Classical Conditioning Reading: Cognitive Processes in
Learning and Biological Predispositions
Cognitive Processes in Learning
To emphasize the importance of cognitive factors in learning, take Michael
Dawson's studies of conditioning in human subjects. His results nicely
parallel those obtained by Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner, whose
conditioning of animals is discussed in the text.
Dawson and his colleagues found that conditioning occurs only when
people understand the critical relationship between the unconditioned and
conditioned stimuli. Subjects hooked up to an instrument that measures
sweat-gland activity are told that shocks may be given sometime during
the presentation of five tones. The subject does not know that the shocks
are given according to a set plan, for example, after the lowest tone.
Dawson reports that those who do not figure out the pattern show no signs
of anxiety in anticipation of the shock. He then informs them that the
pattern may be predictable; most people figure it out and begin showing
signs of stress when they expect a shock. In short, people become
conditioned only after they understand the relationship between the shock
and the tones.
Dawson and his colleagues also have experimental evidence that an
"accepting" attitude promotes the conditioning process. In one study, they
told half the subjects that being conditioned was wise, sensible, and
intelligent; the other half were told the reverse. Those given positive
instructions demonstrated stronger conditioning. While positive awareness
assisted conditioning, negative instructions produced active resistance and
undermined the process.
Dawson maintains that his research has implications for therapy: "Take a
child who is phobic about dogs, say, and is repeatedly given ice cream or
another pleasant stimulus to associate with the object that arouses
irrational fear. If the hypothesis I'm testing is correct, behavioral therapists
should enlist the child's active cooperation. The therapist should encourage
the child to concentrate on the new association of dog/ice cream rather
than passively submit to it."
Carpenter, E. (1985, May). Conditioning: It's the thought that counts.
Psychology Today, 8-10.
Biological Predispositions
In 1924, Watson stated: "The importance of stimulus substitution or
stimulus conditioning cannot be over-rated . . . so far as we now know . . .
we can take any stimulus calling out a standard reaction and substitute
another stimulus for it." Nisbett and Ross note that few hypotheses in
psychology have ever been so amply disconfirmed, although it took nearly
four decades of research for investigators to realize it.
Watson himself was among the first to find refuting evidence. Although he
and Rayner successfully conditioned Little Albert to fear a rat by pairing
the rat with a loud noise, other experiments in their lab were not so
successful. One of Watson's students tried pairing a block of wood, as well
as a cloth curtain, with noise, but conditioning failed to occur.
As the text notes, Garcia was the person most responsible for challenging
the prevailing behaviorist view. In addition to the results of the tasteaversion studies cited in the text (in which rats, sickened as late as several
hours after tasting a distinctive flavor, learned to avoid that flavor), Garcia
found that if rats were made ill several hours after eating a food of familiar
taste but unfamiliar shape, they did not show subsequent avoidance of the
differently shaped food. If, however, the rats were shocked immediately
after eating the differently shaped food, they learned to avoid eating food
of that shape. If they were shocked immediately after eating food having a
new taste, they did not learn to avoid that food. The rats were obviously
predisposed to learn that distinctive taste cues when followed by delayed
gastric distress should be considered suspect, and that distinctive spatial
cues when followed by immediate somatic pain should be considered
suspect. To summarize:
1. unfamiliar taste - delayed illness - avoidance
2. familiar taste and unfamiliar shape - delayed illness - no avoidance
3. unfamiliar shape and immediate shock – avoidance
4. unfamiliar taste and immediate shock - no avoidance
Additional research replicated and extended Garcia's findings, providing
many examples of differential preparedness to learn certain associations.
For example, rats show more fear of a gradual light onset followed by a
gradual shock onset than of a gradual light onset followed by a sudden
shock onset. Similarly, they show more fear of a sudden light onset
followed by a sudden shock onset than of a sudden light onset followed by
a gradual shock onset. Rats seemed primed to learn that sudden things are
signaled by sudden things and gradual things by gradual things. Finally, a
rat can be taught in a single trial to avoid shock from a grid floor if it can
escape to a smooth black floor. However, if the compartment to which it
must escape has a grid floor continuous with that of the shock
compartment, it takes approximately ten trials for the rat to learn the
avoidance response. As Nisbett and Ross observe, the rat is predisposed to
assume (and quite reasonably) that the grid floor is the cause of its pain
and does not readily form the hypothesis that merely changing
compartments will eliminate the pain.
Konner, M. (1982). The tangled wing. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Nisbett, R., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and
shortcomings of social judgment. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice