Untitled

• The study notes are for Chapter 2: Elicited Behavior, Habituation, & Sensitization.

Chapter 2 Outline

• Elicited behavior.
• Repeated stimulation effects.
• Dual-process theory of habituation & sensitization.
• Habituation & sensitization of emotions & motivated behavior.

Behavioral System Paradigm

• According to Hogan in 1988, there are four primary components:
  • All potential sensory inputs of an organism
  • Central mechanism(s)
  • All potential motor outputs of an organism
  • Could also be considered a sensory input

Elicited Behavior

• Elicited behavior occurs in response to environmental stimuli.
• Examples:
  • Pupils constrict when exposed to bright light
  • Withdrawal response to touching something hot
  • Food in mouth elicits salivation
  • Sneeze if particle of dust enters your nose

Reflexive Behavior

• Simplest form of elicited behavior.
• Eliciting stimulus leads to a response.

Reflex Arc

• The reflex arc includes a stimulus pathway, a sensory neuron, an interneuron, a motor neuron, and a response pathway.

Knee-Jerk Reflex

• The knee-jerk reflex depends on sense organs in the patellar tendon.
• The sensory nerve travels up to the spinal cord in the rump region.
• Synapses with the motor nerve pass back down to the leg to the muscle.

Adaptive Reflexes

• Reflexes contribute to an animal's well-being or survival.
• Examples:
  • Eye blink reflex and gag reflex
  • Head turning and respiratory-occlusion reflexes in infants

Modal Action Patterns (MAP)

• Species-typical response patterns or "instincts."
• Genetically programmed.
• MAPs are evident for Feeding and Sexual behavior
• Also Territorial defence and Catching prey

Modal Action Patterns Examples

• Occur in subsets of animals.
• Egg-rolling response is a classic example.

Eliciting Stimuli for MAPs

• A feature or combination of features that elicit (release) the behavior.
• Sign stimulus releases the behavior.
• Exaggerating the sign stimulus results in a supernormal stimulus.

Supernormal Stimuli

• Male sticklebacks guard their nest & territory.
• Elict aggression can be elicited with a model.

Exploited MAPs

• Baby cuckoo begs for and receives food from foster bird.
• Key sign stimuli includes red gaping and begging calls

Eliciting Stimulus

• Threshold for stimulus to elicit behavior varies according to animal's state:
  • Hungry vs. satiated (daily cycle)
  • Breeding season (seasonal cycle)
  • Reproductive cycle in humans (lunar cycle)

Behavior Sequences

• Sequences of behaviors are species-typical.
• Appetitive behaviors:
  • Early in the sequence.
  • Less stereotyped and may be shaped by learning.
• Consummatory behaviors:
  • Late in sequence.
  • Highly stereotyped and have specific eliciting stimuli.

Behavioral Sequences Example

• Foraging behavior.
• General search (appetitive).
• Focal search (appetitive).
• Handling and ingesting (consummatory).

Repeated Stimulation

• Descartes said reflex response occurs the same way every time.
• Repeated stimulation can alter the behavioral response resulting in:
  • Habituation and Sensitization

Habituation

• Decrease in response intensity with repeated stimulus presentations

Elicited Behavior & Repeated Stimulation

Experimental examples:

• Salivation and taste ratings in people
• Visual attention in human infants
• Startle response in rats

Salivation & Taste in People

• Epstein et al. (1992) gave subjects lemon or lime juice.
• Measured saliva output over trials and hedonic ratings over trials

Results

• Elicited behavior is not fixed.
• Response decrease is stimulus-specific.
• This is known as the habituation effect, which decreases in vigor of elicited behavior that occurs with repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus.

Visual Attention in Infants

• Results showed a human infant visual fixation (Bashinski et al., 1985).
• Over trials, infants fixated longer to complex stimuli rather than simple stimuli.

Stimulus Specificity

• Stimulus specificity provides a powerful tool for testing subjects that cannot talk.
• Stimulus specificity can "ask" the animal if it can discriminate between two stimuli.

Startle Response

• Leaton, 1976 tested startle response in rats.
• Demonstrates spontaneous recovery; return of responding following habituation.

Sensitization

• Occurs when you are already aroused (e.g., loud background music).
• Underlying arousal of the subject is important in in whether habituation or sensitization occurs!

Visual Attention in Infants:

• Shows Habituation and Sensitization
• Sensitization is the increase in the vigor of the elicited behavior that results from repeated presentations of eliciting stimulus or exposure to a strong extraneous stimulus.

Habituation Advantages

• A stimulus and sensitization learn which stimuli to ignore and which stimuli to respond to.

Remember This Experiment

• The principles could apply these principles to:
• The principles could apply these principles to increase and decrease enjoyment of eating.
  • Relation between attention & taste habituation.

Functional Habituation

• Deecke et al. (2002) examined habituation to predator vocalizations in harbor seals to determine if seals avoid mammal-eating killer whales in the wild

Killer Whale Vocalizations

• Includes familiar mammal-eaters, familiar fish-eaters, and unfamiliar fish-eaters.

Functional Habituation Example:

• Includes a Statistical comparison among 3 playback types.
• Positive means more seals were visible post-playback.
• Seals responded less to familiar fish-eating whales.
• Treated playbacks are similar for familiar-mammal eaters and unfamiliar fish-eaters.

Sensory Adaptation

• Is not habituation.
• Reduction in sensitivity of the sense organs caused by repeated or excessive stimulation.

Fatigue and Classic Conditioning

• Fatigue, is not habituation, rather; it leads to a Decrease in behaviour due to repeated or excessive use of muscles
• While Classical conditioning (Pavlovian) is an associative change from no response to a response
• Habituation is a non-associative change in reflexive responding

Habituation vs Sensitization

• They are good to be plastic in behavioral responses to elicited stimuli.
• They result in a focus behaviour to respond to important stimuli.

Dual-Process Theory

• Is an underlying process is presumed to cause the behaviors that are habituation and sensitization effects.
• Two processes:
  • Habituation process: produces decrease in behavior
  • Sensitization process: produces increase in behavior
• These processes are not mutually exclusive

Dual-Process Theory: Theoretical Graph for Habituation and Sensitization.

• S = Sensitization process
• H = Habituation process
• Net = Net effect (measured response)

Effects Vs. Processes

• Habituation process might not necessarily lead to habituation (vice versa with sensitization process)
• Effects = observable behaviour
• Processes = mechanisms underlying observable behaviour.
• What effect is observed depends on the relative strength of the processes at work

Habituation Effect

• A progressive decrease in the vigor of elicited behaviour that might occur with repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus.

Habituation Process

• Neural mechanism activated by repetitions of a stimulus that reduces the magnitude of responses elicited by that stimulus.

Sensitization Effect

• An increase in the vigor of elicited behaviour that might result from repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus or exposure to a strong extraneous stimulus.

Sensitization Process

• Neural mechanism that increases the magnitude of responses elicited by a stimulus.

Processes Location

• Occur in S-R and the State systems:

• Habituation process - S-R system - This system is shortest neural pathway that connects the sense organ to the muscle to produce an elicited response.

  • It is always activated when eliciting stimulus is present and highly Stimulus specific

• Sensitization process - State system - The system contains neural structures that determine the general level of arousal an organism.

  • Is not always activated is not stimulus specific

Strong External Stimulus Effect

• Reinstate responding can come from Changing the stimulus.
• Sensitizing the organism can also reinstate responding know as:
  • Dishabituation
• This phenomenon may result in pure sensitization of a non-decremented response

Visual Attention in Infants: Dishabituation

• An extraneous stimulus (75dB tone) can lead to a dishabituation of behaviour with the baby's fixation.

Acoustic Startle in Rats

• After Activation of S-R & State system may occurs after a light flash
• Dishabituation: is defined here after a rapid decay, followed by a sensitization back to habituation levels after a small number of trials

Startle Response in Rats - Sensitization

• Habituation can occurs via S-R system sensitization via the state system "PURE SENSITIZATION"
• Note different decibel levels lead to different Startle responses!

Stimulus Location and Species Specificity

• Songbirds learn their songs and calls from a model and is Analogous to human speech learning

• As it song and calls are critical to survivical and for:

  • Territory defense, mating
  • Calls variety of functional roles, eg. maintain contact, sound alarm

• Experiment on location specificity: played a new song for known neighbour or unknown stranger with the following location of playback and measured:

  • territory boundary
  • within territory

• Behavioural Measure was Singing responses of focal male

• Birds Ignore known individuals when they are located where they are supposed to be but respond well when they are threatened.

• Songbird brain has specilized areas for the following:

  • learning, production and perception of vocalizations.

Habituation of Neural Response - The process of songbird brain specialixation.

• Examined whether the immediate early gene response changed with repeated presentation of same song.
• Showed Decreased response in NCM with repeated presentations of the same song.
• Birds heard one stimulus 2.5 hours (training), test/they heard a second stimulus ) for 30 minutes

Aplysia Example

Habituation, Dishabituation, and Sensitization Development

• Why do we think that these are separate processes?
• Different developmental time courses would suggest different processes.
• This was shown in the Marine slug Aplysia
• The process show what effect is caused at different stages of developement to see how habituition and sensitization are learnt

Siphon Withdrawal Reflex in Aplysia

• Study used this measure in Aplysia.
• Habituation training consisted of a Water jet directed at siphon.
• Behavioral measure used here in Aplysia: siphon contraction.

Results of the experiment

• Habituation intact stage 9 (as soon as siphon develops)
• Gets better with age Dishabituation intact stage 10 (4-7 days later)
• Sensitization training uses Tail shock (before habituation training)

Aplysia - results

• Showed No sensitization in stage 11 Depressed responding post tail- shock
• Sensitization develops by late stage 12 increased responding post tail- shock

Aplysia - Results Summary

• Showed temporal emergence of the following learning;
• Habituation occurs the first followed by Dishabituation then, Sensitization
• It is sugested based on this study that Habituation, Dishabituation, and Sensitization are indeed seperate processes

Complex Emotional Responses

• Eliciting stimuli and complex Resonses such a emotions and drug tolerence

• Stimulus can be simple which includes taste

• The stimulus can be complex which includes (love, fear, etc.)

• Also stimulus can be lead to Drug addiction

Drugs -

• Leading to drug with tolerance and finally a withdrawa phase

• Emotions and drug addiction is the opposite to the effect that occur earlier on

• Biphasic with the following outcomes:

  • One emotion during the eliciting stimulus
  • Opposite emotion when eliciting stimulus is termina

• Drug tolerance involves declining in the effectiveness of the drug with repeated exposures

• Characteristics involve:

  • Biphasic
  • As the primary becomes weaker with repeated stimulation
  • The effect is Accompained with strengthening after-reactio

• Leads to OРТМ - Homeostatic theory (opponent theory of motivation)

Opponent process

a process- the emotional state in the presence of stimulus Opposition or b-Process eliciting the oppsite emotional reatio by the a Process And as a result changes with the net effect of all of the processes

• Model: Observed behaviour is that when the stimulus happens you are more likely to do that stimulus.
• Stimelus will have higher peaks and more gradual and weaker decline.

After Extentive Exposure

• Opponent Process Theory of Motivation:
  • After Extensive Exposure you might still feel the original effect After a longer use it will decline and you don't need as much sttumeuls to experience. At a certaim point it can become harmful.

The Opponent proces Theory- Examples

Why Drug Addiction? - According to the Optical Theory of Motivation!

• Drugs and addiction are closely liked and are considered Opponent events that are affected by a motivational process.

Why do people do them?

• Sastain use to allevialte all of the ponent event that are experienced from the stemulie a druing of withdraw phase.

How can it be tackled?

• Druggs are taken not to feel great and good, but rather, to not feel that bad Caffien and erngy levels as well aling with that thye go through

Review

• Environmental stimuli can elicit behaviour; that behaviour can be modified by habituation and sensitization.

• Eliciting stimuli that do not arouse an organism will, over repeated presentations, lead to weaker responses.

• Eliciting stimuli that are intense and arouse an organism will lead to stronger responses.

• Responding to eliciting stimuli represents the net effects of habituation and sensitization processes.

• Opponent processes are mechanisms balance initial emotional responses.