Unit 2 Study Guide

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Unit 2: CH 3-4 Ch 3 Glossary of Abbreviations CR—conditional response(s) CS—conditional stimulus (stimuli) GSR—galvanic skin response NS—neutral stimulus(i) S—stimulus(i) UR—unconditional response(s) US—unconditional stimulus(i) 1. Describe Pavlov’s early life, career path, and other factors that led him to study the digestive processes and the salivary reflex in the dog. When did Pavlov become interested in psychic reflexes? (pp. 57–60) 2. What were the psychic secretions that became a focus of Pavlov’s work? Why did Pavlov shift the focus of his work from digestive processes to psychic secretions? (p. 59) 3. Describe Pavlov’s work with dogs that illustrates Pavlovian conditioning. Define unconditional reflexes, conditional reflexes, unconditional stimulus, unconditional response, conditional stimulus, and conditional response. What terms are used in place of these? (pp. 60–62) Comment: In describing Pavlovian conditioning, it is customary to also speak of another type of stimulus, a neutral stimulus . Chance de-emphasizes the neutral stimulus in his treatment of the topic. (He does mention it on page 61 but does not include it in his diagrams of classical conditioning and does not include it as a critical term.) The neutral stimulus is simply a way of describing the conditional stimulus before it is able to elicit the

conditional response. For example, the author describes the use of a hand clap as a conditional stimulus (p. 61). We would refer to the hand clap as a neutral stimulus before it could elicit the conditional response, salivation. In this unit’s conceptual exercise, you will be asked to identify the neutral stimulus in examples of Pavlovian conditioning. For our purposes, we will consider a stimulus to be neutral if it does not elicit a particular conditioned or unconditioned response. For example, a bright light does not elicit eye blinks, so it is a neutral stimulus with respect to the eye-blink response. However, bright light does elicit pupil contraction, so bright light would be an unconditioned stimulus (not a neutral stimulus) for the pupil-contraction response. 4. Describe Wallace and Rosen’s demonstration (2000) that rats show a strong response to an odorous chemical derived from fox feces. How does this assist in survival? (pp. 60–61) 5. Is the presentation of the two stimuli (i.e., the neutral stimulus and the unconditional stimulus) independent of the behaviour of the animal? Explain. Provide an original example illustrating that an organism whose behaviour is subject to Pavlovian conditioning is more likely to survive than an organism whose behaviour is not subject to such conditioning. (p. 63) 6. Define higher-order Pavlovian conditioning. Describe Frolov’s demonstration of higher-order conditioning. Why does higher- order conditioning increase the importance of Pavlovian conditioning? (pp. 63–64) Describe Graham and Desjardins’ (1980) study in which the experimenters used Pavlovian conditioning to influence the mating behaviour of male rats. (pp. 63–64) Comment: Chance uses higher-order conditioning to refer to the use of a previously established conditional stimulus to function as an unconditional stimulus in Pavlovian conditioning. In this unit’s conceptual exercise, we refer to one form of higher-order conditioning as second-order conditioning . In second-order conditioning, the CS (CS-0) predicts another previously established CS (CS-1). The CS-1 obtained its ability to elicit a CR because it was paired with a US for a UR.

In third-order conditioning, a CS-0 is paired with a CS-1 that gained its ability to elicit a response by being paired with a previously established CS (CS-2), whereas CS-2 gained its eliciting function by being paired with a US. As such, when we refer to second-order or third-order conditioning, we are referring to the number of steps that the CS is removed from a US. Although second-order conditioning can be quite effective, third-order conditioning (and further removed orders) have not generally been demonstrated to be very potent forms of conditioning. Fifth-order conditioning has been noted if the US is a shock, but generally the further away you get from the pairing with the US, the weaker the CR is likely to be. 7. Describe Staats and Staats’ (1957) classic experiment of verbal higher-order conditioning. (pp. 63–64) 8. How can response latency be used to measure Pavlovian conditioning? How is the use of latency as a measure of Pavlovian conditioning problematic? (pp. 65–66) 9. Describe the use of test trials to measure Pavlovian conditioning. Provide an original example of this use of test trials. (p. 65) 10.Describe the method of measuring Pavlovian conditioning by means of intensity or amplitude of the CR. Provide an original example. (p. 65) 11.Define pseudoconditioning, and explain why it poses a problem in measuring Pavlovian conditioning. How can researchers overcome this problem? (pp. 65–66) 12.Describe the following four ways of pairing the CS and the US in Pavlovian conditioning: trace conditioning, delayed conditioning, simultaneous conditioning, and backward conditioning. Specify the relative effectiveness of each of these procedures. Be able to provide and recognize original examples of each. (pp. 66–69) 13.What is a contingency? Describe Rescorla’s (1968) experiment that demonstrated the importance of the CS-US contingency in the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning. In everyday life, do we generally encounter high or medium-low degrees of contingency between the CS and the US? Explain. (p. 69)

Comment: At one time, scientists thought that the critical factor in establishing the strength of a CS (i.e., the ability of the CS to elicit a strong CR) was the number of times the CS was paired with the US. For example, a tone could be best established as a CS for an eye-blink response through a large number of pairings of the tone with a puff of air, a US for the eye-blink response. However, two additional factors affect the strength of the CS, both of which are part of the contingency factor. The contingency factor consists of two probabilities: the probabilities that 1) the US will be presented after the CS and 2) the US will be presented in absence of the CS. As such, the strength of our CS (tone) would increase if (a) the puff presentation followed every presentation of the tone and (b) the puff was never presented alone (i.e., in absence of the tone). Consider the extent to which presenting the CS “predicts” the presentation of the US. We say that the CS predicts the US if (a) the CS is always followed by the US—the puff—and (b) the absence of the CS is followed by the absence of the US. The importance of the CS “predicting” the US may also be illustrated in the following applied example. Ed is an average-sized hockey player who is beaten up by the league hit man “Moose” Gantua. In this case, the US would be the painful stimuli involved in being beaten; the UR and CR would be Ed’s fear reaction, and the CS would be the sight of Moose to Ed. We are concerned with how strong Ed’s fear reaction would be when he sees Moose (i.e., how strong would the CR be to the CS?). As we have said, the magnitude of the CR to the CS would be most importantly influenced by the extent to which the CS predicts the occurrence of the CR. As such, Ed’s fear would be greatest if (a) the sight of Moose (the CS) was always followed by a beating (the US) and (b) beatings (the US) were only delivered by Moose (i.e., the US never occurred unless it preceded (predicted) the CS. In contrast, Ed’s fear at the sight of Moose (the CS) would be decreased in magnitude if (a) the sight of

Moose (the CS) was not always followed by a beating (the US) or if (b) Ed was beaten by bullies other than Moose—in which case the S would also occur in absence of the CS (the sight of Moose). 14.What is CS-US contiguity, and how does this contiguity influence the effectiveness of classical conditioning? Does the type of response being conditioned influence CS-US contiguity? Explain, citing an example from the text. Are short intervals or long intervals (between the CS and the US) more effective in Pavlovian conditioning? (pp. 69–70) 15.What is a compound stimulus? Describe the experiment that one of Pavlov’s assistants conducted with a compound stimulus on a dog, including the results of the experiment. (p. 72) 16.Define overshadowing. What features of a stimulus (when presented as part of a compound stimulus) are responsible for overshadowing? (p. 72) 17.How does prior experience with a CS influence the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning? What is latent inhibition? (p. 74) 18.Define blocking. Compare and contrast blocking and overshadowing. (pp. 74–75) 19.Describe how blocking might work for us and against us. (p. 75) Comment: As we have emphasized, the basic procedure for establishing a neutral stimulus as a CS is to present that stimulus and quickly follow it with an unconditional stimulus (US). Overshadowing and blocking employ the basic Pavlovian conditioning procedure, but fail to establish the neutral stimulus as a CS. In overshadowing, two neutral stimuli are presented simultaneously and are followed by the US. If one of these stimuli comes to function as a CS and the other stimulus doesn’t, we would say that the first stimulus overshadowed the second. In blocking, a CS is initially established in the standard fashion (by pairing it with a US). Then, in subsequent trials, this CS is simultaneously presented with a neutral stimulus, and both stimuli are then followed by the US. If the neutral stimulus fails to come to function as a CS, we say that the previously established CS blocked the neutral stimulus from becoming a CS.

In both overshadowing and blocking, the failure of the neutral stimulus to become a CS often occurs because the organism is attending to the other stimulus, perhaps because the other stimulus is more prominent or salient. Overshadowing and blocking probably occur to a significant degree in everyday life (though they have only been studied in laboratory settings). For example, suppose your cafeteria lunch is served on a tray. The sight of food has probably been established as a CS for salivation because it has regularly preceded food in your mouth (an US for salivation). Every day, the sight of both the food and the tray precede food in your mouth, a pairing arrangement that might establish the sight of both (either) food and the tray as conditional stimuli for salivation. However, seeing the tray alone may never act as a CS for salivation, because it is blocked by the pre-existing CS (sight of the food). Conceivably, more of your attention is directed at the food than at the tray. 20.What is sensory preconditioning? (p. 75) 21.Describe the relationship between the number of pairings of the CS and US on Pavlovian conditioning. Is the relationship linear? Explain. What are the implications of this for survival of a species? (pp. 75–76) 22.What is the relationship between length of the intertrial interval and the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning? (p. 76) 23.How do age, temperament, and stress affect Pavlovian conditioning? (p. 77) 24.Define a Pavlovian conditioning extinction procedure. Under what conditions do we say that a CS-CR relationship has been extinguished? (p. 78) Comment: One form of therapy based on Pavlovian extinction is called flooding. In flooding, the CS for fear is presented in intensive maximal form. For example, to treat fear of snakes using flooding (also called implosive therapy), a therapist might ask a client to imagine being in a cave, surrounded by hundreds of snakes. This method teaches the fearful individual that imagining (and eventually, actual exposure to) the feared stimulus need not produce an unpleasant US. As you can

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