Associative Learning Psychology 3906

Introduction Every species tested seems to show some form of associative learning There are many possible responses Are they all served by some overarching ‘associative learning system?’

Constraints Early on (meaning the 1960s….) people looked at so called constraints Taste aversions “Misbeahviour” The whole notion of adaptive specializations of learning Not really a clear research program

More recently.. The modular view has helped out here Intelligence is modular Memory, for example, has many subsystems, we accept that easily Same with perception So learning may as well

What is learning? Some event at time 1 affects behaviour at time 2 Probably the best definition out there, though there are others Bob Rescorla

What are we interested in? Conditions for learning Contents of learning Effects on behaviour

Conditions for learning Contingency The “Rescorla control” vs conditioned inhibition Compounding Features and blocking Surprisingness

The Model: ΔV i – S i (A j -V sum ) i = CS j = US S = Salience A = Value of the US V = amount of conditioning These quantities are, of course, hypothetical

An example OK, say a food pellet = 100 Say salience of a light CS =.2 V sum = 0 (at the start of the experiment, there is no conditioning yet

OK, now for the numbers Trial 1 ΔV i – S i (A j -V sum ) =.2(100 – 0) =20 Trial 2 ΔV i =.2(100-20) =16

Continued…. Trial 3 ΔV i = S i (A j -V sum ) ΔV i =.2(100-36) 12.8 And so on…. Less and less conditioning as time goes by Cool eh

More on conditions Gallistel’s model is more to do with duration of events and number of pairings Events have to “go together” –Preparedness –Belongingness –No model deals with that well at all

I just want to belong to something…. Spatial and temporal contiguity can be considered types of belongingness Think about backwards conditioning, it never works When you look at these two types of contiguity from a functional viewpoint it makes a great deal fo sense

Prior learning affects new learning Group Phase 1 Phase 2 Test Result ControlNothing LT+ T CR Blocking L+ LT+ T No CR

The contents of learning Is it an association between stimuli? Is it an association between a stimulus and a response? It seems to depend on the preparation How in the hell could you tell? As usual, Bob Rescorla figured this out…

S-S and S-R US CS UR

If we could just get rid of that US – UR bond….. US CS UR

Rescrola (1973) So, how do you get rid of a response that is hard wired to a stimulus? Well, if you use CER, then your response is startle right? How do you get rid of a startle reflex? Habituation!! (Bob is a smart man)

Design GroupPhase 1Phase 2Test Habituatio n L -> NNoiseLight ControlL -> NNothingLight

Results Less suppression in Habituation group (In other words, more responding) Therefore, the connection MUST be S – S WOW!

But, after all of that…. Need it be a connection? Gallistel says that it is contingency itself that is learned Different features of the CS and US are learned Holland’s experiment

Effects on Behaviour Learning vs. performance The Behaviour system approach Are Pavlovian and Instrumental learning different? Operationally of course yes But, what about occasion setting and within event learning

In sum It may simply be that most types of what we call associative learning use many of the same modules Cause effect realationships Patterns Predicting the future is pretty adaptive