Principles of Classical Conditioning

Question 1

What does the Law of Contiguity state?

Answer 1

Law of Contiguity states that repeated presentation of two stimuli in close proximity leads to the development of a learned association.

Question 2

What is the most prominent principle of association in Pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 2

The temporal relation between the CS and US – when

in time the stimuli occur relative to each other.

Question 3

What is short delay conditioning?

Answer 3

When the CS is presented about one second before the US.

Produces strongest and most rapid conditioning.

Question 4

When are the CS and the US presented in simultaneous conditioning?

Answer 4

At the same time.

Question 5

What is the contradiction of simultaneous conditioning and the normal law of contiguity?

Answer 5

Studies have shown that early onset of the CS is important, however the CS and US are presented simultaneously. The contradiction is that this is where the relationship should be the strongest, however it is actually much weaker than short term delay

Question 6

What are the rules useful in predicting outcomes of conditioning arrangements?

Answer 6

1- To the extent that a CS is a good predictor of the PRESENCE of the US, it will tend to become excitatory.
2- To the extent that a CS is a good predictor of the ABSENCE of the US it will tend to become inhibitory

Question 7

What is trace conditioning?

Answer 7

The CS and US are separated by some time interval in which neither stimulus is present.

Question 8

What is long-delay conditioning?

Answer 8

When the onset of the CS precedes that of the US by several seconds, though continues until the US is presented.

Question 9

What happens to the temporal location of the CR in long delay conditioning?

Answer 9

It changes over trials.
Early in training a dog will salivate upon presentation of the CS (although the CS-US interval is 10 seconds)
As the trials continued these early CRs would disappear and the dog would salivate shortly before presentation of food

Question 10

What does the long delay conditioning with the salivation of the dog before the presentation of the food indicate?

Answer 10

That the dog has learned the passage of time (duration of the CS), and supports the rule that the stimulus that best predicts the US will be the most strongly conditioned

Question 11

What is backward conditioning?

Answer 11

When the CS is presented after the US
BUT even if the CS is presented immediately after the US, the level of conditioning is markedly lower than in simultaneous or short-delay conditioning.

Question 12

What is the problem with the contiguity principle and backward conditioning?

Answer 12

If the CS and US are equally contiguous in short-
delay conditioning and in backward conditioning, the contiguity principles predicts that equally strong CSs should develop.

Question 13

What is the limitation of the continuity principle found within backwards conditioning?

Answer 13

Besides their temporal proximity, the order of the stimuli is important.

Question 14

What happens to a backward CS after multiple trials?

Answer 14

It becomes inhibitory

Question 15

What is spatial contiguity?

Answer 15

Conditioning is influenced by contiguity in space as well as time (whereby conditioning is strongest when both stimuli are close together)
e.g.When rats are exposed to light followed by a blast of air, fear conditioning is strongest when both stimuli come from the same area of the box.

Question 16

What is frequency of pairings?

Answer 16

Determines the strength of an association between two events.
Strength of the CR seems to increase most during early conditioning trials, with the rate of increase gradually declining as training continues until performance reaches a stable plateau.

Question 17

What does the intensity of the stimuli involve?

Answer 17

The strength of association…intensity (or magnitude) of the US roughly determines the upper limit of learning…intensity of the CS is also important.

Question 18

What were the two papers that were landmark on contiguity?

Answer 18

Robert Rescorla

Garcia and Koelling

Question 19

What did Rescorla demonstrate?

Answer 19

That temporal contiguity between a CS and US is not sufficient to ensure conditioning, but the CS must also be a good predictor of the US.

Question 20

What is contingency?

Answer 20

A measure of the extent to which the occurrence of one event depends on another.

Question 21

What is positive contingency?

Answer 21

A situation where the probability of one event is higher if another event has occurred. In classical conditioning, the CS signals an increase in the probability that the US will occur.

Question 22

What is negative contingency?

Answer 22

A situation where the probability of one event is lower if another event has occurred. In classical conditioning, the CS signals a decrease in the probability that the US will occur.

Question 23

What are the two probabilities that the US/CS contingency is defined by

Answer 23

1. that the US will occur given that the CS has been presented [p(US/CS)]
2. that the US will occur given that the CS has not been presented [p(US/noCS)]

Question 24

How do you measure the difference in contingency between two events?

Answer 24

Calculate the difference between the two probabilities..

Question 25

What is the perfect positive contingency?

Answer 25

A situation in which the US always occurs with
the CS and never by itself:
P(shock / tone) = 1.0
P(shock / no tone) = 0

Question 26

What is the perfect negative contingency?

Answer 26

A situation in which the US occurs when the CS is absent but never occurs on trials with the CS:
P(shock / tone) = 0 P(shock / no tone) = 1.0

Question 27

What is a perfect negative contingency?

Answer 27

When the CS signals the absence of the US).

Question 28

If the US (shock) is more likely to occur during the CS (one-minute tone) than in its absence:
P(shock / tone) = 0.60 P(shock / no tone) = 0.20
What is the predictive value?

Answer 28

It has moderate predictive value and the contingency would be 0.40 (i.e. the tone is not a perfect predictor).

Question 29

If the US occurs equally with and without the CS:
P(shock / tone) = 0.10 P(shock / no tone) = 0.10
What is the predictive value/contingency?

Answer 29

The CS/US contingency is zero (i.e the two probabilities are equal and the CS provides no information about whether the US will occur or not).

Question 30

What was the conclusion made by Rescorla?

Answer 30

That the traditional view of classical conditioning, contiguity of CS and US causes an association to develop, is incorrect. If conditioning depends on contiguity then this should be equal in the two groups since both had the same number of CS-US pairings.

Question 31

Why was contingent relationships found to be incorrect by Rescorla?

Answer 31

If conditioning depends on contiguity then this should be equal in the two groups since both had the same number of CS-US pairings.
If contingency also matters then powerful conditioning should be found in the contingency group (where there is strong contingency between tone and shock) and substantially weaker in the random group (no contingency).

Question 32

What happens when the CS predicts an increase in the likelihood of the US?

Answer 32

We find excitatory conditioning (i.e. the positive contingency produces excitatory conditioning)…the CS comes to regularly elicit a CR

Question 33

What happens when the CS predicts a reduced likelihood of the US? (i.e. negative contingency)

Answer 33

We find inhibitory conditioning…the CS comes to inhibit occurrence of a CR

Question 34

In particular, what did Garcia and Koelling challenge?

Answer 34

The idea that it did not matter what stimulus was chosen as a CS.

Question 35

How did the rat experiment show that taste aversion was not linked to places

Answer 35

Rats did not avoid the place of poison. If associations form between any contiguous events then place cues should be associated with illness as readily as taste and odor cues (but this did not appear to be happening).

Question 36

What was the hypothesis tested by Garcia and Koelling?

Answer 36

That the rats associated taste and odor with nausea, but were unable to form similar associations involving visual cues

Question 37

How did Garcia and Koelling study this hypothesis?

Answer 37

1. Rats were allowed to taste distinctly flavoured water from a tube that was wired so every lick produced not only water but a brief noise and light flash
2. Following exposure to this taste-noise-light compound they received a dose of radiation to induce gastrointestinal disturbance and nausea
3. On a test trial the rats were exposed to each of the compound stimuli separately to determine which had become aversive
4. A lick produced either the flavoured water or plain water plus the noise-light compound (‘bright-noisy’ water)

Question 38

What was the results of Garcia and Koellings first experiment?

Answer 38

An aversion seemed to be readily conditionable to gustatory cues (as suggested by naturalistic observations), but not to stimuli from external environment.

Question 39

What is the alternate explanation of Garcia and Koellings findings?

Answer 39

That the noise and light used were too faint to be detected so conditioning would not have been possible no matter what unconditioned stimulus had been employed…

Question 40

How did Garcia and Koelling change their experiment to test whether the light and the noise were too faint.

Answer 40

Garcia and Koelling repeated the experiment with the same compound CS, but with electric shock as the US: The audiovisual stimulus produced a suppression of drinking and the taste stimulus had no effect.

Question 41

What happened when Garcia and Koelling repeated the experiment?

Answer 41

Rats do not easily learn an aversion to an auditory or visual cue paired with illness, nor an aversion to a taste cue paired with shock, even though each of these conditioned stimuli is easily associated with the other US.

Question 42

What is preparedness?

Answer 42

When we seem prepared to associate some CS-US combinations more readily than others. Coined by Seligman

Question 43

What are the implications for psychologists in regards to the traditional view of conditioning

Answer 43

According to a traditional view, all that matters in conditioning is contiguity: if two events are contiguous they will be associated.
The evidence for preparedness shows that this is not the case. In the taste-aversion experiment, for example, noise was just as contiguous with illness as taste, but this contiguity did not result in learning…contiguity is not sufficient for learning to take place.

Question 44

What is other evidence that contiguity is not necessary?

Answer 44

In the Garcia and Koelling experiment, there was a delay of at least 20 minutes between the presentation of the taste and the animals’ becoming ill
In a more memorable experiment, Etscorn and Stephans (1973) conditioning occurred despite a delay of 24 hours Clearly, conditioning is not due simply to the linking of events that happen to occur contiguously.

Question 45

What is the uniformity of continuity?

Answer 45

No matter what CS was paired with what US the same associative process would be involved and the principles of conditioning would thus also be the same.

Question 46

What were the problems with the uniformity of continuity?

Answer 46

The principles of taste-aversion learning are not the same as those of salivary conditioning:
It is easy to associate a light with food but very difficult to associate light with illness
The role of contiguity is different (in salivary conditioning the longest CS-US interval at which conditioning will occur is on the order of minutes; in taste aversion learning it can be as long as 24 hours)
Salivary conditioning is a fairly slow process requiring many trials, while strong taste aversions can be learned in just one or two trials

Question 47

Why do such differences in conditioning exist?

Answer 47

To exist with survival. One way of thinking about conditioning is as a means of identifying stimuli that cause or predict important events.

Question 48

What is blocking?

Answer 48

When one stimulus blocks the conditioning of another because the other adds no new information.

Question 49

Who demonstrated the blocking effect?

Answer 49

Kamin 1969.
Rats initially conditioned to the light when rats pressed bar to get food.
Pretraining Conditioning
Blocking group N → shock NL → shock
Control group NL → shock

According to contiguity analysis, we should expect strong conditioning to the light in both groups, because the light was repeatedly and contiguously paired with the shock. However, the suppression ratio was 0.05 for the control group (indicating substantial fear conditioning) and 0.45 for animals given preliminary conditioning to the noise (a statistic barely distinguishable from the 0.50 level representing no fear).
In other words, prior conditioning to the noise had blocked conditioning to the light…

Question 50

Why is the effect of the light blocked during the blocking experiment?

Answer 50

The light was redundant in the blocking group as it supplied no new information (i.e. the noise on its own was a reliable predictor of the US).