(10) Conditioning and Learning Flashcards by I M

What is Learning?

Relatively permanent change in behaviour due to experience

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What is Reinforcement?

Any event that increases the probability that a response will occur again. The process whereby an event increases the probability that a response will occur again

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What is a Response?

Any identifiable behaviour

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What is classical conditioning?

Discovered by accident
Ivan Pavlov: Russian physiologist studying digestion
Studied salivation in dogs when they were presented with meat powder
Food elicited reflex (salivation in this case): Automatic, non-learned, response
Pavlov’s key discovery: An arbitrary (or neutral) stimulus (e.g., sound of a bell) paired with the meat powder began to elicit the reflex (salivation)
Known as Pavlovian conditioning

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-NS =

Neutral stimulus

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-US =

Unconditioned stimulus

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-UR =

Unconditioned reflex or response

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-CS =

Conditioned stimulus

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-CR =

Conditioned reflex or response

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What is Spontaneous recovery?

Reappearance of a conditioned response (CR) following its (apparent) extinction
Without further pairings of the CS with US, CR not recovered to full strength however

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What is Stimulus generalisation?

A tendency to produce the conditioned response (CR) to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus (CS)
E.g. association with playing a note of the piano with pain, playing a similar note will produce some anxiety

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What did Rescorla (1967) find about presenting tones and shocking dogs?

Exposed dogs to electric shock. On some trials, shock (US) was preceded by a tone (CS)
Two groups (A and B) presented with same number of temporally contiguous US-CS pairs.
But only in Group A was a shock ALWAYS preceded by a tone
Group A learned the association quickly, Group B did not
Shocks were independent of the tone

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What is Vicarious Classical Conditioning?

Learning to respond emotionally to a stimulus by observing another’s emotional reactions e.g. child watching parent

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What is Desensitisation?

Exposing phobic people gradually to feared stimuli while they stay calm and relaxed

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What is Aversive therapy?

-Treatment of abnormal behaviour: Pair an unacceptable response with a punishment to produce a new, ‘acceptable’, response

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What did Briggs (1954) find about classical conditioning in humans?

(Human) participants learned paired associate words (A1-B1, A2-B2…etc)
Concrete example: ‘pineapple – dog’, ‘desk – cushion’, …etc…
Then new list of paired associates but first word of previous pairs was presented again i.e., A1-C1, A2-C2,…etc) e.g., ‘pineapple – hammer’, ‘desk – scissors’
Then presented an A item; participant to say the pair that “came to mind” (-B or -C).
Due to RI, fewer B item responses than C item responses
But…24 hours later, participants tested again; now, B item responses more frequent than C item responses (i.e., spontaneous recovery of initial association)

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After classical conditioning the conditioned stimulus elicits the _______________ response.

Conditioned response

When an animal is trained on one stimulus and responds to a similar stimulus, we call it ________________.

Stimulus generalisation

The period during which a response is being learned is called __________________.

Acquisition

Before conditioning has started, the unconditioned stimulus elicits the _________________.

Unconditioned response

When a response comes back after a rest period, it’s called _________________.

Spontaneous recovery

Operant conditioning

-Definition: Learning based on the consequences of responding; responses are associated with their consequences

What is the Law of Effect (Thorndike)?

The probability of a response is altered by the effect it has; responses that lead to desired effects are repeated, those that lead to undesired effects are not. Stamped into the mind
-Thorndike studied how cats learned to open a latch to get food through positive reinforcement

What did B.F. Skinner (1938) do?

Built a Conditioning Chamber (or Skinner Box): Apparatus designed to study operant conditioning in animals
Used Response-Contingent Reinforcement: Reinforcement given (only) after a desired response

Positive Reinforcement:

When a response is followed by a positive stimulus that makes that response more likely

Negative Reinforcement:

When a response is followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus that makes that response more likely, e.g. stopping a shock by pressing a leaver

-Punishment:

When a response is either: i) Followed by an aversive stimulus that makes that response less likely ii) Followed by the removal of a positive stimulus that makes that response less likely

Primary Reinforcer:

Non-learned and natural; satisfies biological needs (e.g., food, water, sex)

-Intracranial Stimulation (ICS):

Natural primary reinforcer; involves direct activation of brain’s “pleasure centers”

-Secondary Reinforcer:

Learned reinforcer (e.g., money, grades, approval, praise)

-Token Reinforcer:

Tangible secondary reinforcer (e.g., money, gold stars, poker chips)

-Social Reinforcer:

Provided by other people (e.g., learned desires for attention and approval)

Operant extinction

- Definition: When learned responses that are NOT reinforced gradually fade away - Negative Attention Seeking: Using misbehaviour to gain attention! - Not giving attention can extinguish the behaviour (e.g., Williams, 1959) - Reward in the form of attention, no attention can extinguish undesirable response

-Stimulus generalisation

e.g., child petting other dogs following positive reinforcement of petting the family dog

-Stimulus discrimination

e.g., Through selective reinforcement of petting only family dog. E.g. can pet the family dog but not other dogs

Why is timing important in learning?

- E.g., Rats in a Skinner box show a rapid drop in learning as delay between the response and the reinforcer increases - E.g. pressing the lever and nothing happening, then later being presented with food. Confusing as to what caused the food to come

What is the token economy?

- Ayllon and Azrin (1965): Shaping desirable behaviour on a mental hospital ward - Access to desirable things e.g. cigarettes etc by doing things to gain them, e.g. tidying room etc

The ethological challenge

- Laws of learning not the same in all species - Ethologists emphasise biological (genetic) predispositions over learning - Evidence for ethological view: - Chicken’s instinctive food-gathering behaviour competed with the desired learned response (Breland & Breland, 1961) - The selectivity of associability in classical conditioning: rats learned an association between taste and sickness but not between a tone and sickness (Garcia & Koelling, 1966) - E.g. poison (US) > feeling sick (UR) – vanilla (NS) > poison (US) > feeling sick (UR) – vanilla (CS) > feeling sick (CR)

What is imprinting?

- There is a critical period for developing attachment behaviours - Bird songs: Birds have inborn template for acquiring their own species’ song

What is the cognitive challenge?

- Learning and intelligence relies on the animal’s inner mental representations of the world - Kohler (1920s): ‘Insight’ in apes, doesn’t discover by chance - Mental note-taking in rats (e.g., Olton & Samuelson, 1976) – maze to get food, doesn’t go back to places where they’ve already collected food from