Effect

Whatofwe
Pavlovian
will not conditioning
cover today: on
Perception
learnabilty

Ø  Pavlovian conditioning not only affect behavior, but

also learnability!

Ø  Three types:!
!
Ø  Overshadowing!
Ø  Blocking!
Ø  Latent inhibition!
What we will Overshadowing
not cover today: Perception

Group 1: Blue stick

and cat odor!
!
Group 2: Red light
and blue stick
together!
!
Red light can!
overshadow!
the blue stick!
!
Rats respond less
strongly to blue stick
(group 2)!
What we
Blocking
will not(Kamin
cover today:
1968, 1969)
Perception

Group 2: Red
light and blue
stick together with
cat odor!

Group 3: They first learned to

associate stick & cat odor
before red light was added!
!
Group 3 respond less
strongly to Red light!
!
Initial learning blocked the
subject’s ability to pair the
red light!
 What we willLatent
not cover
inhibition
today: Perception

Habituation to blue stick reduces the association strength of !

blue stick with cat odor!
What we will
Operant
not cover
conditioning
today: Perception
B. F. Skinner, 1938

Instrumental conditioning (goal-directed

learning)!
!
Association of a stimulus with a reward/
punishment!
www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html!
 What we will
Operant
not cover
conditioning
today: Perception
Skinner’s work was based on Thorndike’s law of effect (1905): any
behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be
repeated, and any behavior followed by unpleasant consequences
is likely to be stopped!
Skinner introduced a new term into the Law of Effect -
Reinforcement. !
Behavior which is reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e.
strengthened); behavior which is not reinforced tends to die out-or
be extinguished (i.e. weakened)!
!
Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither
increase nor decrease the probability of a behavior being
repeated.!
Reinforcers: increase the probability of a behavior being repeated.
Reinforcers can be either positive or negative.!
Punishers: decrease the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.
Punishment weakens behavior! www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html!
Go/no-go olfactory behavior (freely moving)
 Insight learning

Wolfgang Kohler (1925)!

- using the chimpanzees!
!
Learning can happen not only by
conditioning (trial-and-error) !
!
Reasoning ability!
!
Ability to perform when challenged
first time with no prior experience!
 Observational learning

Learning to do the tasks by observing others!

!
 What we will notLearning
cover today: Perception

A relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of

experience!
!
Ø  How do animals learn?!

Ø  Why do animals learn?!

Ø  What do animals learn?!

Does it provide some survival or reproductive advantage?

If yes, then potentially natural selection can work on “the
ability to learn”!
 Why do animals learn?

Learning ability favored by natural selection?!

!
Within-species studies to understand natural selection and
learning!
!
Population studies!
!
All animals learn in a fundamentally similar fashion
(Thorndike 1911; Pavlov 1927; Bitterman 1975)??!
!
If a particular environment of an organism has no effect on
learning, then all creatures will show the same learning!
!
Is this true?!
 Within species studies

Thorndike, Skinner, Pavlov etc!

!
Individuals can learn cues selectively which are going to
be useful in their environment – natural selection should
favour these individuals!
!
Importance of the environment!
 Population studies

Ø  Compare the populations of the same species & make

predictions about behavioral similarities and differences!

Ø  Similarities/differences can be based on ecology!

Ø  How natural selection has shaped the behavior!

 Learning, foraging, and group living in Doves

Ø  Zenaida dove population in !

Barbados !

Ø  Find food more faster, have more !

available time for foraging!
!
Ø  Group living vs territorial population (more solitary)!

Ø  Only 9 miles away – environmental variables are likely to

be minimal!

Ø  How natural selection has shaped the behavior!

 Learning, foraging, and group living in Doves

Doves from both groups, experiments in the lab, !

task: individuals are !
required pulling a ring to !
open a drawer to get food!
!
Group-living ones – better !
learners!
!
Differed due to environme-!
ntal factors?!
!
Natural selection had made!
group living doves better !
learners?? à raise both group under controlled lab
conditions and see the learning differences!
 Learning and antipredator behavior in sticklebacks

Sticklebacks – favorite species for !

testing the ethologically based !
hypotheses, only a single critical!
variable – predation pressure (high !
and low predation environment)!
!
They were raised in the lab with no exposure to predators
(minimizing experience differences across populations) !
!
Are the anti-predator strategies different?!
!
Simulated predator attack - how long fishes take to avoid
predation zone?!
 Learning and antipredator behavior in sticklebacks
Training: One side of the tank was associated with food!
Simulated predator attack from the same side!

orange: No. of fish reached the predator avoidance criteria; green: No. of fish
remaining!
à  No differences in learning in the context of foraging!
à  Fishes from high-predation locality learned the predation avoidance faster!
 Garcia’s rats

Garcia & Koellings (1966) !

!
A seminal study!
!
Conditioned taste-aversion
learning!
!
The tendency to associate
some CS-UCS combinations
more readily than others
(selective association)!
 Garcia’s rats

UCS!
CS!
Toxin/radiation!
Water with Light & Noise!
(bright, noisy water)!
Immediate/delayed electric shock!
Toxin/radiation!
Sweetened Water!

Immediate/delayed electric shock!

Selective learning – audio-visual cue + shock!

sweetened water + toxin/radiation!
How to explain ??!
 Garcia’s rats

Can explain by natural selection!

!
Favor the ability to pair the gustatory cues with internal
discomfort (getting ill)!
!
Peripheral pain (electric shock) can be associated with
audiovisual cues (hearing or seeing a predator, lightning)!
!
Even after the delay of 75 min, when injections of noxious
substances were paired with drinking sweetened water,
learning occurred!
!
Preparedness: Animals are preprogrammed or predisp-
osed to learn certain connections !
 Garcia effect

Ø  Learning doesn’t occur in a similar way

with any stimuli pair!

Ø  Preparedness would vary depending

on the species and the environment!

Ø  No arbitrarily chosen stimuli!

The ability to learn certain things can itself be instinctive (?)!

In short, specific learning mechanisms, or “preparednesses,” are themselves
products of evolution. We can’t draw a line and say, “This behavior is
instinctive and that behavior is learned.” Instead, we seem to have!
instinctive tendencies to learn some things, but not others.! !!
!
How general is this conclusion? It may be very general indeed. To this point,
we have been talking about the pairing of one event with another - that is,
classical or Pavlonian conditioning. But once alerted to the importance of
preparedness, researchers began looking for it in other contexts too, and
found it. Take, for example, operant conditioning and the reinforcement
principle. Stated abstractly: If a response (any response) is followed by a
reinforcer (any reinforcer), the frequency of that response increases.
Therefore, any reinforcer should strengthen any response. But this is not so.
Some reinforcing events work very well with some responses, but not with
others. Some responses are easily strengthened by one reinforcer, but not by
another that may be very effective with a different response (Shettleworth,
1987). As with taste-aversion learning, some combinations work well, others
poorly or not at all.!