Week 7 Associative Learning

Question 1

What is classical conditioning (acquisition)?

Answer 1

Learning that a stimulus is predictive of an outcome and thus forming an association between the two

Question 2

What is the unconditioned stimulus?

Answer 2

a stimulus elicits a usually biologically potent response, eg. food

Question 3

What is the unconditioned response?

Answer 3

a response from the unconditioned stimulus, eg. salivation

Question 4

What is the conditioned stimulus?

Answer 4

a neutral stimulus paired with unconditioned stimulus, eg. tuning fork sound

(needs to occur before the UC)

Question 5

What is the conditioned response?

Answer 5

a learnt response from the conditioned stimuli, eg tuning fork causes salivation

Question 6

What is latent inhibition + example?

Answer 6

When prior exposure of the conditioned stimulus (fork) often impairs producing conditioned response

So, without latent inhibition you are more likely to develop a new association because you have less prior experience with it.

You try a new food and you’ve become unwell it’s more likely to produce a conditioned response.

If the food is familiar to you and you’ve become unwell, you’re less likely to make an association between the familiar food and your sickness.

Question 7

What is extinction?

Answer 7

When you de-couple the conditioned stimulus (fork) from the unconditioned stimulus (food), it gradually impairs the association between the two

Example dogs would stop associating the sound of the fork with food.

Question 8

What is renewal?

Answer 8

After extinction in one context, the renewal of the conditioned stimulus in a new content can reinstate the associative learning

Question 9

How could someone prevent renewal of an association for cases like PTSD?

Answer 9

1. You could de-couple the conditioned stimulus (fork) from the unconditioned stimulus (food) in different contexts, so the extinction is reinforced and the patient learns that the CS is not associated with the UC in multiple contexts
2. Introduce a reward instead

Question 10

What is the difference between stimulus generalisation and stimulus discrimination?

Answer 10

Stimulus generalisation = when the conditioned response is also elicited by similar stimuli like the conditioned stimuli

Stimulus discrimination = when the conditioned response is only elicited by the conditioned stimuli

Question 11

What is operant conditioning (Skinner)?

Answer 11

learning an association between a behaviour and the consequence of that behaviour, which increases or decreases the behaviour depending on reward or punishment

Question 12

What is positive vs. negative reinforcement?

Answer 12

BOTH TYPES OF REINFORCEMENT INCREASE THE BEHAVIOUR

positive reinforcement = the addition of something positive
negative reinforcement = the subtraction of something negative

Question 13

What is positive vs. negative punishment?

Answer 13

BOTH TYPES OF PUNISHMENT DECREASE THE BEHAVIOUR

positive punishment = the addition of something negative
negative punishment = the subtraction of something positive

Question 14

What would type of OC would giving lollies after tantrum be?

Answer 14

positive reinforcement - giving a positive thing

Question 15

What would type of OC would medication fixing a headache be?

Answer 15

negative reinforcement - taking away a negative

Question 16

What would type of OC would getting a hangover be?

Answer 16

positive punishment - addition of a negative

Question 17

What would type of OC would taking a phone away be?

Answer 17

Negative punishment - taking away a positive thing

Question 18

What are the 2 best types of OC that change behaviours?

Answer 18

Punishment doesn’t work because the subject doesn’t know what they are being punished for not doing

Negative and positive reinforcement work at eliciting new behaviours, because the subject is motivated to

1. Stop punishment (negative reinforcement)
2. Increase reward (positive reinforcement)

Question 19

What type of reinforcement is best for changing behaviours?

Answer 19

Partial reinforcement!

This produces slower but more robust changes in behaviour, while continuous reinforcement produces faster but less robust changes in behaviour

Question 20

What are the 4 different types of reinforcement schedules?

Answer 20

1. Fixed ratio = reinforcement is given after a certain number of responses, food every 5 taps
2. Fixed interval = reinforcement is given after a certain amount of time has passed, food every 5 minutes
3. Variable ratio = reinforcement is given after unpredictable number of responses, food on average every 5 taps
4. Variable interval = reinforcement is given after unpredictable amount of time has passed, ie. food on average every 5 minutes

Question 21

What type of partial reinforcement is the most impactful on behaviour?

Answer 21

Variable ratio = reward on average every 5 taps, produces the highest number of responses

eg. why gambling slots are designed that way, social media, game design

Question 22

What is the premack principle?

Answer 22

The effect that reinforcers will be more effective if the outcome is something the individual likes/already does

Question 23

What is erroneous learning / illusory correlations?

Answer 23

Our brain’s tendency in associative learning to make a false association of a systematic relationship between 2 things where only randomness exists

Question 24

What are the 3 reasons why we make illusory correlations?

Answer 24

1. Brain’s tendency for making patterns
2. Poor comprehension of what randomness is
3. Salient information is more likely to be encoded into memory, where people refer back to selective memories and make strong albeit incorrect associations

Question 25

How is signal detection theory related to making illusory correlations?

Answer 25

we are have high sensitivity but also often a very liberal criterion, more hits, more incorrect hits, especially for people with anxiety to judge things as threatening

Question 26

What are two negative outcomes of erroneous learning?

Answer 26

1. Social prejudice, i.e. thinking certain groups are threatening or unintelligent, can lead to changes in how you treat those groups, leading to changes in their behaviour, leading to self-fulfilling prophecies.
2. Negative schemata of the self and the world, people make false associations about their abilities, luck and the way the world treats them - when associations are overly negative, it leads to negative interpretation bias.

Question 27

What are 2 ways to prevent erroneous learning?

Answer 27

1. Self-awareness: remembering we have the common ability to make erroneous associations
2. A true understanding of randomness can be trained, making us less susceptible to making false associations

Question 28

What are primary vs. secondary reinforcers?

Answer 28

Primary reinforcers = necessary for survival/reproduction of the organism, water, food, sex

Secondary reinforcers = associated with primary reinforcers, ie. money, accommodation

Question 29

What is visual statistical learning?

Answer 29

Learning relationships in stimuli where there are statistical regularities present to be noticed

Question 30

Can we pick up statistical regularities in artificial scenes?

Answer 30

In artificial scenes = 70% right (above chance level)

This indicates the brain’s strong ability to look for patterns/statistical regularities even in artificial visual scenes

Question 31

Are we better at detecting temporal or visual statistical regularities?

Answer 31

Temporal statistical regularities accuracy was highest at 95%

(where stimuli were presented temporarily over time instead of spatially)

Question 32

How early does statistical learning develop and what paradigm do we use to test to?

Answer 32

Using the preferential looking paradigm + eye-tracking technology in infants

If they have encoded something, they will be drawn to novel stimuli. If preferential looking for unfamiliar novel stimuli is above chance, one can infer they have encoded the original stimuli.

Results: a few days after birth, infants were sensitive (looked at novel sequences above chance level) to statistical regularities of simple sequences

Question 33

How does statistical learning link with language acquisition?

Answer 33

(Kidd, 2012) - Children who can pick up on statistical patterns quicker are predictive of picking up on linguistic patterns in language, enhancing their acquisition of syntax

Question 34

Does statistical learning help ensemble perception?

(the acquisition of general/average information about a category)

Answer 34

Yes! Ariely (2001) found that people were poor at individual dot identifications, but very good at mean discriminations, whether the test spot was a mean representation of the prior set

In multi element scenes, it appears that it’s easier to extract summary information in a visual scene over individual information.

Statistical learning taking place at a whole-stimulus ‘ensemble’ level due to our global stimuli preference

Question 35

How does statistical learning shows a big limitation in visual searches?

Answer 35

Statistical learning in visual searches shows that people learn the spatial arrangement of visual search arrays while searching for a target, leading to disproportionately faster RTs compared to mixed spatial arrangements.

It is thus important to consider whether the participant is actually searching for the target or whether they have simply memorised the arrangement of the surrounding stimuli.

Question 36

How could we test whether participants are using statistical learning in visual search experiments?

Answer 36

1. Make 2 conditions where one of the spatial arrangements changes each trial and the other stays the same.
2. Compare the two RTs of target identification in visual search
3. If RTs are faster in the same arrangement condition, this indicates participants have memorised the arrangement.

Question 37

After AB blink training, participants showed a reduced AB effect during lags 2-3. Is this truly an improvement in attentional blink or they using statistical learning?

How to demonstrate this idea?

Answer 37

1. Test the trained participants also avoid AB effects at different lags.
2. If they demonstrate no improvement at different lags, this indicates that participants have got used to statistical regularity of expecting to see target 2 at lag 2

Question 38

What are 2 ways of engaging in cognitive reappraisal? (as an emotional regulation technique?)

Answer 38

1. Don’t personalise other people’s behaviour - it is often more about them than it is about you.
2. Think about things from the other person’s point of view
3. You don’t have to be perfect first time / all the time, you can benefit from opportunities to learn and improve
4. Negative emotions (in the right dosage) can have adaptive consequences (eg helping you to prepare)