Once a Conditioned Behavior Is Extinguished
Chapter 8. Learning
8.1 Learning by Clan: Classical Workout
Learning Objectives
- Draw how Pavlov'south early work in classical workout influenced the agreement of learning.
- Review the concepts of classical workout, including unconditioned stimulus (United states of america), conditioned stimulus (CS), unconditioned response (UR), and conditioned response (CR).
- Explain the roles that extinction, generalization, and discrimination play in conditioned learning.
Pavlov Demonstrates Conditioning in Dogs
In the early part of the 20th century, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), shown in Figure 8.2, was studying the digestive organisation of dogs when he noticed an interesting behavioural phenomenon: the dogs began to salivate when the lab technicians who unremarkably fed them entered the room, even though the dogs had not withal received any food. Pavlov realized that the dogs were salivating because they knew that they were nigh to be fed; the dogs had begun to associate the arrival of the technicians with the food that soon followed their appearance in the room.
With his team of researchers, Pavlov began studying this procedure in more item. He conducted a serial of experiments in which, over a number of trials, dogs were exposed to a sound immediately before receiving food. He systematically controlled the onset of the sound and the timing of the delivery of the nutrient, and recorded the corporeality of the dogs' salivation. Initially the dogs salivated only when they saw or smelled the food, but after several pairings of the sound and the food, the dogs began to salivate every bit soon every bit they heard the audio. The animals had learned to associate the sound with the nutrient that followed.
Pavlov had identified a central associative learning process chosen classical conditioning. Classical conditioning refers to learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone) becomes associated with a stimulus (eastward.g., nutrient) that naturally produces a behaviour. After the association is learned, the previously neutral stimulus is sufficient to produce the behaviour.
As you tin see in Figure eight.3, "4-Console Prototype of Whistle and Domestic dog," psychologists use specific terms to identify the stimuli and the responses in classical conditioning. The unconditioned stimulus (The states) is something (such as food) that triggers a naturally occurring response, and the unconditioned response (UR) is the naturally occurring response (such as salivation) that follows the unconditioned stimulus. The conditioned stimulus (CS) is a neutral stimulus that, later being repeatedly presented prior to the unconditioned stimulus, evokes a like response every bit the unconditioned stimulus. In Pavlov's experiment, the audio of the tone served as the conditioned stimulus that, afterward learning, produced the conditioned response (CR), which is the acquired response to the formerly neutral stimulus. Note that the UR and the CR are the aforementioned behaviour — in this case salivation — simply they are given different names because they are produced by dissimilar stimuli (the US and the CS, respectively).
Conditioning is evolutionarily beneficial because information technology allows organisms to develop expectations that help them set for both skillful and bad events. Imagine, for example, that an brute first smells a new food, eats it, and then gets sick. If the fauna can larn to associate the odour (CS) with the food (US), it will quickly learn that the food creates the negative event and will not swallow it the next time.
The Persistence and Extinction of Conditioning
Afterward he had demonstrated that learning could occur through association, Pavlov moved on to report the variables that influenced the strength and the persistence of conditioning. In some studies, after the conditioning had taken place, Pavlov presented the sound repeatedly but without presenting the food afterward. Figure viii.4, "Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous Recovery," shows what happened. As y'all can come across, after the initial acquisition (learning) phase in which the conditioning occurred, when the CS was then presented solitary, the behaviour rapidly decreased — the dogs salivated less and less to the audio, and somewhen the sound did not elicit salivation at all. Extinction refers to the reduction in responding that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is presented repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus.
Although at the end of the first extinction period the CS was no longer producing salivation, the effects of conditioning had not entirely disappeared. Pavlov institute that, after a pause, sounding the tone once more elicited salivation, although to a lesser extent than before extinction took place. The increase in responding to the CS post-obit a pause later on extinction is known as spontaneous recovery. When Pavlov again presented the CS lonely, the behaviour again showed extinction until it disappeared over again.
Although the behaviour has disappeared, extinction is never complete. If conditioning is again attempted, the fauna will learn the new associations much faster than it did the first time.
Pavlov also experimented with presenting new stimuli that were like, but not identical, to the original conditioned stimulus. For instance, if the dog had been conditioned to being scratched before the food arrived, the stimulus would be changed to beingness rubbed rather than scratched. He found that the dogs also salivated upon experiencing the similar stimulus, a process known as generalization. Generalization refers to the tendency to respond to stimuli that resemble the original conditioned stimulus. The power to generalize has important evolutionary significance. If nosotros eat some red berries and they make us sick, it would be a skilful thought to think twice before we consume some majestic berries. Although the berries are not exactly the same, they all the same are similar and may have the same negative properties.
Lewicki (1985) conducted research that demonstrated the influence of stimulus generalization and how chop-chop and hands it can happen. In his experiment, loftier schoolhouse students kickoff had a brief interaction with a female experimenter who had short hair and spectacles. The study was set upwards so that the students had to ask the experimenter a question, and (according to random assignment) the experimenter responded either in a negative manner or a neutral way toward the students. Then the students were told to go into a second room in which two experimenters were present and to approach either one of them. Yet, the researchers arranged it so that one of the ii experimenters looked a lot like the original experimenter, while the other one did not (she had longer pilus and no spectacles). The students were significantly more likely to avert the experimenter who looked like the earlier experimenter when that experimenter had been negative to them than when she had treated them more than neutrally. The participants showed stimulus generalization such that the new, similar-looking experimenter created the same negative response in the participants as had the experimenter in the prior session.
The flip side of generalization is discrimination — the tendency to respond differently to stimuli that are like but not identical. Pavlov'southward dogs quickly learned, for example, to salivate when they heard the specific tone that had preceded food, merely non upon hearing like tones that had never been associated with food. Discrimination is also useful — if we do try the imperial berries, and if they practice non make united states sick, we volition be able to make the distinction in the hereafter. And nosotros can learn that although ii people in our course, Courtney and Sarah, may await a lot akin, they are nevertheless unlike people with different personalities.
In some cases, an existing conditioned stimulus can serve as an unconditioned stimulus for a pairing with a new conditioned stimulus — a process known as 2d-order conditioning. In one of Pavlov's studies, for instance, he start conditioned the dogs to salivate to a sound and so repeatedly paired a new CS, a blackness square, with the sound. Somewhen he found that the dogs would salivate at the sight of the black foursquare alone, even though it had never been directly associated with the nutrient. Secondary conditioners in everyday life include our attractions to things that stand up for or remind us of something else, such as when we experience good on a Friday because it has become associated with the paycheque that nosotros receive on that day, which itself is a conditioned stimulus for the pleasures that the paycheque buys us.
The Role of Nature in Classical Conditioning
As nosotros accept seen in Chapter ane, "Introducing Psychology," scientists associated with the behaviourist school argued that all learning is driven by feel, and that nature plays no role. Classical conditioning, which is based on learning through experience, represents an instance of the importance of the environment. Only classical conditioning cannot be understood entirely in terms of experience. Nature also plays a role, as our evolutionary history has made us better able to acquire some associations than others.
Clinical psychologists make use of classical conditioning to explain the learning of a phobia — a potent and irrational fright of a specific object, activity, or situation. For example, driving a car is a neutral event that would non normally elicit a fear response in nigh people. But if a person were to feel a panic assault in which he or she all of a sudden experienced stiff negative emotions while driving, that person may learn to associate driving with the panic response. The driving has become the CS that now creates the fright response.
Psychologists have also discovered that people do not develop phobias to simply anything. Although people may in some cases develop a driving phobia, they are more likely to develop phobias toward objects (such as snakes and spiders) or places (such every bit loftier locations and open spaces) that have been dangerous to people in the past. In modern life, information technology is rare for humans to be bitten by spiders or snakes, to fall from trees or buildings, or to be attacked by a predator in an open surface area. Existence injured while riding in a car or being cutting by a knife are much more likely. Simply in our evolutionary past, the potential for being bitten by snakes or spiders, falling out of a tree, or beingness trapped in an open space were important evolutionary concerns, and therefore humans are all the same evolutionarily prepared to learn these associations over others (Öhman & Mineka, 2001; LoBue & DeLoache, 2010).
Another evolutionarily important type of conditioning is workout related to food. In his important research on nutrient conditioning, John Garcia and his colleagues (Garcia, Kimeldorf, & Koelling, 1955; Garcia, Ervin, & Koelling, 1966) attempted to condition rats by presenting either a taste, a sight, or a sound as a neutral stimulus before the rats were given drugs (the US) that made them nauseous. Garcia discovered that taste conditioning was extremely powerful — the rat learned to avoid the taste associated with illness, fifty-fifty if the illness occurred several hours later. But conditioning the behavioural response of nausea to a sight or a sound was much more difficult. These results contradicted the idea that conditioning occurs entirely as a result of environmental events, such that information technology would occur as for any kind of unconditioned stimulus that followed any kind of conditioned stimulus. Rather, Garcia's research showed that genetics matters — organisms are evolutionarily prepared to larn some associations more than easily than others. You can meet that the ability to acquaintance smells with disease is an important survival machinery, allowing the organism to speedily learn to avoid foods that are poisonous.
Classical conditioning has also been used to help explicate the experience of mail service-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as in the case of P. K. Philips described in the chapter opener. PTSD is a severe feet disorder that tin develop after exposure to a fearful result, such as the threat of decease (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). PTSD occurs when the individual develops a strong association between the situational factors that surrounded the traumatic event (e.g., military uniforms or the sounds or smells of war) and the The states (the fearful trauma itself). Every bit a issue of the conditioning, beingness exposed to or fifty-fifty thinking virtually the situation in which the trauma occurred (the CS) becomes sufficient to produce the CR of astringent anxiety (Keane, Zimering, & Caddell, 1985).
PTSD develops considering the emotions experienced during the event have produced neural activity in the amygdala and created stiff conditioned learning. In addition to the potent conditioning that people with PTSD experience, they also evidence slower extinction in classical conditioning tasks (Milad et al., 2009). In brusque, people with PTSD accept adult very strong associations with the events surrounding the trauma and are also slow to show extinction to the conditioned stimulus.
Key Takeaways
- In classical conditioning, a person or creature learns to associate a neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) with a stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus, or US) that naturally produces a behaviour (the unconditioned response, or UR). As a upshot of this association, the previously neutral stimulus comes to elicit the same response (the conditioned response, or CR).
- Extinction occurs when the CS is repeatedly presented without the United states, and the CR eventually disappears, although it may reappear later on in a procedure known as spontaneous recovery.
- Stimulus generalization occurs when a stimulus that is similar to an already-conditioned stimulus begins to produce the same response as the original stimulus does.
- Stimulus discrimination occurs when the organism learns to differentiate betwixt the CS and other similar stimuli.
- In second-order conditioning, a neutral stimulus becomes a CS later on being paired with a previously established CS.
- Some stimuli — response pairs, such as those betwixt aroma and food — are more hands conditioned than others because they have been specially important in our evolutionary past.
Exercises and Disquisitional Thinking
- A instructor places gilt stars on the chalkboard when the students are tranquillity and attentive. Somewhen, the students beginning condign quiet and attentive whenever the teacher approaches the chalkboard. Can you explain the students' behaviour in terms of classical conditioning?
- Recall a time in your life, perhaps when you lot were a child, when your behaviours were influenced by classical conditioning. Describe in detail the nature of the unconditioned and conditioned stimuli and the response, using the appropriate psychological terms.
- If mail-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a blazon of classical workout, how might psychologists use the principles of classical conditioning to treat the disorder?
References
American Psychiatric Clan. (2000).Diagnostic and statistical transmission of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.
Garcia, J., Ervin, F. R., & Koelling, R. A. (1966). Learning with prolonged delay of reinforcement.Psychonomic Science, 5(three), 121–122.
Garcia, J., Kimeldorf, D. J., & Koelling, R. A. (1955). Conditioned aversion to saccharin resulting from exposure to gamma radiation.Scientific discipline, 122, 157–158.
Keane, T. M., Zimering, R. T., & Caddell, J. Chiliad. (1985). A behavioral formulation of posttraumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans.The Behavior Therapist, 8(1), 9–12.
Lewicki, P. (1985). Nonconscious biasing effects of single instances on subsequent judgments.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 563–574.
LoBue, V., & DeLoache, J. Due south. (2010). Superior detection of threat-relevant stimuli in infancy.Developmental Science, 13(one), 221–228.
Milad, M. R., Pitman, R. Chiliad., Ellis, C. B., Gold, A. L., Shin, L. M., Lasko, North. B.,…Rauch, S. L. (2009). Neurobiological footing of failure to recall extinction retentivity in posttraumatic stress disorder.Biological Psychiatry, 66(12), 1075–82.
Öhman, A., & Mineka, South. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning.Psychological Review, 108(three), 483–522.
Image Attributions
Figure viii.ii: Ivan Pavlov (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ivan_Pavlov_LIFE.jpg) is in the public domain.
Source: https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/7-1-learning-by-association-classical-conditioning/
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