Week 2 - Pavlovian conditioning (basic principles)

Question 1

What is habituation?

Answer 1

A decline in a reflexive/automatic response when the same stimulus is repeatedly presented without consequence.

Question 2

What is the purpose of habituation?

Answer 2

Saves processing resources; prevents wasting attention on irrelevant, repetitive events.

EG. Rats freeze the first time they hear a loud noise, but stop responding after repeated exposure.

Question 3

Who proposed the Free Energy Principle?

Answer 3

Karl Friston (2010).

Question 4

What is the core idea of the Free Energy Principle?

Answer 4

• Brains are adaptive systems that must resist entropy (disorder/surprise)
• Biological systems minimise long-term surprise by maintaining predictable states.
• Surprise = entropy
• EG: A fish out of water experiences high entropy.

Question 5

Who discovered classical conditioning?

Answer 5

• Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936).
• Dogs salivated not only at food, but also at associated cues (experimenter, footsteps, bell).

Question 6

What are the four elements of classical conditioning?

Answer 6

• Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
• Unconditioned Response (UR)
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
• Conditioned Response (CR)

Question 7

What is an Unconditioned Stimulus (US)?

Answer 7

Triggers innate response (e.g., food).

Question 8

What is an Unconditioned Response (UR)?

Answer 8

Innate response (e.g., salivation to food).

Question 9

What is a Conditioned Stimulus (CS)?

Answer 9

Previously neutral stimulus (e.g., bell) that comes to predict the US.

Question 10

What is a Conditioned Response (CR)?

Answer 10

Learned response to the CS (e.g., salivation to bell).

Question 11

True or False: The Unconditioned Response (UR) and Conditioned Response (CR) are identical.

Answer 11

False.

Key distinction: UR and CR may look identical (both salivation), but differ in what elicits them (innate vs learned).

Question 12

What is the ‘Little Albert’ experiment an example of?

Answer 12

Phobias/Fear Learning.
- Neutral stimuli paired with frightening events can lead to maladaptive fears.

Paired loud noise (US) with white rat (CS) → fear response (CR) generalized to other furry objects.

Question 13

What is the first phase of a classical conditioning experiment?

Answer 13

Habituation.

CS presented alone; ensures no pre-existing response.

Question 14

What occurs during the acquisition phase of classical conditioning?

Answer 14

CS + US paired repeatedly; learning occurs.

○ Graph: CR strength increases with more pairings.

Question 15

What is extinction in classical conditioning?

Answer 15

CS presented alone; CR weakens over time.

Question 16

What factor influences acquisition in classical conditioning?

Answer 16

• US intensity - strong US = faster learning
• Order & timing of CS-US:

Question 17

What is delay conditioning?
(short vs long)

Answer 17

• delay conditioning (short): CS starts, US introduced while CS still present = strong learning
• delay conditioning (long): CS presented long before US = weaker

Question 18

What is the difference between excitatory and inhibitory conditioning?

Answer 18

• Excitatory Conditioning: CS predicts occurrence of US (bell = food)
• Inhibitory Conditioning: CS predicts absence of US (light = no food)
  
  • Example: Bell + food, but bell + light = no food. Light becomes an inhibitor.

Question 19

why do we need to test for inhibitory conditioning and what are they called?

Answer 19

since inhibition predicts “nothing”, we need special tests:
1. retardation test
2. summation test

For a stimulus to be a true conditioned inhibitor, it must pass both tests.

Question 20

What does spontaneous recovery refer to?

Answer 20

CR returns after a break.

Question 21

What is renewal in the context of classical conditioning?

Answer 21

CR returns in a new context (learning is context specific)

Question 22

What are three traditional assumptions challenged in classical conditioning (now disproved)?

Answer 22

• Equipotentiality – any stimuli can be paired.
  
  • Contiguity – more pairings → stronger learning.
  • Contingency – learning changes regularly trial by trial.

Question 23

What is blocking in classical conditioning?

Answer 23

○ Prior learning about one CS (noise → shock) blocks learning about a new CS (light).
- Even though light+noise+shock pairings occur, no learning about light.

Question 24

What is superconditioning?

Answer 24

○ Prior learning that a stimulus is a safety cue (inhibitor) increases learning about a new CS.
- Example: Tone = no shock. Then tone + light + shock → light strongly associated with shock.

Question 25

what therapy is used to treat phobias?

Answer 25

- Flooding – exposing clients to feared stimuli while teaching coping skills. ○ Clinical relevance: fears are learned and can be unlearned.

Question 26

define trace conditioning

Answer 26

CS ends, then gap before US → learning depends on memory of CS.

Question 27

define simultaneous conditioning

Answer 27

CS and US at same time → weak learning

Question 28

define backward conditioning

Answer 28

US before CS → very weak/none.

Question 29

define temporal conditioning

Answer 29

CS is time itself (e.g., cat expects food at 6pm daily).

Question 30

what is the retardation test?

Answer 30

- Retardation test is a procedure used to determine if a stimulus is a conditioned inhibitor (i.e., predicts the absence of an outcome) by seeing how long it takes to become excitatory. - If a stimulus has been previously trained to predict the absence of a reward (it's an inhibitor), it will be much slower to acquire a new, excitatory response during the retardation test compared to a neutral stimulus. - This slowness demonstrates that the animal has already learned to associate the stimulus with non-reinforcement, and must overcome this initial understanding to learn a new association.

Question 31

what is the summation test?

Answer 31

- The summation test in classical conditioning checks if a stimulus is an inhibitor by pairing it with a known excitatory stimulus and seeing if the response is reduced. - In a simple example, if a light (excitatory stimulus) causes a dog to salivate, and a tone is later trained to act as an inhibitor (i.e., it predicts no food), the summation test presents the light and tone together. - If the dog salivates less to the combination of the light and tone than to the light alone, the tone is a conditioned inhibitor.

Question 32

what is reinstatement?

Answer 32

US presented alone after extinction → CR reappears to CS.

Question 33

why is extinction complex?

Answer 33

* Extinction ≠ erasure of learning. * Three phenomena show persistence: 1. spontaneous recovery: spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of the response after a period of time has passed since extinction 2. renewal: occurs when the conditioned stimulus is encountered in a new context or environment, different from where extinction occurred. 3. reinstatement: happens when the unconditioned stimulus (US) is re-presented after extinction, often due to a stressor or a related aversive event.