0010 Ch 6 Gaps (3/3)

What is biological preparedness (Seligman, 1970)?

A genetically programmed tendency to fear certain objects — e.g., monkeys condition fear to snakes far more easily than to flowers or rabbits (Cook & Mineka, 1989)

What does dopamine set the value of — and what happens if dopamine is blocked?

It sets the value of a rewarding US (classical) or reinforcer (operant); blocking dopamine disrupts conditioning

Where is dopamine released for food reward, and what modulates it (Rolls et al., 1980)?

In the nucleus accumbens (basal ganglia); release is greater with greater hunger — deprivation increases reward value

Distinguish wanting from liking (Robinson & Berridge, 1993).

Wanting = desire or craving, driven by dopamine; liking = subjective pleasure, driven by endogenous opiates. They dissociate — e.g., a smoker can want a cigarette without enjoying it

In Schultz et al. (1997), what happened to monkey dopamine activity across conditioning?

Unexpected juice → dopamine spike; after conditioning, the CS (light/tone) triggered the burst but the expected juice did not; omitting the expected juice → dopamine dipped below baseline

As learning progresses, what happens to dopamine activity — and what does this explain?

It shifts from the reward itself to the cue predicting it — explaining second-order conditioning and why secondary reinforcers like money work

What is a phobia?

An acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat

Why might freezing be a hardwired fear response (LeDoux, 2002)?

Keeping still may help avoid a predator's notice

In Little Albert (Watson & Rayner, 1920), what were the CS, US, and CR?

CS: white rat; US: loud hammer-on-iron-bar sound; CR: fear and crying. The fear generalized to a rabbit, a ball of wool, and a Santa mask with a white beard

What operant component appeared in Little Albert's behavior?

His crawling away from the feared objects was reinforced by fear reduction

What theoretical point was Watson making with Little Albert?

That phobias could arise from simple learning principles — countering Freud's theory that they stem from repressed sexual desires

How did Mary Cover Jones (1924) eliminate 3-year-old Peter's rabbit fear?

By bringing a rabbit gradually closer while giving him a favorite food — a precursor of behavioral therapies

Give two textbook examples of drug cues becoming conditioned stimuli (Siegel, 2005).

Coffee smell triggering arousal as if caffeinated; the sight of a needle triggering craving in heroin addicts — some inject water to reduce cravings

Why does taking the usual drug dose in a novel setting risk overdose (Siegel)?

Tolerance is partly conditioned to the usual setting — the body compensates metabolically in anticipation; in a new setting that compensation does not occur, leaving the full drug effect unopposed

In Bandura's Bobo doll study (1961), how much more aggressive were children who saw the aggressive model?

More than twice as likely to act aggressively toward the doll

What does the media-violence research overall show (Gentile et al., 2007; Bushman & Anderson, 2015)?

Meta-analyses show violent-media exposure increases the likelihood of aggression, though longitudinal work notes confounds like personality and poverty

When is imitation of a model most likely?

When the model is attractive, high-status, and somewhat similar to the observer — and the observer is physically capable of the behavior

In Bandura's 1965 study, what happened when children were offered gifts to reproduce the model's aggression?

All groups reproduced it — showing everyone had learned the behavior; the observed consequences had affected performance, not learning

What is instructed learning, and why is it uniquely human?

Learning stimulus/action associations through verbal instruction (Vygotsky, 1962); it underlies complex human culture (Tomasello et al., 1993) — e.g., learning COVID precautions by being told about invisible germs

In Mineka's monkey studies, how did lab-reared monkeys acquire snake fear?

By watching wild-reared monkeys react fearfully to snakes — the acquired fear lasted 3 months

What brain structure is critical for conditioned defensive responses, per LeDoux (2015a)?

The amygdala — an almond-shaped structure in the medial temporal lobe, critical for acquisition and expression of freezing and autonomic arousal to aversive CSs

What did Phelps and colleagues find about the three routes to fear learning?

Classical (shock pairing), observational (watching another person shocked), and instructed (being told) routes all produced defensive responses like sweating, with critical amygdala involvement in every case