Classical Conditioning: Foundations

Classical conditioning pertains to a

type of learning in which an
organism learns about the
relationship between 2 stimuli, or
how these 2 stimuli are associated.
As such, classical conditioning
represents a type of “associative
learning”.
 
The field of classical conditioning
began with the work of Ivan P.
Pavlov (1849-1936), who was
interested in digestive physiology.
Two of his students discovered
that dogs would begin to salivate
to the sight or sound of stimuli
that regularly preceded food
substances being placed in the
mouth.
 The Classical Conditioning Paradigm
Neutral Stimulus (NS) – A novel and
behaviorally irrelevant stimulus that elicits
no behavioral reaction.
 
Unconditional (Unconditioned) Stimulus
(UCS) – elicits a behavior (reflex) with no
prior training.
 
Unconditional (Unconditioned) Response
(UCR) – (reflexive) response to UCS.
 
Conditional (Conditioned) Stimulus (CS) -
A stimulus that - through learning –
becomes behaviorally-relevant to an
organism and elicits a behavioral reaction.
 
Conditional (Conditioned) Response (CR)
– Acquired response to CS.
 Fear Conditioning

John Watson (1878-1958)

pioneered the study of fear
conditioning. His studies
Environment Over DNA??
involved a nine-month old
infant named, Albert.
 Fear Conditioning

Today fear conditioning is

primarily studied with rats.

The goal of this research is to

identify the mechanisms of
fear and anxiety, to elucidate
their pharmacological basis,
and to understand how they
may be affected by behavioral
treatments.
 Fear Conditioning
file = C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2006a\work\ekg\ekg_EW111_6_08_06.mat trial 4 thresh = 4.0

To study fear conditioning, one 10

needs to be able to measure fear. 5

This can be done in a number of

ways. 0

• Heart Rate -5

-10

• Freezing -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5

• Conditioned Suppression
 Fear Conditioning, continued

• 10 trials with rats

• CS for 46 seconds co-terminating with + (2
second) mild shock
• 210 second intertrial interval

Rat freezing in fear

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 Fear Conditioning

Conditioned Suppression

• Fear is measured according to

how much appetitive
responding decreases when
the CS is presented.
 Eye Blink Conditioning

The study of eye blink

conditioning in humans was
common in the early days of
learning research.

As interests switched to
neurobiological mechanisms,
animals became the preferred
subjects.
 Eye Blink Conditioning

The “engram” for eye blink

conditioning is believed to reside
in the cerebellum.
 Eye Blink Conditioning

Lack of Performance Does

Eyeblink conditioning has also been Not Imply Lack of Learning
demonstrated in 4 and 5 month old
infants.

Training sessions
? were separated by
one week.

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 Sign Tracking
Animals tend to orient towards or
come into contact with a stimulus that
is paired with reinforcement.
 
Sign tracking can be adaptive (advantageous)
in an animal’s natural environment where
stimuli that precede food (sight or smell of a
rat - CS) are actually the food (UCS)!
 
 
Sign tracking can be so powerful that animals
will continue to track a stimulus even when it
impedes the ability to obtain the available
reward:

Sign tracking only occurs in situations where

the CS is localized and can be tracked.
 
 Goal Tracking
Sign Tracking Goal Tracking
Goal tracking occurs when an
animal approaches the goal
(e.g., location of food reward)
instead of the CS that the
signals its arrival.

The CS-US interval has been

shown to determine whether
sign tracking or goal tracking is
observed.

Sign
Goal
Mixed

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 Learned Taste Aversions
The mechanisms responsible for taste-
aversion learning probably evolved to
protect animals from potentially toxic
substances.

For this mechanism to offer a

“selective advantage,” animals would
need to be able to associate their
illness with substances eaten hours ago,
because dangerous foods may not have
their effect until the food has been
digested, absorbed in the blood stream,
and distributed to various body tissues.

John Garcia provided one of the first

demonstrations of “long-delay
learning,” dispelling the widely-held
notion that learning only occurred with
a CS-US interval of 0.5 seconds or less.
 Excitatory Pavlovian Conditioning Procedures

All examples of conditioning discussed

thus far are considered instances of
excitatory conditioning.

With excitatory conditioning, the

animal learns that the CS predicts the
US. Another way to think of this is that
with excitatory conditioning the CS
predicts the US’s occurrence. This is
also referred to as a positive CS-US
contingency.

Excitatory conditioning is most effective

when the CS is a good signal for the
impending delivery of the US. This is
not the case for simultaneous or
backward conditioning.
 Temporal Coding Hypothesis

In addition to learning an association between a CS and US, animals may come to learn the various
temporal parameters that underlie the relationship between the CS and the US, in addition to other
relevant temporal parameters of the task. This idea is known as the temporal coding hypothesis.

Thus, not only do animals learn “what” stimuli to respond to. They also learn “when” to respond to
them.
 Temporal CodingHypothesis
Temporal Coding Hypothesis

Evidence For Temporal Coding

Conditioning with a 150 ms or 500 ms CS-

US interval (randomly interleaved).

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 Measures Of Conditioning
The strength of conditioning (i.e., learning) can be quantified
(measured) in various ways:
 
Response magnitude - amount of saliva secreted, amount of
freezing, suppression ratio, startle magnitude, heart rate
increase, etc.
 

Response probability – percentage of trials in which CR is elicited

(e.g., eyeblinks on 70/100 trials = 0.7 response probability).
Useful when CR magnitude tends to be constant (e.g., eyeblink).
 

Latency – time between CS onset and CR onset. The strength of

avoidance conditioning is determined by the time it takes a rat to
cross a shuttle box following CS onset.
 
 Inhibitory Conditioning

In many conditioning studies, animals

Victims Of Panic Attacks Are More
learn to predict when something bad
Anxious After Unpredicted Attacks.
will happen. Equally important to
survival is the ability to predict when
something bad will not happen.

Unpredictability is highly aversive in

animals and leads to stomach ulcers
and other physiological symptoms of
stress.

Predictable aversive stimuli are

preferred over unpredictable stimuli.
 Inhibitory Conditioning

With excitatory conditioning, the

animal learns that the CS predicts the
US’s occurrence.

With inhibitory conditioning, the

animal learns that the CS predicts the
US’s absence.

Conditioned inhibition can be

produced a few different ways:
 
• In the standard (Pavlov’s) procedure
the “CS+” occurs alone on some
trials, and together with the “CS-”
on other trials.
 Inhibitory Conditioning

•  In the negative CS-US contingency

procedure a negative correlation
exist between the CS- and the US.
Thus, when the CS- is present, the
US is less likely to occur.
 Measuring Conditioned Inhibition
Conditioned excitatory stimuli
(CS+) come to elicit new The Compound-Stimulus, Or Summation, Test
responses, such as freezing, Is Used To Measure Conditioned Inhibition.
salivation, or eye blinks. However,
conditioned inhibitors (CS-) do not
necessarily elicit the opposites of
these responses (increased
activity, dry mouth, fewer eye
blinks. This will only be true when
the CR is “bidirectional,” that is, a
response that can change in either
direction from baseline (e.g.,
heart rate, respiration,
approach?).
 
 Summation Test
Rats learned that N=No Shock. Or did they?
 
Maybe they learned that L+N=No Shock.
See Clicker & Noise Bar
 
Or, maybe they learned that any two stimuli presented together = No Shock.
See Clicker & Buzzer
 
The “summation” test is based on the assumption that the effects of the CS+ and CS- summate to reduce
the magnitude of the CR.
Results:
  Light = conditioned excitor
Summation Test (Cole, Barnet, & Miller, 1997) Clicker = conditioned excitor
Noise = conditioned inhibitor
Training:
On some trials: Light Shock
On other trials: Light + Noise No Shock
On yet other trials: Clicker Shock
Test:
The time it took the rats to complete 5 seconds of
drinking was measured in the presence of:
? the light (conditioned excitor)
? the clicker (conditioned excitor)
? the light + noise (conditioned inhibitor) Clicker Clicker Clicker Light Light &
& Noise & Buzzer Noise
? the clicker + noise (conditioned inhibitor) Text p.85
 Retardation of Acquisition Test

If a stimulus possesses CS- properties,

then it should be difficult to condition
that stimulus to become a CS+.
Only Control Group Shows Fear To
Noise. They Take Longer To Drink.
Example of Retardation of Acquisition Test
Conditioned Inhibition Group
On some trials: Light Shock
On other trials: Light + Noise No Shock

Control Group
Light Shock

On a test:
All groups get Noise Shock