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CLASSICAL CONDITIONING :PENCIL2: P+C2 LECTURE 7 - Coggle Diagram
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
:PENCIL2:
P+C2 LECTURE 7
Classical conditioning
Pair stimulus with another stimulus to get a response.
Pavlov
Dogs started to salivate before the food was presented.
For example, when the door was opened prior to feeding.
The dog is responding to an event associated with and predicting the food.
Emotional Classical Conditioning
Autonomic conditioning:
Bodily responses, arousal, such as rapid heart rate, sweating.
Evaluative conditioning:
A conscious preference to like a stimulus more or less.
The most widely studied is fear conditioning.
A harmless/neutral stimulus can evoke fear responses, such as in
phobias
.
Unconscious evaluative conditioning
Although people can report the relationship between the unconditioned and conditioned stimulus when preferences are changed, this awareness is not always necessary.
This lack of awareness is what can make advertising (e.g. product placement) effective on social media and in movies
That is, a preference is acquired but we do not know where it came from.
Condition blue square to shock
Physiological reaction such as skin conductance response (SCR) to shock (sweating associated with autonomic arousal)
Explicit knowledge where people report the square will predict the shock.
Autonomic physiological conditioning
Mediated by the
amygdala
.
Patient with amygdala damage has no SCR (autonomic response) but is aware that the square predicts shock.
Evaluative conditioning
Conscious explicit report mediated by the
hippocampus
.
Lesions to the hippocampus have normal SCR (autonomic response) to the square but cannot report the square predicted shock.
Evaluative conditioning
Participants were told to passively observe the nonsense words.
There was no need to actively remember them.
Due to masking there was no awareness that the briefly presented positive and negative words were present.
In later assessment people report more liking of the nonsense words associated with the positive words (e.g. ORTAK) than the negative words (e.g. ENANWAL)
Classical Conditioning Summary
Conditioning an emotional response to a neutral stimulus
Autonomic – Amygdala
Evaluative – Hippocampus
Extinction
Autonomic fast
Evaluative slow (good for advertisers)
Emotional conditioning without awareness
Emotional learning can change a stimulus to be more positive or negative.
Operant conditioning
Reward / punishment and learning
The link between a response and a subsequent outcome
Social media
Post a new photo
Immediate reinforcement in the sense of excitement and hope that others will like your photo.
Looking at other peoples curated photos
Social media gives you a trickle of notifications to keep you coming back
Variable ratio reinforcement is partly why gambling is addictive
Such variable ratio reinforcement is long lasting and hard to extinguish; perfect for grabbing your attention.
Observational learning
Observational learning is where animals learn about danger by observing the reactions of other group members.
Although there is some evidence for hard-wired fear of snakes with visual cells in the pulvinar more active to snake images, monkeys reared in captivity can have little overt fear of snakes, reaching past them to get food.
However, when exposed to wild monkeys who have an intense fear of snakes, then the captive monkeys rapidly start to evoke fear responses and will no longer reach around them.
In this situation there has been no direct negative consequence, yet a stimulus becomes threatening.
Mirror cells may be part of this learning system.
The 'mere exposure' effect
It is also possible to change an emotional response without any associations with positive or negative stimuli.
Just by presenting neutral stimuli they can become more preferred.
In all the emotional learning so far people have been presented with emotional stimuli (e.g. classical conditioning)
Or they have been presented with other individuals expressing emotions (e.g. observational)
However, it is also possible to change an emotional response without any associations with positive or negative stimuli.
That is, just by passively presenting neutral stimuli they can become preferred.
Stimuli that have been presented in the past are preferred more than novel stimuli.
The effect is observed across a range of objects and tasks (liking, pleasantness ratings and forced choice).
The effects seem to be non-conscious, as people cannot recall or explicitly recognise that they have seen the stimuli before.
Indeed, the effect is stronger when people are unaware of the stimuli.
Experiment
After repeated exposures people prefer stimuli they were exposed to before rather than something that is new (centre stimulus).
The effect is bigger when they were not aware of the stimulus due to brief exposure and pattern masking.
Fluency: The mere exposure effect...
Bornstein & D'Agostino (1992)
Devised the perceptual fluency/attribution model to explain why mere exposure effects tend to be stronger when participants are not aware that they have already seen the pre-exposed stimuli.
According to their model, after exposure to a stimulus we process it more fluently
We detect this subtle change in processing fluency and find it rewarding.
This positive emotion is attributed to the stimulus. However, if people realize that they are seeing an object on a number of occasions they are less likely to use processing ease as a proxy for liking.
Clearly this form of passive learning is an effective way to change behaviour.
By presenting a stimulus to a person a number of times, especially if they are unaware that this is happening, they can be biased to prefer it to a competing stimulus.
The ease of the procedure and that it is most effective when people do not notice the repetitions makes it a potentially powerful technique for advertisers whose goal is to increase preference for their project.
Primary reinforcers
Our emotions can be direct and powerful experiences, such as the fear of a snarling dog.
Direct emotional stimuli do not have to be learned.
Food and water are also powerful emotional primary reinforcers about how to act in the world and stay alive.
Secondary reinforcers
Money will not keep you warm or feed you.
However, we have learned to associate it with primary reinforcers: through exchange it can provide these things - it is positive via association.
Extinction
Example...
The Autonomic response measured via SCR is observed for a few trials, but then declines.
In contrast, the reduced liking of the stimulus can remain for a long time afterwards.
The resistance to extinction makes advertising potent.
Conditioning in Advertising
Studies of evaluative conditioning have been more concerned with learned emotional responses of preferences and attitudes.
The conditioned stimulus might be an everyday consumer product like coffee.
This is paired with a positive unconditioned stimulus such as a famous movie star or attractive model.
The neutral product becomes associated with the positive stimulus, becoming more positively evaluated.
Effectiveness of Advertising
And those of you who have an autonomic arousal response to George Clooney, such as increased heart rate, might have this for a short time when subsequently viewing the Nespresso coffee during extinction, but this will fade.
However, your preference for the coffee is likely to continue long after the Clooney ads stop.
Other examples...
Gary Linekar with Walkers Crisps
Young, attractive women for Gambling / Online Casino Websites or Apps
Summary
Classical conditioning: association between 2 stimuli
(see a blue square and get a shock)
Operant conditioning (and social media):
link between a response (posting photos) and the subsequent outcome (getting attention/ likes)
Social media is designed to be helpful and addictive
The Mirror System
(DiPellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese, Rizzolatti, 1992)
A subset of neurons in the macaque premotor cortex fire when the monkey carries out a particular action, but also when he observes the same action being carried out by another person.
(Gallese & Goldman, 1998)
Every time we are looking at someone performing an action, the same motor circuits that are recruited when we ourselves perform that action are momentarily activated.
Chameleon Effect
People unconsciously and non-strategically mimic the postures of the people they interact with resulting in pro-social behaviour.
Overt copying of body posture and actions is most likely when people are in comfortable social interactions, as shown here.
The mirroring of action seems to facilitate social interaction.
When a person’s actions are mimicked they tend to like the mimicker more
E.g. As in waitresses receiving increased tips
And after being mimicked, people are more likely to produce more prosocial behaviour in helping others and giving to charity
Emotion Mimicry: Zygomaticus muscle (smiling) Vs. Corrugator muscle (frowning across the brow) Activity…
When observing the emotional response of another individual learning might be facilitated by simulation.
That is, we are in the same motor state of another person and hence we feel what they are feeling.
When we observe emotion, we mimic that emotion.
Our own facial muscles copy those of another person.
The brain interprets its own physiological body states to experience emotion.
Subconscious mimicry
Cannon et al. (2009)
This emotion mimicry response appears to be automatic. For example when a face is completely irrelevant to a person’s task and is ignored, nevertheless the emotion is still mimicked.
Dimberg et al. (2000)
-And even if the emotion face is subliminal and people are unaware of its presence, mimicry of emotion still takes place.
Electromyography (EMG) discriminates between positive (Zygomaticus) and negative (Corrugator) emotions…
These effects are quite subtle and cannot be seen with the eye, but the weak muscle activity can be recorded with electrodes in electromyography (EMG).
Neural systems representing the emotions of another person…
Singer et al. (2004)
Participants received a painful stimulus which was an electric shock to the right hand.
Or their partner who was in the same room received the pain.
Both their own and their partner's hand were adjacent and visible to the participant.
They were told who would get the next shock via visual cues presented behind the hands.
Results...
Green is self perception of pain
Red is an observing symbol informing another person’s pain.
Overlap in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the insula.
The insula is thought to represent the feelings within the body such as temperature, sensual touch, itch, hunger, thirst and PAIN.
The ACC represents emotional responses and the motivation to act such as scratch itch, withdraw from pain etc.
Therefore observing someone else receive pain activates the same emotional systems as when the observer is receiving pain. The distress during observation drives learning of fear.