Learning and Behavior Quiz

Introduction to Learning and Basic Concepts

• Learning is a permanent change in behavior resulting from experience.
• Learning involves long-term changes in the neural mechanisms of behavior.
• Learning begins in the embryonic period and lasts throughout life.
• Learning is an adaptation process that ensures survival.
• Learning influences and is influenced by the environment.

Syllabus

• Week 1: Introduction to Learning
• Week 2: Habituation and sensitization
• Week 3: Behaviorism and Classical Conditioning
• Week 4: Mechanisms of classical conditioning
• Week 5: Operant conditioning
• Week 6: Reward pathways and motivational mechanisms
• Week 7: Controlling behavior: avoidance, punishment, extinction
• Midterm (40%): Week 9 - Theories of Learning, Week 10 - Social Learning, Week 11 - Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (LTP & LTD), Week 12 - Memory, Week 13 - Memory
• Week 14: Overview of the semester
• Final Exam (60%): Comprehensive
• Sources: "Learning theories: An educational perspective" by Dale Schunk (6th ed., Pearson), "The principles of learning and behavior" by M. Domjan (7th ed.), PPT presentations

What is Learning?

• Learning is a permanent change in behavior resulting from experience.
• Learning is long-term changes that occur in the neural mechanisms of behavior.
• It begins in embryonic period until death.
• All organisms learn
• Learning is the adaptation process that ensures survival.
• Environment changes the learning process and learning changes the environment.
• Adaptation at the individual level occurs through learning. Lasts for the lifetime of the individual

Criteria for learning

• Acquire a new behavior
• Change in behavior frequency
• Change in pace of behavior
• Changing intensity of the behavior
• Different responses to the same stimulus when the level of complexity in behavior changes
• It is not only stimulus
• Unconsciously processed information
• Characteristics of the organism involved in learning
• Must be observed by others
• More than a single stimulus and it takes more than a single moment (generalizable and sustainable).

Learning and Performance

• Learning can only be measured by an observed change in behavior.
• BUT sometimes learning can be behaviorally silent.
• All observable actions of an individual are called performance.
• Performance is affected by motivation and environmental stimuli.
• Learning is one of the factors that affects performance.

Basic Concepts

• Stimulation: The condition in an organism that causes a response (physical, organic, psychological).
• Response: The organism's behavior (conscious or unconscious) in reaction to a stimulus.
• Performance: The needed capacity for a particular task.

What is Behavior?

• The organism's response to the environment.
• Simple reflexes (e.g., blinking).
• Complex behaviors (e.g., nutrition).
• Complex emotional responses (e.g., addiction).

Stimulus

• Causes a reaction in the organism.
• Sensory inputs
• Intensity, duration effects
• More severe stimuli are more likely to cause a reaction, higher intensity/duration means higher chance of causing a reaction.

Response

• Triggered by a stimulus.
• Can be automatic/involuntary or caused by environmental factors.
• Consists of complex behaviors.

Inherited Behavior Patterns

• Many learned behaviors are extensions of innate behavior patterns.
• Reflexes
• Kinesis and taxis (adaptations used by primitive animals in response to environmental stimuli).
• Modal action patterns (fixed action patterns).

Reflex

• Stimulus ⇒ response.
• Unconditional behaviors (e.g., itching, swallowing, chewing, walking).
• Involuntary and can be modified by voluntary control.

Kinesis and Taxis

• Automatic responses to stimuli.
• Kinesis: An undirected movement in response to a stimulus.
• Taxis: A directed movement in response to a stimulus (e.g., movement towards or away from light).

Modal Action Patterns

• A complex, stereotyped behavior pattern common to members of a species.

Reaction Chain

• A sequence of behaviors triggered by a stimulus, with each behavior triggering the next (e.g., tactile arousal → searching reaction → oral stimulation → sucking → full stomach → stopping sucking).

Difference between Reflex and Modal Action Pattern

• Modal behavior patterns continue to completion, regardless of the outcome.
• Reflexes require a stimulus to occur, and the stimulus must be present for the next reaction to occur.

Learning vs Instincts

• Modal action patterns are instinctive.
• Instinctive behaviors are primarily determined by genetic and evolutionary history.
• Learned behaviors are acquired through experience and interactions with the environment.
• Instincts are inborn complex patterns of behavior that exist in species members.
• Genetics and epigenetics influence behavior.

Genetics of Behavior

• Genes do not directly control behavior but affect the brain through RNA and proteins.
• Genes affect the brain at different times and many levels.

Jim Twins Study

• Identical twins adopted at birth and raised in unrelated environments.
• Striking similarities (e.g., similar lifestyles, naming pet dogs, occupational pursuits) suggesting a genetic component to some behavioral tendencies.
• Study highlights that shared experiences, not just genetics, influence traits.

Other (Drosophila) Larvae Activity

• Drosophila larvae activity level and locomotion differ.
• Larvae called "rovers" travel much longer distances.
• "Sitters" are relatively quiet.
• These traits are inherited; rover mothers or fathers have rover offspring, and sitter parents have sitting offspring.
• FOR Gene is involved in this phenomenon

Epigenetics effects learning and memory

• Contextual fear conditioning (placing animal in novel environment, giving aversive stimulus, then removing it).

Habituation and Sensitization

• Habituation: decreasing response to a repeated stimulus.
• Sensitization: increasing response to a repeated stimulus.
• The brain ignores or amplifies information depending on the significance of the stimulus or experience.
• Positive versus negative memory traces.
• Both are basic forms of learning.

Experimental setup (Gill-withdrawal reflex)

• Experimental Setup: Tactile stimulus ⇒ Siphon ⇒ Mantle shelf ⇒ Respiratory Organ (Gill).
• Gill-withdrawal Reflex Circuit: Sensory neuron → Interneuron → Motor neuron → Gill.
• Habituation: Repeated stimuli reduce gill withdrawal response over time.
• Control: No habituation, consistent, no learning occurring
• Habituated: Repeated stimulus, weaker response over time, learning.

Criteria of learning habituation

Depression of synaptic potentials by long term habituation

Inactivation of synapses by long term habituation

Sensitization (inverse of habituation)

• The repeated stimulus, if paired with a pleasurable or irritating stimulus, produces an increasingly larger response.
• Serotonin is released, facilitating the synapse.
• Calcium influx enhances synaptic transmission.

Presynaptic facilitation

• Involves two molecular pathways
• Both presynaptic and postsynaptic proteins change to make the sensory neuron fire stronger

Long-term habituation/sensitization

• Involves structural changes.
• Synaptic facilitation is synapse specific.

Effects of Repeated Stimulation

• Each stimulus ⇒ a reaction
• Elicited behavior is not invariant; it can either increase or decrease, through habituation and sensitization mechanisms.
• These are basic forms of learning.

Visual Habituation (e.g., face perception in newborns)

• Study of visual attention in newborns.
• Habituation to faces (different orientations)
• Testing for differences in attention.
• Study on constancy in perception and novelty in response to stimulus

Fear-potentiated startle

• Participants are exposed to pleasant and unpleasant pictures, sometimes signaling a shock.
• The eyeblink response to a puff of air is measured.
• Pleasant pictures ⇒ no increase in eyeblink response.
• Unpleasant pictures ⇒ an increase in eyeblink response (fear-potentiated startle)

Habituation and Sensitization of Emotions and Motivated Behavior

• Habituation and sensitization are primary concerns of classical and operant conditioning.
• Concepts extended to more complex emotions and motivations (feeding, drinking, exploration, aggression, courtship, and sexual behavior).
• Drug addiction: Addicts take drugs for pleasure or to escape misery.

Conditional Analgesia

• The body uses opiates as a defense against harmful stimuli or injury (morphine)
• Conditional analgesia occurs.
• Shock becomes less painful due to the learned response.

Conditioned Drug Tolerance

• Repeated drug use ⇒ weaker drug effect
• Higher doses needed to achieve the same effect.
• Tolerance develops in almost all psychoactive drugs.

Behaviorism and Classical Conditioning

• Behaviorism: Study of behavior, not mental states.
• Methodological Behaviorism (1913, J. Watson): Study of observable behavior, ignoring mental states.
• Radical Behaviorism (Skinner): Behavior determined by environment's influence and reinforcement.

Little Albert Experiment

• Classical conditioning of fear in a baby.
• Initially neutral stimulus (rat) paired with aversive stimulus (loud noise) elicits fear response in baby.
• Demonstrates the role of conditioning in learned fear.
• This experiment highlights ethical concerns about experimentation.

Edward Thorndike (1874-1949)

• Believed psychology should study behavior, not mental elements/conscious experiences.
• Developed a theory of learning.
• Connectionism: Association between stimuli and responses is strengthened by reinforcement.
• Response-units = simplest elements of behavior

Law of Effect

• Behavior that produces a good outcome is more likely to occur again.
• Behavior with a bad outcome is less likely to occur again.
• Foundation of operant conditioning.

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

• Foundations of classical conditioning.
• Technique of pairing a neutral stimulus with a naturally occurring stimulus.
• The neutral stimulus becomes associated with the response ⇒ elicits a similar response.

Conditioned Reflexes

• US = Unconditioned Stimulus -UR = Unconditioned Response
• NS = Neutral Stimulus
• CS = Conditioned Stimulus
• CR = Conditioned Response
• Before conditioning: US → UR (meat → saliva) , NS (bell) → nothing.
• After conditioning: CS (bell) → CR (saliva) - conditioned response

Eye Blink Conditioning

• Tone (US) → Blink (UR) ⇒ Tone sound (CS) → Blink (CR).
• Needs over 300 trials (repeated pairings) for learning.

Conditioned Suppression

• A decrease in ongoing responses (e.g., lever pressing) in response to a sound signaling an impending shock.
• CS = sound
• US = shock

Goal-Tracking and Sign-Tracking Conditioning

• Organisms can learn to respond to a sign cue that predicts or precedes a reward.
• Goal-tracking: Responding to the stimulus that leads to a reward.
• Sign-tracking: Responding to stimuli associated with the reward even when the reward is not present.

Taste Aversion Conditioning

• Strong association between a taste and an illness.
• A single pairing can produce a strong aversion.
• Important for survival.

Connectivity Between CS and US

• Strength of connection is determined by the rate that stimuli occur together.
• Conditioning occurs when one stimulus consistently signals the appearance of another.
• Rapid increase during early attempts, eventually plateau.

CS-US Compliance

• The organism reacts differently depending on the biological and species (based on what kind of cues are used)

Severity of CS and US

• More intense stimuli = faster conditioning.
• High-intensity stimuli can completely suppress a behavior, while low-intensity stimuli produce partial suppression

Secondary Conditioning

• A neutral stimulus is paired with a conditioned stimulus to create a secondary conditioned stimulus.
• Creates more long-term and complex associations (e.g., learning about specific flavors indicating a mealtime associated with feeding).

Sensory Preconditioning

• Two stimuli are paired initially, then one is paired with a US.
• The initially-paired stimulus elicits a CR.

Extinction

• Conditioned response weakens with repeated presentation of the CS without the US.

Recovery of Response (Spontaneous Recovery)

• Reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a delay or rest.

Inhibition of Behavior

• Actively suppressing a reaction that would normally occur (e.g., during extinction).
• Excitatory connection is established during conditioning between CS and US.
• An inhibitory connection appears between the two stimuli during extinction.
• Cortical function includes inhibitory connections.

Conditioned Inhibition

• CS- serves as a signal for the absence of the US
• US is paired with a conditioned stimulus (CS+) on the majority of trials, and it's paired with a different stimulus (CS-) on other trials.

Generalization

• Responding similarly to a new stimulus that resembles a previously learned stimulus.

Discrimination

• Identifying and responding to the difference in stimuli.

Blocking

• Presence of a conditioned stimulus prevents the later conditioning of another stimulus.

Rescorla-Wagner Model

• Calculates how much an organism learns in each trial based on the difference between the predicted and actual stimuli.
• Strength of a learned response is based on the difference expected and perceived stimuli

Attentional theories in conditioning

• Conditioning occurs based on attention paid to the stimuli.
• Without attention, no conditioning occurs
• The more attention given to a stimulus the more likely that stimulus will be associated with a specific reaction

Avoidance Therapy

• Classical conditioning used in therapy to associate undesirable behaviors with unpleasant stimuli
• Examples include treating alcohol addiction by pairing the smell, taste and appearance of alcohol with unpleasant stimulus.

Systematic Desensitization

• Anxiety-provoking response replaced with a comforting one to condition response.

How Can We Destroy Habits?

• Threshold Method: Gradually introduce the stimulus
• Making Tired/Disgusted Method: Repeated stimulus until undesirable behavior is no longer desired
• Opposite Reaction Method: Presenting stimuli to cause the opposite reaction

Operant Conditioning

• Learning based on the consequences of behavior.
• Organisms perform behavioral actions which are rewarded or punished

Reinforcement

• A stimulus increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring.

Primary and Secondary Reinforcers

• Primary Reinforcers: Satisfy basic biological needs (e.g., food, water).
• Secondary Reinforcers: Gains their reinforcing value through association with primary reinforcers (e.g., money).

Secondary Reinforcement - Wolfe's Experiment

Connectivity in 3 Factors

• Behavior
• Reinforcer
• Context (stimulus that initiates behavior)

Behavior as a Chain of Conditioned Acts

• Behavior is a combination of repeated acts
• Reinforcement is obtained by adding these acts together

Determinants of Reinforcement

• Size of the reinforcer: Larger reinforcers tend to lead to stronger behavioral responses.
• Hunger and thirst: Motivational drivers to satisfy basic biological needs
• Response/reinforcer timeframe: Shorter time between responding and obtaining reinforcement = a stronger learned response.

Crespi's Study (1942)

• Rats on a treadmill: higher amount of food led to faster rate of reaching the target box

Hunger and Thirst

• Deprivation increases the reinforcing value of food or water
• A linear relationship between the duration of deprivation and the strength of the response.

Response-Reinforcer Timeframe

• Shorter time between response and reinforcement is better for learning.
• Longer time between response and reinforcement reduces response rate.

Biological Limitations of Operant Conditioning

• Learned behaviors that are difficult to teach through operant conditioning because the behavior conflicted with instinctive ways animals normally respond (e.g., washing food as a natural response)

Breland's Study (1961) - Dancing Chickens

• Animal's instinctive behavior interfered with the conditioned response.

Requirements for Removal Approach

• Deprivation of a vital need creates arousal and motivates the organism to satisfy the need.
• Behaviors that satisfy the need are reinforced.

Conditions of Learning: Contiguity and Impulse-Decrease

• The stimulus elicits a response.
• If this response satisfies a biological need, the bond between stimulus and response is strengthened → Impulse reduction.
• Primary reinforcement leads to need-fulfilling stimuli → reduction in impulses.

Miller and Kessen (1952)

• Experiment contradicting the idea that reinforcement eliminates impulses; injection of saline rather than milk into rat's stomach did not prevent learning.

Sheffield (1951)

• Experiment contradicting the idea that reinforcement eliminates impulses; rats still learned to reach target box in treadmill even when the reinforcement (mating) wasn't necessary for basic bodily functions.

What is the most powerful reinforcer for US in daily lives?

• Many factors influence a reinforcer such as money, as it elicits feelings of pleasure and value rather than a need, like food, for example.

Premack Principle

• A preferred behavior can reinforce a less preferred behavior.
• A high frequency behavior can be used to reinforce/increase a low frequency behavior.

Positive Reinforcement

• Presenting a pleasurable stimulus after a behavior.
• Increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring.

Negative Reinforcement

• Removing an aversive stimulus to strengthen a behavior.
• Increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring.

Positive Punishment

• Presenting an aversive stimulus after a behavior..
• Decreases the likelihood of the behavior recurring.

Negative Punishment

• Removing a pleasant stimulus following a behavior.
• Decreases the likelihood of the behavior recurring.

Types of Operant Conditioning

Reward Pathways and Motivational Mechanisms

• Neural pathways involved in reward, pleasure, and motivation.
• Specific brain regions are crucial (nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area).

Regulation of Behavior (Neurotransmitters)

• Dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, adrenaline, histamine, and other neurochemicals are involved in the regulation.
• Neurochemicals influence brain systems for many daily behaviors.

Avoidance Conditioning

• Learning to avoid or escape an aversive stimulus by engaging in specific behaviors.
• Active avoidance: Engaging in a response to avoid an impending stimulus.
• Passive avoidance: Avoiding a response to avoid becoming exposed to the stimulus/outcome

Passive Avoidance

• Avoidance learning and avoiding responses or actions.
• Experimental protocols (e.g., rat in a maze, light and shock) to teach avoidance responses.

Active Avoidance

• Learning to avoid an aversive stimulus by performing a different action to avoid getting the aversive stimulus
• Experimental protocols (e.g., rats escaping shock by crossing over a barrier, rat conditioned to climb a pole to prevent shock) to teach/enable avoidance responses.

Distinctive Avoidance

Non-Distinctive Avoidance

• Avoidance behavior without specific stimuli or actions.
• The animal can choose behaviors to avoid a negative outcome, regardless of stimulus.

Learned Helplessness

• Exposure to uncontrollable aversive stimuli ⇒ animals/humans' inability to escape further harmful events.
• Non-avoidable condition: Shock with no escape possibility
• Avoidable condition: Shock which can be escaped by an action
• No shock condition: No shock, control condition

Forced Swimming Test

Recovery of Learned Helplessness

• Animals with learned helplessness are more likely to respond to appropriate guidance.
• The learned helplessness can gradually disappear.

Reinforcements Patterns

• Continuous Reinforcement: Reinforcement occurs every time a desired behavior occurs.
• Intermittent Reinforcement: Reinforcement occurs sometimes, only after a certain ratio/interval has passed.

Ratio Patterns

• Fixed Ratio: Reinforcement after a fixed number of responses.
• Variable Ratio: Reinforcement after a varying number of responses.

Intermittent Patterns

• Fixed Interval: Reinforcement after a fixed amount of time.
• Variable Interval: Reinforcement after a varying amount of time.

Which Is Best?

• Variable-ratio reinforcement schedule ⇒ high and steady response rate compared to other schedules.

Concurrent Schedules

• Multiple response alternatives are available, reinforcement schedules attached to each alternative.
• Organisms can quickly switch between behaviors (responses) according to alternative.

Equivalence Law

• Organisms show preference to reinforce certain behavior based on the probability of reinforcement

The Effect of Delay in Reinforcement

• Delayed reinforcement ⇒ reduces the occurrence of that behavior.
• Immediate reinforcement ⇒ increases the occurrence of that behavior

Other Reinforcement Setups

• Low rate responding: Reinforcement after minimum period of time after last reinforcement
• High rate responding: Reinforcement required for a minimum number of attempts
• Alternative responding: Training may prevent habits, for example, if using this method to break bad habits (unwanted response)

Theoretical Discussions on Reinforcement Schemes

• Break Time: Time required for behavior
• Depends on the response needs of the organism

Punishments

Skinner's Study on Punishment

• Rats taught lever-pressing behavior.
• Reinforcement removed ⇒ extinction of lever-pressing behavior.
• Different groups were punished or not ⇒ comparison of effects on punishment and no punishment Severity of punishment: Stronger shocks resulted in more suppression of behavior.

Alternatives to Punishment

• Identify the cause of undesirable behavior.
• Extinction: Ignoring the unwanted behavior
• Reinforcing desirable behaviors instead

How to Use Reinforcers?

• Specify the desired behavior precisely.
• Reinforce behaviors that aren't automatically present.
• Use a good reinforcer.
• Reinforce each step of complex behaviors gradually.
• Remove the reinforcer when the desired behavior is observed.

Strategies to Reduce Undesirable Behaviors

• Extinction of responses → removing the reinforcer to eliminate unwanted behavior
• Unconditional reinforcement → reinforcing the desirable behaviors
• Reinforcing other behaviors → reinforcing the alternatives rather than the undesirable one

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)

• A method to change problem behaviors

What is common in classical and operant conditioning?

Long-Term Storage of Implicit Memory

• Repeated experience transferred from short to long-term memory.
• Linked to increased synapses
• Requires more time or repeated trials

Consolidation

• Short-term memory conversion to long-term memory.
• Requires protein syntheses
• "CAMP-CREB pathway" plays a critical role in this change

Explicit Memory

• Not stored in a specific region
• Utilizes visual, verbal, auditory cues differently (for storage)
• Processes: encoding, storage, consolidation, retrieval

Working Memory

• Temporary storage related to explicit memory.
• A temporary storage area to help the brain process information.
• Essential for mental activities
• Based on focused attention

Memory Classification

• Time-based:
• Short-term
• Long-term
• Nature-based:
• Implicit
• Explicit

Priming

• Non-conscious effects of past experiences on current behaviors/performance.
• Positive or negative priming effect dependent on the relationship between stimuli.
• Study used multiple stimuli (e.g., words, phrases) to create associations.

Types of Memory

Neurobiology of Habituation

Neurobiology of Sensitization

• Short-term sensitization requires presynaptic facilitation.
• Repeated stimulation of the nervous system (presynaptic) → stronger response

Neurobiological of classical conditioning

• Fear conditioning requires coordination of pre and post-synaptic transmission.
• Tail shock → sensory → facilitating interneuron, leading to a response (light touch from siphon).
• Classical conditioning involves sensitization (increase in response)

Amygdala

• Primary region of fear.
• Receives unconscious fear responses
• Processing of fear responses
• Conditioning of fear responses relies on its input and pathways to the body.

Learning and storing habits requires striatum.

• Complex behaviors created through combining simpler actions
• Reinforcement of these simpler acts

Packard et.al.'s study.

• Win-change method: Animals learn to select new arms randomly (hippocampus-based learning)
• Win-stay method: Animals learn that specific arms have rewards (striatum-based learning).

Long-term storage of implicit memory

• Transfer short-term to long-term memory.
• Associated with an increase in synapses.
• Training may lead to prolonged potentiation (lasting for weeks).

Long-term Potentiation (LTP)

• A prolonged, repetitive, and excitatory synaptic input leads to a lasting increase in response.
• Early phase (hours): Not dependent on protein synthesis.
• Late phase (days to weeks): Requires protein synthesis.

Schaffer Collaterals → CA1

• A set of neuronal pathways
• The strength of the synapse
• Plays a role in memory

Regular Synaptic Transmission

• Basic synaptic mechanism → transmission of a signal from one neuron to another neuron

LTP dependent on NMDA

• Activation of NMDA receptors is crucial for LTP and learning.
• Calcium influx plays a role in enhancing synaptic transmission.

Early phase of LTP

• Transmitter release increases, while unsuccessful transmission decreases.

The properties of neural membranes

• Persistent firing unaffected by synaptic blockade
• Caused by structure of the membrane
• Source of this mechanism are deep layers of the entorhinal cortex
• Small excitatory input creates action potential
• Calcium entry → Long-lasting responses.

Neural Networks

• Reversal of excitatory connections leads to neural network activity.
• Interacting inhibitory circuits (e.g., when you are stimulated and need to do a task, other neurons act as a group and work together inhibiting other parts of sensory information, while some neurons fire more strongly to focus on the task)
• Dependent on DOPAMINE.

Spatial Sensory Memory

• Requires LTP in the hippocampus.
• Critical parts of the hippocampus for memory (place cells, grid cells) (location-related neurons).

Long-Term Depression (LTD)

• A decrease in synaptic strength.
• Opposite of LTP.
• Calcium entry insufficient to stimulate a response
• Caused by low-frequency stimulation.

Implicit Memory

• Function unconsciously and automatically.
• Memory related to habits and motor skills.

Clive Wearing

• Sufferer of herpes encephalitis.
• Lost explicit memory.
• Still able to perform skills (implicit memory) like reading music, playing piano.

Neurobiology of habituation

• Implicit memory requires synaptic changes.
• Habituation involves presynaptic suppression of synaptic transmission.
• Involves homosynaptic depression.

Neurobiology of fear conditioning

• Coordination of pre and post-synaptic transmission.
• A light touch stimulus to a siphon.
• Fear response (e.g., tail shock) → a learned response (activation of serotonin).
• It relies on the AMYGDALA for learning.

Summary