Week 4: Limits of learning and new directions in the study of conditioning and comparative cognition Flashcards
Classical and operant conditioning are simple processes with predictable results. True/False
False
Every species has its own evolutionary history and physiological structures (brain, body) that imposes limits on conditioning.
Name three experiments by Skinner that involved a dog and a pigeon:
- Dog Agnes running up the wall
- Dog Agnes opening the lid
- Pigeon guided bomb
Name five limitations of learning:
- Physical
- Learnt behaviour is not innate
- Individual differences
- Critical periods
- Neurological damage
Type of behavioural therapy in which reinforcement or nonreinforcement is used to increase or decrease particular behaviour?
Contingency management
Few ‘real world’ examples of contingency management:
- teach children with intellectual disabilities living skills—toilet training, personal
grooming, table manners - suppress behaviours in some children with intellectual disabilities—self-injurious
behaviour, aggression, disruptive behaviour - phobias, anxiety, depression, pain, substance abuse (Petry et al., 2017)
- poor study habits (i.e., increase academic performance)
- reduce fuel and energy consumption of large groups of people—direct payments to
efficient energy users can reduce energy consumption; information feedback and
stickers can reduce home fuel consumption; reserving a special lane on the Oakland—
San Francisco Bay Bridge for car with several passengers increased car-pooling and
improved traffic flow
Name three stages of contingency management therapy:
- Assessment (direct observation is used to establish baseline levels of target behaviours)
- Contracting (when and how reinforcement will be delivered)
- Implementation (providing reinforcement contingent)
_____-________ can be used if a person wants to change his/her own undesirable behaviours.
Self-reinforcement
(e.g. impulsive overspending (shopping)
* overeating
* depression
* inadequate study time)
The response is strengthened, because it is followed by removal of an aversive/unpleasant
stimulus, __________ reinforcement.
negative
Negative reinforcement is still reinforcement, with a good outcome— despite the word ‘negative’. True/False
True
Negative reinforcement may lead to _________ or __________ learning— as lot of people tend to avoid awkward or unpleasant situations or difficult problems.
Escape/avoidance
Learning/response that decreases or ends aversive stimulation (e.g., dogs
learn to escape shock by jumping to another compartment in a shuttle box), ________ learning.
escape
Learning/response that prevents aversive stimulation (e.g., if a light goes on before shock, a rat will run to another compartment as soon as the light comes on, to avoid
shock), ________ learning.
avoidance
Mowrer (1960) proposed that fear is acquired according to classical conditioning principles and is maintained by operant conditioning principle; i.e., escape and avoidance are reinforced by anxiety reduction, _____-_____ model.
Two-Factor
According to Two model theory, phobias are acquired through _________ conditioning, while avoidance is maintained by __________ conditioning.
classical, operant
(phobia of lifts - in the past— lifts became paired with a frightening stimulus event (e.g., stuck between floors,
delay in door opening, felt claustrophobic, had a panic attack)
* now— if you need to get into a lift, you experience conditioned fear.
If the phobia is severe enough, you take the stairs instead. Taking the stairs is an avoidance
response— this leads to consistent negative reinforcement, by relieving your conditioned fear.
Phobias are easy to extinctic. True/False
False
Phobias are very resistant to extinction
A phobia usually leads to avoidance of the feared object/situation
and avoidance behaviour stops any chance of facing the conditioned stimulus. True/False
True
(earns negative
reinforcement for every avoidance response)
Presentation of an aversive stimulus, ________ punishment.
positive
(e.g., spanking a child, getting a speeding fine)
Removal of a pleasant stimulus, ________ punishment.
Negative
(e.g., taking away TV watching privileges)
More effective discipline— if you reinforce desirable behaviour rather than punish undesirable
behaviour. True/False
True
A reaction that occurs after an undesired behavior that is intended to curtail that behavior and directly affect the individual, ___________ punishers (innate).
primary
- cold, heat, hunger, thirst, loud noises,
- environmental stimuli that cause pain, nausea and illness (e.g., pain produced by spanking a child)
Things that are learned or acquired to be negative through conditioning to neutral stimuli, ________ punishers (learned/acquired).
secondary
(properties by association with primary aversive stimuli (e.g., social
disapproval, nasty glances, ridicule, being told off)
All punishers are easily classified as primary or secondary. True/False
False
Sometimes two punishers are combined, e.g., having the phone disconnected due to late payment
(removes pleasant phone) and then having to pay a reconnection fee (financial penalty).
3 factors influence effectiveness of punishment:
* severity of punishment— must be severe to produce complete suppression of punished
behaviour
* consistency of punishment— must be consistent, i.e., every time inappropriate behaviour
occurs it must be punishment
* delay of punishment— punishment must be immediate
Example: drink driving
Conditioning ‘failures’ to control behaviour, despite repeated food
reinforcements are disrupted by
“_____ - ___________ interference”.
instinct- related
“__________ drift occurs when an animal’s innate response tendencies interfere with
conditioning processes”
instinctive
Breland and Breland suggest that food reinforcement elicited innate food foraging and handling behaviours,
which caused the decline in the effectiveness of an operant response that was reinforced by food. True/False
True
As suggested by Martin Seligman ____________ is biologically programmed phenomenon that involves a species-specific predisposition to be conditioned in certain ways and
not others.
preparedness
(includes food aversion and phobias as well, e.g. spiders, heights, darkness)
As suggested by William Timberlake, _________ _________ approach integrates
innate and learned behaviour and takes the environment and adaptive functions into account.
behavior systems
(e.g. Learning can influence the innate behaviour system of feeding, which is made up of four main
components: search, capture, handling and eat/reject/hoard)
Theory that proposes that behavior cannot be described
in isolation from its environment and the biological function served by the learning.
Ecological Learning Theory
Fixed interval schedules are found to cause a variety of excessive (aberrant or ‘abnormal’) behaviours in humans. True/False
True
(excessive drinking after getting paid, drink driving…)
Learned association of taste and visceral distress (nausea).
Conditioned Taste Aversion
Theory that focuses on basic laws of learning fundamental to all species, and has typically IGNORED BIOLOGICAL ISSUES?
Traditional Learning Theory
Examples of non-lethal animal control:
- Anatolian shepherd to protect sheep and goats
- Maremma dogs that protect pinguins in Australia
- Animal armour- protective collar
- sound producing devices that scare animals
Problems associated with the use of aversive stimuli is that animals become habituated.
True/False
True
animals become habituated to aversive
stimuli
* stimuli may be discriminative stimuli for
reinforcement
* e.g. if siren goes off when predator
enters farmyard, then other predators
know where food is
Rats trained using operant conditioning to detect landmines and tuberculosis.
HeroRATs
___________ cognition is the study of information processing across species, which includes humans and non-human animals.
Comparative
(topics such as
Memory
* Categorisation
* Decision-making
* Problem solving
* Language use
* Deception
The ability to attribute mental states to others, such as knowledge, intentions and
beliefs
Theory of mind
Sharing or concealing
information from others
requires an animal to
understand that it is:
* Separate from other
individuals (self-awareness)
* Content of its mind is
different from others
Developed by Gallop and Amsterdam, classic test of self-awareness:
The mark and mirror test
