Topic 4 Subtopic 2 Instinctive Drift PDF

25/08/2020 Topic 4: Subtopic 2 Instinctive drift, conditioned taste aversion, Preparedness and phobias BIOLOGICAL AND LEARNING PSYCHOLOGY Course coordinator:...

25/08/2020 Topic 4: Subtopic 2 Instinctive drift, conditioned taste aversion, Preparedness and phobias BIOLOGICAL AND LEARNING PSYCHOLOGY Course coordinator: Associate Professor Carla Litchfield 1 BIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS ON CONDITIONING (1) Instinctive drift & animal ‘misbehavior’ Breland & Breland (1961) suggest: food reinforcement can elicit innate food foraging & handling behaviours, which cause a decline in effectiveness of an operant response reinforced by food Instinctive drift occurs when: innate response tendencies interfere with conditioning processes Examples: pigs or raccoons depositing coins in a piggy bank 2 1  25/08/2020 BRELAND & BRELAND (1961) Keller & Marian Breland trained animals for the IQ Zoo, a tourist attraction in Hot Springs that showcased operant conditioning © www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net © Lin Stone; © www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net www.shareyourstate.com/zooiq.htm 3 BRELAND & BRELAND (1961): TRAINING CHICKENS IN THE CLASSROOM They identified chickens (Gallus domesticus) as the best behavioural model for teaching operant conditioning in the classroom. © www.psichi.org 4 2  25/08/2020 BOB BAILEY’S OPERANT CONDITIONING COURSES FOR DOG TRAINERS Bob Bailey runs operant conditioning courses for dog trainers based on Breland and Breland chicken training workshops (Hot Springs, Arkansas). Photos: © http://susangarrettdogagility.com/; http://www.legacycanine.com/ 5 BIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS ON CONDITIONING (2) Conditioned Taste Aversion Aversions to food can develop, if: eating a particular food is followed by nausea (due to food poisoning, illness, or alcohol intoxication); animals readily make connections between taste and nausea while most conditioning takes more than ONE pairing for an association to develop! From an evolutionary point of view this makes sense: animals quickly learn to avoid food that has made them sick (e.g. poisonous foods), because individuals that learn what NOT to eat will survive 6 3  25/08/2020 BIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS ON CONDITIONING (3) Preparedness & phobias Martin Seligman suggests ‘preparedness’ is: biologically programmed; a species-specific predisposition to be conditioned in certain ways and not others. Humans appear easily to develop phobias to: spiders, snakes, heights & darkness; fear and avoidance of them may have helped survival of our early ancestors 7 SCHEDULE-INDUCED BEHAVIOURS OR ADJUNCTIVE BEHAVIOURS IN NON-HUMAN ANIMALS Some excessive (aberrant or ‘abnormal’) behaviours can occur during fixed-interval schedules: typically occur just after reinforcement (during the post-reinforcement pause). Examples: polydipsia (excessive drinking), excessive wheel-running, and excessive aggression 8 4  25/08/2020 SCHEDULE-INDUCED BEHAVIOURS OR ADJUNCTIVE BEHAVIOURS IN HUMANS Excessive levels of ‘instinctive’ appetitive behaviours (eating, drinking) can also occur. In our societies: reinforcement often occurs on fixed-interval schedules (e.g., eat at certain times, get paid on certain days, relax on specific days). Interval schedules may contribute to excessive drinking or alcoholism. 9 REFERENCES You don’t need to find these but they are given here to acknowledge sources Breland, K., and Breland, M. (1961). The Misbehavior Of Organisms. American Psychologist, 16, 681-684. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Breland/misbehavior.htm McNally, R. J. (2016). The legacy of Seligman’s ‘phobias and preparedness’(1971). Behavior therapy, 47, 585-594. Powell, R.A. et al (2015). CP1052 - BEHL 2012 Biological and Learning Psychology (1st Edition). Compiled by Dr Carla Litchfield. South Melbourne, Victoria: Cengage Learning. (Chapter: The Limits of Learning, pp.184-200). Seligman, M.E.P. (1971). Phobias and preparedness. Behavior Therapy, 2, 307-320 Sources for images are provided with the images or have been sourced as freely available for reuse (e.g. Pixabay) 10 5