PSYC2050 - Wk2 Classical Conditioning

Question 1

How did psychologists try to get quolls to learn not to eat cane toads.?

Answer 1

They captured quolls and fed them bits of toad laced with a nausea drug, so this created an associative response to cane toads in the wild.

Question 2

What is habituation?

Answer 2

A decline/disappearance of a reflexive response, after the same stimulus is repeatedly presented.

Question 3

Why does your brain have a mechanism for habituation?

Answer 3

It allows important and unimportant information to be sorted.

Question 4

What is the free energy principle?

How does it help explain how processing in the brain works?

Answer 4

Self organising systems must minimise free energy (surprise). And it must be formulated to resist natural tendency for disorder.

Question 5

Who is Karl Friston?

Answer 5

Cognitive neuroscientist, he developed platforms for neuroscientists

Question 6

How do the environment and agent interact in the free energy principle?

Answer 6

External states lead to sensations. Sensations create internal states. These motivate action or control signals, which then affect external states. Like a circle.

Question 7

How is free energy minimised? 2

Answer 7

Action minimises prediction errors

Perception optimises predictions

Question 8

What does the free energy principle attempt to do?

Answer 8

Minimise surprise and maximise accurate representation of the world

Question 9

What’s the difference between a unconditioned vs conditioned response?

Answer 9

Innate vs learned (respectively) (but they can be the same, its what causes it that matters)

Question 10

What is a conditioned stimulus?

Answer 10

The stimulus the organism has to learn

Question 11

How does eye blink conditioning work?

Answer 11

A tone is learned to predict a puff of air on the eyeball. People then hear the tone and instinctively blink

Question 12

What are the clinical applications for classical conditioning? 3

Answer 12

Treatment and acquisition of fears, phobias, maladaptive behaviours.

Question 13

What did Watson and Rayner (1920) demonstrate? Little Albert experiment.. (2)

Answer 13

Little Albert acquired emotional responses to conditioned stimuli, such as learning mice predict a loud sound. They also created a generalised fear.

Question 14

What’s the sad story behind Watson and Rayner?

Answer 14

They tried to raise their children using their learning principles, later generations attribute their mental health problems to how their parents were raised.

Question 15

What did Watson think about behaviourism and tabula rasa?

Answer 15

There are no inherent qualities in a person, anyone can be trained to be and do anything.

Question 16

What are the 3 stages of Classical conditioning?

Answer 16

Habituation, Acquisition, Extinction

Question 17

What factors influence the acquisition curve? 3

Answer 17

1. The intensity of the US (more intense, more rapid)
2. The order and timing (CS before US is better)
3. Superconditioning (inhibitor present)

Question 18

What is delay conditioning?

Answer 18

CS is presented before and during US

Question 19

What does ISI refer to in CC?

Answer 19

Interstimulus interval

Question 20

What is trace conditioning?

Answer 20

present CS, gap in time, then US

Question 21

What is a trace interval?

Answer 21

The gap in time between CS and US presentation

Question 22

What is simultaneous conditioning?

Answer 22

US and CS present simultaneously

Question 23

What is backward conditioning?

Answer 23

US is presented before the CS

Question 24

Is there an optimal ISI?

Answer 24

No, the strength of the conditioning depends on what the stimulus are.

Question 25

What are differences in optimal ISI for eyelid reflex and taste aversion learning?

Answer 25

Eyelid reflexes can be paired using intervals as low as 200ms, whereas taste aversion can take an hour to learn.

Question 26

What is excitatory conditioning?

Answer 26

When the CS predicts the occurrence of the the US

Question 27

What is inhibitory conditioning?

Answer 27

When the CS predicts the absence of US

Question 28

What happens in inhibitory conditioning?

Answer 28

The animal learns that the presence of stimulus predicts the absence of US. A-US, AB-nothing, A-US, AB-nothing —> B becomes Inhibitor

Question 29

how do we know inhibitory conditioning was successful ? 2

Answer 29

Retardation test and summation tests. We have to pass both

Question 30

What is the retardation test?

Answer 30

Taking an inhibitory stimulus and using normal excitatory pairing. When you compare the inhibitory stimulus with a neutral stimulus, the inhibitory stimulus should be learned slower. Because the previous inhibitory conditioning was successful and retards learning.

Question 31

What is the summation test?

Answer 31

When inhibitor + new CS (N+I) is conditioned it will have a weaker conditioned response than the new CS itself.

Question 32

What is the spontaneous recovery effect?

Answer 32

A short pause will increase the strength of the CR

Question 33

What is renewal effect?

Answer 33

Extinction is context specific

Question 34

What is the impact of renewal effects in clinical practice?

Answer 34

Change in behaviour in a psychologist’s office might not translate to change in the patients everyday situations

Question 35

What is reinstatement effect?

Answer 35

the reminder effect: present the US alone after extinction. Then present the CS and get CR (as though the association gets kick started)

Question 36

What are two possible explanations for why extinction happens?

Answer 36

Inhibition theory;

Ambiguous stimulus: CS no longer predicts the US (innate pairing)

Question 37

What are the hidden (and incorrect) assumptions of classical conditioning?

Answer 37

Equipotentiality- any two stimuli can be paired together
Contiguity - the more a pair is presented, the stronger the association
Contingency - conditioning changes trial to trial in a regular way

Question 38

What is the blocking effect?

Answer 38

Pairing a novel stimulus with a conditioned excitatory stimulus will prevent associations forming with he novel stimulus: ie the CR blocks the learning about novel stimulus.

Question 39

How does the blocking effect disprove the assumptions of CC?

Answer 39

Equipotentiality: the act of pairing the novel stimuli doesn’t lead to conditioning
Contiguity: blocking effect seen regardless of number of pairings.

Question 40

What is superconditioning?

Answer 40

when a novel excitatory stimulus is paired with a learned inhibitor, learning is faster for the novel stimulus. Because it is more surprising.