Understanding Respondent Learning: Predicting Important Events and Behavior Conditioning

1. Respondent Learning Lesson 4

2. What’s going to happen next? • If we know…we can be prepared • Increases our chances for success • Predicting important events critical for survival • food & water • sex • danger ~

3. Associative Learning • Events become associated • linked • Association via • Respondent Learning • (AKA: Classical or Pavlovian Conditioning) • involuntary behavior • Operant Learning • (AKA: Instrumental) • motivated behavior ~

4. Associative Learning • Respondent learning • Elicited (involuntary) behavior • Triggered by external events • Learned “reflexes” • Operant learning • Emitted (motivated) behavior • Attempt to change environment • Controlled by consequences ~

5. Motivation • Will expend energy to achieve goal • Approach satisfiers /Avoid annoyers • What “motivates” operant behavior? • Physiological responses • Emotional responses • Cognitive response • Involuntary responses • Both innate & learned ~

6. Respondent Learning • A.K.A. Classical or Pavlovian Conditioning • Ivan Pavlov • dog learned to salivate when bell rings • Throughout animal kingdom • cockroaches, sea slugs, dogs, humans ~

7. Learning Associations • Signal--Important event • Based on reflexes • stimulus  response • automatic (involuntary) • After association learned… • signal triggers response ~

8. Eye-blink Reflex • Puff of air  eye blinks • prevents injury to eye • “click” precedes puff of air • Reflex • inherited • stimulus  response • automatic ~

9. response stimulus Air puff Eye blink “Click” Respondent Learning: Eye-blink signal

10. signal Eye blink Learned response After Learning Occurs “Click” Anticipatory response

11. What is learned? • Relationship between events • Predicts biologically important events • What kind of responses can be learned (conditioned)? • Physiological Responses • Emotional Responses • Expectancies ~

12. Unconditional Stimulus (US) • Part of reflex • automatically elicits a response • Biologically important • motivational significance • food, sex partner, drugs • physical trauma, toxins ~

13. Unconditional Response (UR) • Response to US • Automatic response • Reflexive • Physiological & emotional responses •  HR/temp. - sexual arousal/pleasure • Pain/nausea – fear/anxiety ~

14. salivation, chewing, swallowing, pleasure gagging, spitting, disgust  HR, flinch, orient, fear sneeze/cough, anxiety pain, withdrawal, fear Examples: USURs US URs Good food in mouth Bad food in mouth Loud noise Dust in nose/throat Animal bite

15. Unconditional stimulus Unconditional response Pain/fear Reflexive Behavior Bite

16. Conditional Stimulus (CS) • Initially neutral stimulus (NS) • does not trigger UR of interest • Reliably precedes US • Cue or signal ~

17. Conditional Response • Learned response • in response to CS only • usually similar to unconditional response • homogeneous • After many pairings of CS & US • learning is usually gradual • frequency important ~

18. US UR Respondent Learning Conditional Stimulus : See dog bite Pain/fear

19. AfterRespondent Learning Conditional Stimulus only See dog Fear Conditional Response Anticipatory response

20. Milk Let-down Response • Feeding reflex • baby suckling  milk released US UR • Potential CSs • crying, time of day, holding baby, etc • precede suckling predictably • act as CS  trigger milk release (CR) • Generalization? • another baby crying ~

21. Extinction: Respondent Learning • CS no longer followed by US • Loses predictive value • Behavior becomes weaker :  Fear

22. Conditioned Emotional Responses • Affect • positive & negative • Depends on experiences • subjective interpretation of physiological responses • Expectations • Conditioned emotional response • CER ~

23. Conditioned Emotional Responses • Classes of stimuli • appetitive • aversive • CS predicts important event (US) • CS+  US will occur • Positive contingency • CS-  US won’t occur • negative contingency ~

24. CER (affect) Negative Positive CS+ CS- Positive Negative Appetitive Aversive (satisfier) (annoyer) US

25. Likes & Dislikes • Like • Cues associated w/ satisfying events • Dislike • Cues associated w/ annoying events • Expectation + Contingency + US • CS+/CS- and appetitive/aversive ~

26. CER (Likes/Dislikes) Dislike Like CS+ CS- Like Dislike Appetitive Aversive (satisfier) (annoyer) US

27. Food Preferences • Genetic component • Taste receptors • Salty, sweet, bitter, sour, *savory • Or blend of these tastes • Learned component • Taste as CS • Nutrients as US • Preference for sweet/salty innate • Can be altered by experience ~

28. Thiamine & Open Eating Systems • Thiamine (vitamin B1) • Tasteless & odorless • Beri beri  heart, neural disorder • Rats with B1 deficiency • Prefer tastes of foods w/B1 • Avoid tastes of foods w/o B1 • Taste preferences learned • Associated w/ vital nutrients ~