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Two Conditioning Models
Catania Chapter 12
Respondent Conditioning
•  Classical conditioning
–  2-term model
–  Antecedent è Behavior
–  Stimulus è Response
•  Operant Conditioning
–  4-term model
Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.D.
–  Establishing Operation è Antecedent è
Behavior
è
Consequence
–  Stimulus è Response è Stimulus
Classical Conditioning Terms
•
•
•
•
•
•
UCS—unconditioned stimulus—the food
UCR—unconditioned response—salivation to the food
NS—neutral stimulus—the bell before conditioning
CS—conditioned stimulus—the bell after conditioning
CR—conditioned response—salivation to the bell
Extinction—repeated instances in which the CS is presented
without the UCS that results in elimination or weakening of
the CR
Classical Conditioning
•  Antecedent è Behavior Conditioning Model
•  Pair a neutral stimulus (NS) with an
unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
•  NS becomes a CS
•  Results in a conditioned response (CR) to the
CS
•  Repeated presentations of the CS alone
results in Extinction—weakens or eliminates
CR
•  This behavior is sensitive to antecedents, but
not to its consequences
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CS’s and Drug Use
•  Rats are given increasing doses of
morphine over time
•  The dosing occurs in a very distinctive
environment
•  The rats will develop tolerance—they
will not overdose on large doses of
morphine
•  The rats are divided into two groups
–  One dosed in the distinct environment
–  One dosed in an environment other than
the typical dosing environment
Types of Conditioning
•  Temporal Conditioning
– Regular interval between UCS
presentations
•  Differential Conditioning
– CS+, CS-
Types of Conditioning
•  Simultaneous Conditioning
– < or = 5 sec (pretty arbitrary)
– .5 sec is optimal for conditioning
•  Trace Conditioning
•  Delay Conditioning
– Both delay and trace produce
elicitation at onset of CS that drifts
gradually closer to the onset of UCS
– Think about “what” the CS is
Backward Conditioning
•  Order of NS and UCS is reversed
•  Weak or absent conditioning effects
•  Think evolution here
•  What adaptive advantage is there for
events occurring before the UCS to
come to have the functions of the UCS?
•  What advantage for things that come
after the UCS?
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Contiguity and Contingency
Stimulus Combinations
•  Contiguity is necessary, but not
sufficient
•  Contiguity – stimulus pairings
•  Overshadowing
•  Blocking
•  Sensory preconditioning
•  Second-order conditioning
– Do S1 and S2 happen together in
time and space?
•  Contingency – probability of UCS
given NS, and not UCS, given no
NS
– How well does S1 predict S2
Overshadowing and Blocking
•  Overshadowing
–  Tone and house light dim at same time
–  Shock follows
–  Test the Tone for CR
–  Test the Dimming for CR
•  Blocking
–  Condition light->shock relation
–  Condition tone+light->shock relation
–  Test the Tone for CR
–  Blocking may occur
Inhibitory Stimuli
•  Buzzer->food until conditioning occurs
•  Tone->food until conditioning occurs
•  Tone+light presented under extinction
•  Will get CR with tone, but not with tone
+light
•  Test Buzzer alone
•  And, Buzzer+light
•  Inhibitory effects of light
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Overshadowing and Blocking
Stimulus Combinations
•  Overshadowing
•  Blocking
•  Sensory preconditioning
•  Second-order conditioning
•  Overshadowing
–  Tone and house light dim at same time
–  Shock follows
–  Test the Tone for CR
–  Test the Dimming for CR
•  Blocking
–  Condition light->shock relation
–  Condition tone+light->shock relation
–  Test the Tone for CR
–  Blocking may occur
Inhibitory Stimuli in Compounds
•  Compound Stimulus?
•  Buzzer->food until conditioning occurs
•  Tone->food until conditioning occurs
•  Tone+light presented under extinction
•  Will get CS with tone, but not with tone
+light
•  Test Buzzer alone
•  And, Buzzer+light
•  Inhibitory effects of light
Sensory Preconditioning
•  Can one “neutral” stimulus be conditioned
to another “neutral” stimulus?
•  How to assess when responses to these
events are subtle and/or similar
•  Consider a buzzer and a tone—the only
UCR’s are likely to be orienting responses,
but they would be the same for both
•  How would you know if conditioning had
occurred?
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Sensory Preconditioning
•  Condition buzzer->tone
•  Condition tone->shock
•  Test buzzer for CR
•  If sensory preconditioning occurred, what
would we see? CR? No CR?
•  Could condition buzzer->tone->then shock
all in sequence
•  Test Buzzer
•  but would be ambiguous if we didn’t see
the CR to buzzer
Defining Operants and Respondents
•  Sometimes we think of motor responses as
operant and glandular sorts of responses
as respondent
•  But remember-these are not defined a
priori, they are defined by their sensitivity
to antecedents an consequences
•  Some “respondents” can be brought under
operant control
•  And, some of what typically might be
thought of as operants might be under
respondent control
Second-order conditioning
•  Condition tone->shock
•  Condition buzzer->tone
•  Test buzzer
•  Difficult because the buzzer->tone
conditioning trials will serve as
extinction trials for the tone
•  May need to intersperse buzzer-tone
trials with tone-shock trials to maintain
the CR’s to tone
Autoshaping
•  Began as a convenient alternative to
shaping key pecks in a pigeon
•  Hopper train pigeon
•  Then light key followed by operating hopper
•  As few as 10, seldom more than 100 trials
•  Pigeon begins to peck key when lit—why?
•  Some of the functions of the food inhere in
the lit key as result of respondent
conditioning processes
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A Closer Look: Pigeon Mind Reading
•  Examining the topography of pecks to
reveal their respondent qualities, but first…
TONE
TIME
SHOCK
CONDITIONING
Autoshaping
•  Tough to parse operant and respondent
contingencies entirely, but consider
omission training
•  Autoshape key pecks when red light is lit
•  Now turn hopper off on a trial if the
pigeon pecks the key
•  Result: still some pecking, because food is
still contingent and contiguous with the
presence of the red key
•  Even though pecking actually stops food
access
TONE
SHOCK
Classical Conditioning Example
Experimental Separation of Op/Resp
KEY
TIME
FOOD
WATER
CONDITIONING
Pigeon Mind Reading
KEY
KEY
FOOD
WATER
•  Some early studies mixed operant and
respondent contingencies accidentally
•  Leg flexions to shock—placement of
electrodes
•  The Case of Little Albert
–  Rat, touch, clang of metal bars, cry
–  Complex array of operant and respondent
contingencies
–  Reaching for the rat is likely operant
–  Bar clanging would likely be what with respect to
reaching
–  Crying is likely a UCR to bar clanging, but also has
the consequence of terminating the experiment
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Operant-Respondent Interactions
Conditioned Suppression
•  Respondent processes can even effect
completely unrelated operants
•  Cond Suppression/Conditioned
Emotional Responses (CER’s)
•  Establish a lever pressing operant
•  Resp. condition tone->shock
•  Now, present tone during the operant
task
•  What happens?
Preaversive/Preappetitive Stimuli
•  Stimuli that come to have some of the
psychological functions of aversive or
appetitive stimuli
•  By what operation?
•  Consider examples where some stimulus
event reliably predict aversive/appetitive
stimuli
Hospitalized Child Burn Victims
•  Massive unpredictable aversive events
– Injections, dressing changes, examination
•  Outcome: general behavioral
suppression
•  Place a red light above the bed and turn
it on a few minutes prior to any
aversive procedure
•  What happens to the red light?
•  To the absence of the red light?
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Biological Constraints on Learning
•  Sensory constraints
–  Interspecies differences
–  Dx in range of sight, hearing, etc. with with
acuity
–  Mindfulness about controlling for stimuli
that may be inapparent to the
experimenter, but functional for the
experimental organism
•  Motor constraints
–  Some aspects of responses may be
unaffected by contingencies
Preparedness
•  Animals may learn relations among
some stimuli more easily than others
•  Bright noisy versus sweet water
•  Shock versus illness as a delayed
consequence
Constraints on Consequences
•  Raccoon example, more properly
interpreted as the intrusion of
respondent behavior on an operant
preparation
•  Still a good example of biological
constraint on behavior
•  You would not see that behavior if
water were the reinforcer
•  Rats get water that is sweetened while lights
flash and clicking occurs.
•  Half of the animals are shocked while drinking
•  Half of the animals are irradiated using X-rays
(causing nausea) while drinking
•  All animals are tested under two conditions:
–  Non-sweetened water w/ noise and lights flashing
–  Sweet water (no noise or lights flashing)
•  X-rays = conditioning to flavor, but not lights
and noise
•  Shock cause conditioning to lights and noise,
but not flavor
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100
90
80
70
60
Bright Noisy
Group
50
40
Sweet Group
30
20
10
0
X-Ray
Shock
Percent Normal Fluid Intake
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