PSY 383 Exam 2 Study Guide 2

Be able to define and also apply the basic terminology of classical conditioning (unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response) to a variety of real-world and experimental situations.

• Classical Conditioning: A form of learning in which an animal acquires the expectation that a given stimulus predicts a specific upcoming event

• Unconditioned stimulus(US): A cue that has some biological significance and that, in the absence of prior training, evokes a response

• Unconditioned response(UR): The naturally occurring response to a US

• Conditioned stimulus(CS): A cue that is paired with an US and comes to elicit a conditioned response

• Conditioned Response(CR): The trained response to a CS in anticipation of the US that the CS predicts

How Pavlov demonstrate classical conditioning in dogs?

• Hooked dogs up to an apparatus

• Associated the sound of a bell to food

• Which then caused the neutral stimulus(the bell) to become a conditioned stimulus

• Soon after repeated trials, in the dogs mind, the sound of the bell became paired with the arrival of food

What is the difference between appetitive and aversive conditioning?

• Appetitive Conditioning: Conditioning in which the US is a desirable event(food)

• Aversive Conditioning: Conditioning in which the US is a disagreeable event(shock)

How do the processes of acquisition and extinction work?

• Acquisition happens when a neutral stimulus becomes paired with an unconditioned stimulus, which in then turn causes said neutral stimulus to become a conditioned stimulus(Eye blink Conditioned response: Day 1: Only UR to airpuff, day 3: anticipatory eyeblink, day 5: strong anticipatory eyeblink)

• Extinction is the process of reducing a learned response to a stimulus by ceasing to pair them together

How does the conditioned compensatory response develop (particularly its application to drug tolerance

• Conditioned compensatory responses develop through trials that then lead to expectations. These expectations can then cause reactions that prepare for whatever is coming

• In relation to drug tolerance, after repeated interactions with a drug, the body will naturally become more used to whatever drug(Dog and adrenaline)

What is the blocking effect and what is its theoretical significance?

• The blocking effect is a two-phase training paradigm in which prior conditioning with a cue(CS,US) blocks later learning of a second cue

• Through blocking, researchers were able to find that classical conditioning occurs only when a cue is both a useful and a nonredundant predictor of the future

Be able to identify the key components of the Rescorla-Wagner model and apply the model to classical conditioning phenomena.

• The key idea behind this model is that changes in CS-US associations on a trial are driven by the discrepancy between the animal’s expectation of the US versus what really occurs

• Prediction error: The difference between what was predicted and what actually occurred.

• Error-correction learning: learning through trial and error to reduce the discrepancy between what is predicted and what occurs

How do the concepts of conditioning extend to more advanced category learning?

• People can be trained to categorize certain things based on their attributes

• Bower and Trabasso trained students to categorize objects based on shape

• But, if a redundant cue is added after the objects are already sorted, they can become confused

How does classical conditioning apply to cause-effect judgments?

Through classical conditioning researchers are able to identify if one event(the cause) can lead to another(the effect)

Be able to apply neural networks to category learning.

Through trial and error/guessing, someone can trained to associate certain attributes with a specific category and after time, they will be trained to recognize that attribute as being attributed to that category(Gluck and Bower)

What is latent inhibition and the modulation of CS processing?

• Latent Inhibition is a conditioning paradigm in which prior exposure to a CS retards later learning of the CS-US association during acquisition training

• Modulation of CS processing is any of the theories of conditioning that say the stimulus that enters into an association is determined by a change in how the CS is processed

What is the role of timing in conditioning (be able to describe the specific effects)?

• Timing is one of the most determinant factors in how well someone can learn something

• It refers to the duration of time in between the CS and US

• Trial-level model: A theory of learning in which all the cues that occur during a trial and all the changes that result are considered a single event

• Delay Conditioning: A conditioning procedure in which there is no temporal gap between the end of the CS and the beginning of the US

• Trace Conditioning: A conditioning procedure in which there is a temporal gap between the end of the CS and the beginning of the US

• Interstimulus Interval(ISI): The temporal gap between the onset of the CS and the onset of the US

Why are some associations more readily learned (biased) and how do ecological constraints affect conditioning?

• Some associations are more readily learned due to evolutionary preparedness, a concept which states that organisms are genetically wired to connect certain stimuli more easily than others to ensure survival.

• Ecological constraints—the natural environment and lifestyle of a species—dictate which associations are useful, thereby shaping how conditioning operates in the real world.

• Food is more related to illness

• This biases can affect learning associations that correspond to causal relationships in the ecological niches in which the animals live and evolve.

What is the role of the cerebellum in conditioned responding?

• The cerebellum lies below the cerebral cortex in the back of the head and is responsible for the classical conditioning of motor-reflex responses

• It contains two separate regions: one being the cerebellar cortex, which contains Purkinje cells, and beneath that is the cerebellar deep nuclei, which hold the interpositus nucleus

What is the role of the interpositus nucleus and pontine nuclei in conditioning?

• Interpositus Nuclei: One of the cells within the cerebellar deep nuclei in which the conditioned response output is generated in classically conditioned motor responses

• Pontine Nuclei: This is where CS pathways from elsewhere project to; the pontine nuclei are in the brainstem. The pontine nuclei have two different subregions for each kind of sensory stimulation, meaning that a tone CS and a light CS will go to two different places

What is the role of inhibitory feedback in conditioning?

• In a well trained animal, the production of a CR, through activation of the interpositus nucleus, will in turn inhibit the inferior olive from sending US information to the Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex. This means that activity in the inferior olive will reflect the actual US minus the expected US.

• Its primary role is to signal the absence or omission of an expected unconditioned stimulus (US), allowing an organism to adaptively suppress a learned response when it is no longer appropriate.

How does the hippocampus contribute to conditioning?

• The hippocampus plays a major role in latent learning. Researchers have found that removing the hippocampus can eliminate the latent inhibition effect in classical conditioing

Be able to describe the cellular-level influences on conditioning in Aplysia.

• Kandel and his colleagues when studying aplysia were able to demonstrate that activating sensory neurons has at least three consequences

• Causes motor neurons to fire

• Causes a decrease in glutamate available for any subsequent stimulation of the sensory neuron

• Primes the synapse through a series of intracellular events lasting about half a second, which increases glutamate release

How does conditioning apply to drug tolerance and overdose

• An addicts tolerance to drugs develops through automatic compensatory responses

• This happens through conditioning

• -Environmental cues act like CSs associated with the drug

• -The intense craving felt in response is the CS resulting from the body’s conditioned compensatory response of lowering the levels of the brain chemicals enhanced by the drug in anticipation of the drug’s arrival

• Addiction can be partially reduced through extinction(Rats and alcohol)

What is the CREB-1 gene?

• This gene activates genes in the neuron’s nucleus that initiate the growth of new synapses

How did E. L. Thorndike “discover” operant conditioning?

• He discovered it by watching how cats learned to escape from puzzle boxes

Be able to identify the components of the learned association (stimulus, response, outcome).

• In the presence of a stimulus, sometimes called the discriminative stimulus(Sd), a response(R) may lead to an outcome(O)

• Sd—>R—>O

What are the similarities and differences between classical and instrumental conditioning? Be able to identify whether classical or operant conditioning is occurring in applied situations.

• In classical conditioning, organisms experience an outcome whether or not the perform the conditioned response

• In operant conditioning the outcome depends on whether the organism performs the response

What is the difference between free-operant and discrete trial procedures?

• Free-operant: The animal can operate the apparatus as it chooses in order to obtain reinforcement

• Discrete-trial: The experimenter defines the beginning and end of each trial

What is the difference between reinforcement and punishment?

• Reinforcement: The process of providing outcomes that lead to an increased probability of a behavior

• Punishment: The process of providing outcomes that lead to decreased probability of a behavior

What is the role of discriminative stimuli in operant learning

• The discriminative stimuli helps the learner identify the conditions in which a response will be followed by a particular outcome

What procedures are used during shaping and chaining?

• Shaping involves successive approximations to the desired response being reinforced

• Chaining involves organisms being gradually trained to execute complicated sequences of discrete responses

How can you discriminate between primary and secondary reinforcers?

• A primary reinforcer is something that has biological value to an organism(Food, water, sleep)

• A secondary reinforcer is a reinforcer that initially had no biological value, but has now been paired with a primary reinforcer(Money)

Be able to explain positive and negative contrast.

• Negative contrast is the phenomenon in which the reinforcing value of one reward is reduced because a better reward is expected

• Positive contrast is the phenomenon in which the reinforcing value of one reward increases because the other reward has a lesser reward

What factors influence the effectiveness of punishment?

• If the punishment leads to more variable behavior

• Discriminative stimuli for punishment can encourage cheating

• Concurrent reinforcement can undermine the punishment

• Initial intensity matters

What is the role of timing in acquiring operant responses?

• Normally, immediate outcomes produce the fastest learning

• If there is a long delay, it is more likely that other behaviors have taken place during the interval, and those behaviors might thus be associated with the outcome

Be able to define and apply the processes of positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment (omission), and negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement: The response causes a reinforcer to be “added to the environment; over time the response becomes more frequent

Positive punishment: The response causes an undesirable element to be “added” to the environment; over time, the response becomes less frequent

Negative reinforcement: The response causes an undesirable element to be “subtracted from” the environment; over time, the response becomes more frequent

Negative punishment: The response causes a desirable element to be “subtracted from” the environment; over time, the response becomes less frequent

What are the different schedules of reinforcement and how do they affect responding?

Continuous Reinforcement is a schedule in which every instance of the response is followed by the reinforcer

Partial reinforcement is a schedule in which only some instances of the response are followed by the reinforcer

Fixed Ratio: A specific number of responses must occur before a reinforcer is delivered. This usually involves steady responding leading up to reinforcement, followed by a few seconds with no responding(post-reinforcement pause)

Fixed interval: The first response occurs after a fixed amount of time. This usually involves the subject waiting the exact time after each reinforcement to then respond

Variable Ratio: A specific number of responses, on average, must occur before a reinforcer is delivered. Due to the reinforcement happening on average, this results in high rates of responding

Variable Interval: The first response occurs after a variable amount of time on average. Response rate is usually steady

What is the matching law and how does it apply to choice?

• Matching law is the idea that an organism’s response patterns will closely mimic the relative rates of reinforcement for each possible response

• This can change how we make our decisions

What does ”bliss point” refer to and how is it defined?

• The bliss point is known as the particular allocation of resources that provides maximal subjective value to an individual

Be able to describe and apply the Premack principle and the response deprivation hypothesis.

• The Premack Principle states that a high-probability (preferred) behavior can reinforce a low-probability (less preferred) behavior, while the

• Response Deprivation Hypothesis states that restricting access to any behavior below its normal baseline level makes that behavior an effective reinforcer, regardless of its initial relative preference

What is delayed reinforcement?

• Delayed reinforcement involves a duration of time between response and reinforcment

• Delay discounting: The progressive reduction of the subjective value of a reward the longer it is delayed

What role does the basal ganglia play in operant learning

• The basal ganglia sends information from the sensory cortex to the motor cortex

• The basal ganglia also holds the dorsal striatum, which receives highly processed stimulus information from the sensory cortex and projects it to the motor cortex, which produces a behavioral response

• The dorsal striatum plays a major role in operant conditioing, specifically the ability to learn(Sd—>R) associations based on feedback about reinforcement and punishment

What role does the orbitofrontal cortex play in operant learning

• The orbitofrontal cortex, which is a part of the prefrontal cortex, receives inputs that convey the full range of sensory modalities, as well as visceral sensations(hunger and thirst), allowing this brain area to integrate many types of information

• Outputs from here travel to brain areas, including the striatum, where they can then help determine which motor responses are executed

What neural circuits are associated with reward and operant learning?

• The Ventral tegmental area(VTA) and the Substantia Nigra Pars Compacta(SNC)

How are the dopamine circuits in the brain involved in reinforcement?

• The substantia Nigra Pars Compacta(SNC) is a part of the basal ganglia that contains dopamine producing neurons projecting to the striatum

• The incentive salience hypothesis of dopamine function states that one role of dopamine is to signal how much the animal wants a particular outcome—that is, how motivated they are to work for it

• There is also evidence that dopamine plays a role in monitoring reward prediction error

How is the ventral tegmental area involved in reinforcement?

• It does this by releasing dopamine and broadcasting reward prediction-error signals across the brain’s reward networks

What role do opioids play in reinforcement?

• opioids and endogenous opioids(opiate-like) can be distributed throughout the CNS, and when released into the body, they have a wide range of effects, such as reducing the normal perception of pain and producing feelings of euphoria

• They are released in response to primary reinforcers and sometimes secondary reinforcers

What role does operant learning play in drug addiction

• Operant learning plays a role in drug addiction by sometimes furthering the addiction

• Whenever someone takes the drug there is an immediate reward which can then intensify someone to want to take that drug more

• Or, taking the drug may alleviate pain, so the drug is the only thing that can fix it, meaning that their mind becomes trained to react this way

What brain circuits are affected by certain drug addictions

• The insula cortex, which is involved in conscious awareness of bodily and emotional states and that may play a role in signaling the aversive value of a stimuli, can be affected

• The Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex(dACC), which plays a role in the motivational value of pain, can also be affected

Be able to compare and contrast pathological and behavioral addictions

• A pathological addiction is a strong habit that is maintained despite known harmful consequences

• A behavioral addiction is an addiction to behaviors that produce reinforcements or highs, as well as cravings and withdrawal symptoms when the behavior is preseted

What are some behavioral treatments used to treat addictions

• Cognitive Therapy

• Naltrexone(blocks opiate receptors)

• Distancing

• Differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors(DRA)

• Delayed reinforcement

What are hedonic value and motivational value?

• Hedonic value is how much we like a reinforcer

• Motivational Value is how much we want a reinforcer and how we willing we are to work for it