Week 1 Tutorial

Question 1

Experiment Aim

Answer 1

• Investigate how learning and attention can influence the way stimulus come to control behaviour

Question 2

Stimulus Overselectivity

Answer 2

• When only part of a stimulus affects behaviour
• Other parts of the stimulating environment have reduced effect on behaviour
• Focus on one part of a picture in order to remember and choose that picture in an experiment
• Especially seen in older participants, people with intellectual disabilities or brain damage

Question 3

Effects of Stimulus Overselectivity

Answer 3

• Results in limited learning of the entire picture in the environment that controls/affects behaviour
• Possible underpins deficits in several developmental domains
• • Social
• • Language - reading, writing and verbal
• • Academic
• • Emotional

This is possibly because when you only attend to certain parts of a stimulus array there is less focus and learning on parts where you don’t attend

Question 4

Stimulus Overselectivity Extinction

Answer 4

• Some experiments show that people can respond to unnattended stimulus if the overselected stimulus is removed
• This shows there is some initial learning even with underselected stimulus
• Extinction can also happen when people are given a high cognitive load to learn.

Question 5

Our Specific Research Questions

Answer 5

1. Can our discrimination task produce stimulus overselectivity in a general population of participants?
2. If so, can revaluation produce an emergence of the underselected stimulus?

Question 6

Revaluation

Answer 6

• The observation that subsequent changes in the valence of an unconditioned stimulus (US) after pairing it with a neutral, conditioned stimulus (CS) also changes the valence of the associated CS.

OR

• When an overselected stimulus (OS) is paired with a new stimulus and is made the wrong answer. This is expected to weaken the importance of the OS .