PSYC10003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Conditioned Taste Aversion, Homeostasis, Classical Conditioning
6 Jun 2018
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PSYC10003 – MIND, BRAIN, & BEHAVIOUR 1
LEARNING
Lecture 25 (Week 9 . 1): Classical Conditioning
Learning: the process by which experience / practice results in a relatively permanent change in
behaviour or in potential behaviour
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936): dogs associated bell with food, & would salivate
Classical Conditioning: involves reflex behaviours (simple, unlearnt response governed by the nervous
system that occurs naturally in response to a stimulus). A new stimulus-response relationship is learned
(acquired) by association. Reveals how organisms learn to mentally represent aspects of their world
• Key terms:
• Unconditioned Stimulus: stimulus that always causes an organism to respond in a specific way
• Unconditioned Response: response that takes place in an organism whenever an UCS occurs
• Conditioned Stimulus: original Neutral Stimulus that’s paired with an UCS & eventually
produces the formerly UCR
• Conditioned Response: after conditioning, it’s the response produced when the CS is present
• Strengthened by:
• Frequent pairing of the CS & UCS
• Timing: CS presented immediately before the UCS to make the CS predictive of the UCS
• Basic Principles:
• Extinction: gradually weakening CR – occurs when CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS
• Spontaneous recovery: reappearance of a previously extinguished response – occurs after a
break from presenting the CS, & after extinction the CS would again elicit the CR
• Rapid reacquisition: once extinction occurred, re-learning is substantially faster when a second
acquisition phase is introduced (shows that extinction isn’t an unlearning of the CR but a learned
inhibition of responding)
• Learned taste aversion: shows how organism’s innate behaviour patterns can affect what’s learnt &
how quickly it’s learnt (often doesn’t require repeated exposure, & time span between CS & CR can
be hours). Biologically predisposed to learn taste aversions (principle of biological preparedness)
• Phobias: extreme, irrational fears of specific objects, animals, or situations
• Biological preparedness to acquire phobias of some stimuli over others – salience to survival
• Hard to create phobias for novel stimuli (e.g. flowers, power points)
• Fetishes: sexual attraction to non-living things
• Limits:
• Not everything can be conditioned / conditioned the same – taste aversion, phobias, preparedness
• Applications in Psychotherapy:
• Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy may try to unlearn phobias by gradually pairing the phobic
stimulus with positive experience
• Desensitisation Therapy: relax in the presence of fearful stimuli – gradually extinguished
• Using the conditioned response to drugs – placebo response vs therapeutic response
• Role in drug use: anticipation of a drug elicits a conditioned compensatory response (natural
tendency to reverse the anticipated effect to restore homeostasis
• Withdrawal symptoms – environment without the drug
• Tolerance – need more to create the same effect because of CCR
• Overdose – same doses in different environment (no cues) > stronger effect b/c no CCR
• Relapse – spontaneous recovery from extinction, re-entering the world with old situation cues
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