because the CS and US are presented regardless of what the animal does.

Question 26

What type of behaviour is subject to Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 26

Innate responses

Question 27

Describe Graham and Desjardins’ (1980) study in which the experimenters used Pavlovian conditioning to influence the mating behaviour of male rats.

Answer 27

Male rates experience increased hormone levels when sexually aroused, increase pheromone secretion. The researchers paired wintergreen’s scent with a sexually receptive female rat consistently for 14 days, so that eventually the male’s hormones were as high with the wintergreen as they would be when exposed to the female rat.

Question 28

Describe Frolov’s demonstration of second-order conditioning using a metronome.

Answer 28

Frolov paired food with a metronome’s sound to condition salivating in response to the sound. He then paired the metronome’s sound with the sight of a black square, so that eventually the dog would salivate with the presence of the square, despite it never having been paired with food.

Question 29

Describe Staats and Staats’ (1975) classic experiment of verbal higher-order conditioning.

Answer 29

The researchers asked students to look at nonsense syllables flashed on a screen. The students repeated words spoken by the researchers at the same time. For some students, the researchers paired syllables with positive/negative words. The students then rated each syllable on its pleasantness. The results suggested that the syllables elicited emotional responses similar to the emotional value of the words they had been paired with. Note that this was done without an US being present. This demonstrated the important role of higher order conditioning in the emotional meaning of words.

Question 30

How can response latency be used to measure Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 30

Response latency gives an idea of how strongly the items are associated with one another, in that a mental connection between two items (i.e., stimulus and response) will be faster if they are strongly paired.

Question 31

How is the use of latency as a measure of Pavlovian conditioning problematic?

Answer 31

In some studies, the time between CS onset and US presentations is too short to easily measure response latency.

Question 32

Describe the use of test trials to measure Pavlovian conditioning.

Answer 32

• Test trials present the CS alone every so often to assess if there is a conditional response. Learning is represented as an increase in the frequency of the conditional response.
• For example, a person startles a dog and it runs away, but over time the person may just walk into the room without startling the dog and the dog would still run away, indicating that the dog is conditioned to be scared of that person

Question 33

Describe the method of measuring Pavlovian conditioning by means of intensity or amplitude of the CR.

Answer 33

When the conditioned stimulus over-sensitizes the individual to other stimuli, it can look like conditioning has occurred when it hasn’t. Not all effects of a stimulus pairs will be a result of conditioning. It then becomes a job for the researchers to detangle what is a conditional response and what is a result of earlier exposure to a strong stimulus. To do this, researchers present the CS and US to a control group in a random manner so that the stimuli appear both alone and together. If there’s a difference in how the experimental and control groups perform, there may be conditioning of the experimental group.

Question 34

Describe Rescorla’s (1968) experiment that demonstrated the importance of the CS-US contingency in the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning.

Answer 34

Rescorla exposed rats to a tone followed by a mild shock. All rates received the same number of pairings, some received additional trials with the US alone. This study showed that the amount of learning depended on the degree to which the CS predicted shock - when a shock appeared alone for 40% of the time, little or no learning took place, when compared to a group when the shock only appeared alone 10% of the time.

Question 35

In everyday life, do we generally encounter high or medium-low degrees of contingency between the CS and the US?

Answer 35

In real life we experience medium-low degrees of contingency, with a stimulus sometimes being paired, sometimes being alone, and sometimes being paired with other stimuli. The lack of perfect contingency makes for less than ideal learning conditions and also lends to the uncertain reactions we have towards people and things.

Question 36

Does the type of response being conditioned influence CS-US contiguity?

Answer 36

Yes. E.g., studies for eye blink would need a short interval, but studies for taste aversion could have a longer interval.

Question 37

Are short intervals or long intervals (between the CS and the US) more effective in Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 37

The more contiguous the CS and US, the more quickly a CR will appear. The simultaneous procedure w/ no interval is very ineffective. The optimal interval varies according to the procedure being used. Extremely short intervals may not work well, even in trace conditioning.

Question 38

Describe the experiment that one of Pavlov’s assistants conducted with a compound stimulus on a dog, including the results of the experiment.

Answer 38

He presented both cold and tactile stimulation to a dog, followed by a few drops of mild acid in the mouth to trigger salivation. He tested the dog with cold and tactile stimuli alone, and then together as a compound stimuli. Both the tactile and compound stimuli were effective, but the cold alone wasn’t.

Question 39

What features of a stimulus (when presented as part of a compound stimulus) are responsible for overshadowing?

Answer 39

The intensity of the stimulus is responsible for overshadowing, making the weaker stimuli in a compound stimulus less effective for conditioning, although the stronger stimulus cannot be too intense so as to interfere with learning.

Question 40

What is latent inhibition?

Answer 40

the phenomenon of the appearance of a stimulus in the absence of a US interferes with the subsequent ability of that stimulus to become a CS.

Question 41

How does latent inhibition affect conditioning?

Answer 41

It results in slower conditioning/learning. Novel stimuli are more likely to become CS than those that have frequently been presented without the US.

Question 42

Define blocking.

Answer 42

when the novel stimulus is part of a compound stimulus that includes an effective CS.

Question 43

Compare and contrast blocking and overshadowing.

Answer 43

Blocking resembles overshadowing in that one stimulus interferes with the ability of another to become a CS, however, overshadowing yields differences between the stimuli in characteristics such as intensity, whereas blocking yields a difference in the effect due to prior experience with one part of a compound stimulus.

Question 44

What is sensory preconditioning?

Answer 44

When two neutral stimuli are repeatedly presented together but are not paired with an US, and then one of the neutral stimuli are paired with the US to create a CS. The other neutral stimulus that hadn’t been paired can still elicit a CR.

Question 45

What is the advantage of sensory preconditioning?

Answer 45

Generally, a stimulus will become a CS more rapidly if it has been paired with another stimulus that has since become a CS.

Question 46

Describe the relationship between the number of pairings of the CS and US on Pavlovian conditioning.

Answer 46

• Usually the more often a CS and US appear together, the more likely a CR will occur
• this relationship is not linear. The first several pairings are more important than later ones, following a decelerating curve.
• aids survival because if important because the sooner that an organism is able to adapt, the better.

Question 47

What is the relationship between length of the inter-trial interval and the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 47

The inter-trial interval describes the gap between successive trials. Longer intervals are more effective than short ones. The ideal time may be 20-30s or longer, compared to the <1s for CS-US intervals.

Question 48

How do age, temperament, and stress affect Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 48

Older subjects have shown to be less effective in establishing conditional eye blink. More excitable individuals have also been found to learn faster. Anxiety/stress has also been found to aid in learning.

Question 49

How does extinction occur in Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 49

A CR becomes weakened when the CS is repeatedly presented without the US.

Question 50

Under what conditions do we say that a CS-CR relationship has been extinguished?

Answer 50

If the CR no longer occurs, or occurs as frequently as it did prior to conditioning.

Question 51

How does Pavlovian extinction differ from forgetting?

Answer 51

• Forgetting describes the deterioration of performance following a period without practice
• with extinction, the practice continues but the pairing is lost.
• Extinction can be thought of conditioning is which the CS is paired with the absence of the US.

Question 52

Does extinction completely reverse the effects of Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 52

• No.
• An extinguished CR can usually be reestablished far more readily than it was established initially.
• Extinguished behaviour remains sensitive to environmental cues, in that events that occurred during training can trigger a CR’s reappearance after extinction.

Question 53

Describe spontaneous recovery.

Answer 53

sudden reappearance of a CR after extinction if the the CS is presented again.

Question 54

Describe the work of Edwin Twitmyer in conditioning the patellar reflex.

Answer 54

He would ring a bell before dropping a rubber hammer onto an individual’s knee, but one day he accidentally rang the bell without dropping the hammer and the individual’s knee shot up.

Question 55

Why was Twitmyer unsuccessful in gaining attention for his work?

Answer 55

He presented his findings to the APA after many other discussions and the group was hungry and tired, so did not ask any questions. This deterred Twitmyer from doing other experiments because he felt his findings were unimportant.

Question 56

Describe Pavlov’s stimulus substitution theory.

Answer 56

believed that CR and UR are the same, is conditioning is acquiring the tendency to respond in old ways to new stimuli, as opposed to acquisition of new behaviour. The CS merely substitutes for the US in evoking the reflex response.

Question 57

What problems exist with stimulus substitution theory?

Answer 57

• The problem with this theory is that the CR and UR are not always the same. The CR is weaker, less relabel and slower to appear than the UR. CS and US can also elicit different behaviours
• e.g., when presented with food, a dog will chew (US), but when the CS appeared, it would salivate but not chew.

Question 58

Describe the preparatory response theory.

Answer 58

• what is learned during conditioning is a response to what prepares the organism for the appearance of the US.
• it helps to prepare the organism for what’s about to happen
• e.g., , if a ringing bell and food have been paired together, a dog will begin to salivate in response to the bell because it prepares the dog for digestion of the food it’s anticipating.

Question 59

What prediction does preparatory response theory make regarding the conditional stimuli involved in the development of tolerance to drugs?

Answer 59

• The UR for morphine is decrease pain, but the CR is increased sensitivity to pain to prepare the organism for the drug by suppressing the body’s response to it.
• For some individuals, taking the drug in the same setting may make the environment a CS, thus, reducing the body’s response to the drug. Drug tolerance tends not to occur if drugs are taken in the absence of the CS.
• Lightfoot found that individuals who would drink alcohol in the same location were less inebriated (as indicated by performance on intellectual and perceptual-motor skills tests) than those who drank in a variety of locations.

Question 60

Describe the evidence related to Pavlovian conditioning and awareness.

Answer 60

• There’s an impression/assumption that awareness of the relationship btw the CS and US is essential to, and must precede, the appearance of the CR;
• However, conditioning sometimes occurs without awareness that the CS and US are related, so awareness cannot be said to be necessary for conditioning.
• Also, simple animals (i.e., worms) and one-celled organisms undergo conditioning. Although awareness may be present, it is not a cause of learning, but rather is part of what is learned.

Question 61

Explain how preparatory response theory can account for fatal drug overdoses (in which the dose should not have proved fatal).

Answer 61

o Evidence suggests that deaths are sometimes due to the absence of stimuli morally present during drug use that acted as a preparatory CR, yielding a stronger, possibly fatal, reaction to the drug.