LM-Classical Conditioning

What is classical conditioning?

A form of learning in which an animal acquires the expectation that a given stimulus predicts a specific upcoming important event

What is the Unconditioned Stimulus (US)?

Elicits the unconditioned response

(Food)

What is the Unconditioned Response (UR)?

Response which is automatically (involuntary) produced

(Salivation)

What is a conditioned stimulus (CS)?

Originally neutral stimulus that elicits a behavior after being paired with a US

(Bell)

What is a conditioned response (CR)?

Response elicited by the conditioned stimulus

(Salivate - but by the bell)

What is appetitive conditioning?

Conditioning in which the US is a desirable stimuli (such as food delivery)

What is aversive conditioning?

Conditioning in which the US is a disagreeable stimuli (such as a shock or an airpuff to the eye)

What is extinction?

In classical conditioning, the process of reducing a learned response to a stimulus by ceasing to pair that stimulus with another, previously associated stimulus

What is compound conditioning?

Conditioning in which two or more cues are present together, usually simultaneously, forming a compound CS

What is overshadowing?

An effect seen in compound conditioning when a more salient cure within a compound acquires more association strength than does the less salient cue and is thus more strongly associated with the US

What is Kamin’s Blocking Effect?

A two-phase training paradigm in which prior conditioning with one cue (CS1 US) blocks later learning of a second cure when the two are paired together in the second phase of the training (CS1 + CS2 US)

What is the Rescorla-Wagner Model of Conditioning?

Changes in CS-US associations on a trail are driven by the discrepancy (or error) between the animal’s expectation (or prediction) of the US and whether the US occurred

• Also sometimes reffered to as prediction error

Equation for Prediction Error

Prediction Error = What Happens-What was expected to happen

• If outcome is fully expected = no learning occurs

• If outcome is surprising = Learning occurs

What is Error-Correction Learning?

Learning through trial and error to reduce the discrepancy (error) between what is predicted and what occurs