Chapter 12:  Biological Dispositions in Learning 

1. What is taste aversion conditioning? How does latent inhibition help explain why it is difficult to poison a rat? Describe the three ways taste aversion conditioning differs from other types of Pavlovian conditioning.  

A form of classical conditioning in which a food item has been paired with gastrointestinal illness becomes a conditioned aversive stimulus  

When a rat encounters a novel food item, such as rat bait, it will most likely eat only a small amount of the item before moving on to other familiar items 

1. Formation of associations over long delays: 

2. One trial conditioning 

3. Specificity of associations 

2. Explain the procedure, results, and significance of Garcia & Koelling’s demonstration of belongingness in taste aversion learning.  

The rats that had been made nauseous by the X-ray irradiation avoided the sweet water and drank the bright, noisy water, which is consistent with the basic notion that nausea is more readily associated with the taste with other kinds of stimuli.  

3. Define instinctive drift and sign-tracking.  

Instinctive drift: An instance of CC in which genetically based, fixed action pattern gradually emerges and displaces behavior that is being operant conditioning  

Sign tracking: type of elicited behavior in which an organism approaches a stimulus that signals the presentation of an appetitive event.  

4. Review the autoshaping procedure. How would you change the procedure to make it operant rather than Pavlovian? You should be able to distinguish between operant and Pavlovian procedures.  

Autoshaping: a type of sign tracking in which a pigeon comes to automatically peck at a key because the key light has been associated with the non-contingent) response-independent) delivery of food  

5. Explain the phenomenon of negative automaintenance.  

The key light exerts such strong control over the behavior that it essentially overrides the negative punishment (loss of food) associated with pecking. This phenomenon, in which sing tracking persists despite the resultant loss of reinforcer.  

6. Define adjunctive behavior and schedule-induced polydipsia. When does adjunctive typically occur? Give examples of adjunctive behavior for both nonhumans and humans. 

Adjunctive behavior: an excessive pattern of behavior that emerges as by-product of an intermittent schedule of reinforcement of some other behavior  

Schedule–induced polydipsia: excessive thirst. Rats were trained to press a lever for food on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement, they also began drinking excessive amounts of water.  

When does it occur? Happens during interreinforcement intervals 

Examples: chewing on wood shavings, licking at an air stream (presumably because of the sensory stimulation it provided), and aggression.  

Examples in humans: nail biting, talkativeness, snacking, coffee drinking are commonly associated with periods of enforced waiting.