Detailed Report on Classical Conditioning & Perruchet Effect

Question: Write a report on the classical conditioning and the perruchet effect. Answer: Abstract Classical conditioning is considered to have been the very first form of learning to be discovered and studied within behaviorist tradition (Mitchell, De Houwer Lovibond, 2009). Many individuals today have the general notion that is it one of the most basic types of associative learning, believing that Ivan Pavlovs 1927 dog experiments had something to do with it. Being a Russian scientist, Pavlov started out by studying the digestive system of dogs and eventually was intrigued with his observation. He observed that dogs deprived of food for a given period of time would begin to salivate when one of his assistants walked into the room. Pavlov then investigated this particular occurrence and established the laws of classical conditioning. From his observations, he determined that a stimulus could become linked with food, causing salivation on its own. This report aims at determining whether or not a conditioned response requires conscious expectation of the Unconditioned Stimuli. An experiment questioning the Perruchet Effect will be conducted and the expectancy ratings measured. The relevant methods and outcomes will also be discussed, and conclusions provided at the end. Introduction The basic classical conditioning procedure takes place when a Neutral Stimulus (NS) is combined with an Unconditional Stimulus (US). Here, the NS can be anything as long as it is not capable of provoking any form of response in the animal or person. The US, on the other hand, is something that automatically results in an inherent response. Pavlov referred this as the Unconditional Response (UR). Notably, classical conditioning emphasizes on the significance of learning from the environment, supporting nurture over nature. One of the numerous strengths of classical conditioning theory is that it is scientific as it is founded on the empirical proof conducted by controlled experiments. Secondly, it is also a reductionist explanation of behavior (Lovibond Shanks, 2002). This means that complicated actions are broken down into smaller stimulus-response units of behavior. An alternate theory contending that the underlying mechanisms of human conditioning incorporate both automatic and co nscious processes has resulted in heated discussions in the literature. The strongest proof for the duel process theory is the one referred to as the Perruchet Effect which refers to a psychological occurrence in which dissociation is indicated between conscious expectation of an event, and the speed or strength of a response to this particular event (Perruchet Vinter, 2002). In 1985, Perruchet carried out an eyeblink conditioning study, providing evidence for a double dissociation between Unconditioned Stimulus expectancy and eyeblink Conditioned Responses in eyeblink conditioning. He made use of a 50% random partial fortification schedule, and participants offered ratings in the course of the intertribal session. Notably, Perruchets study is considered to be quite significant because participants eyeblink Conditioned Responses revealed the opposite pattern (Clark, Manns Squire, 2001). This is to say that as the number of successive non-reinforced trials increased, participants eyeblink CRs gradually decreased. On the other hand, as the number of successive reinforced trials increased, their eyeblink CRs also increased. Perruchet offered some proof against the Unconditioned Stimulus sensitization explanation by including an unpaired control group which received USs and CSs in an unpaired manner. Notably, participants in the US sensitization group did no t indicate any transformations in eyeblink CRs as an outcome of US recency. The role played by knowledge with respect to the connection between CS and US in human Pavlovian conditioning is not well understood. However, despite the presence of a clear-cut consensus on this particular issue, many employees acknowledge that the awareness of CS-US connections is a necessary condition for the occurrence of human conditioning (Moratti Keil, 2005). Recently, there has been a need for cognitive theories of conditioning to pursue the line of inquiry and it is here that the idea of expectancy becomes useful. With regards to the human eyeblink conditioning, Perruchet introduced a model for evaluating the significance of expectancy and conditioning strength. In human learning research, it is often assumed that the experience with unforeseen events between occurrences tend to influence cognition and behavior in manners not necessarily considered to be under the conscious control of the person (Burns Corpus, 2004). However, numerous literatures have highlighted Perruchets dissociation between trends in expectancy of the Unconditioned Stimulus and trends in conditioned responding. Notably, the repetition of CS-US pairings tends to increase the strength of the CS-US connection, together with the possibility that a human respondent realizes the connection between stimuli, expecting the occurrence of the US after the CS. Similarly, the r epetition of CS alone often weakens the firmness of the CS-US connection in keeping with the principle of extinction. The transformations in expectancy as a function of the inherence of preceding runs in Perruchets paradigm are attributed to the Gamblers Fallacy. This is a mistaken tendency to believe that a completed run of a specific result will automatically be balanced by a propensity for the opposite result in the immediate future, given a random sequence of occurrences (Perruchet, Cleeremans Destrebecqz, 2006). It is important to note that while in the Perruchets paradigm sampling is without replacement, the Gamblers Fallacy is applicable to situations where successive occurrences are sincerely random. Human participants are able to demonstrate associative learning by simply recording when they expect the Unconditioned Stimulus to take place. It can also be demonstrated by describing the nature of the contingency between the CS and the US, or both (Lovibond Shanks, 2002). Associative learning is the ability possessed by many organisms to learn about connections between separate occurrences when such events are repeatedly combined with one another. It has been suggested that there exists to autonomous learning systems in function in Pavlovian conditioning. Whereas one system results in declarative available knowledge of the stimulus possibilities, the other incorporates the automatic establishment of excitatory connections between nodes that represent the CS and the US. Notably, this dual system perspective of associative learning is widely accepted. However, the empirical proof on which it is founded is rather weak. Definition of key terms and description of key phenomena US Unconditioned Stimulus UCR Unconditioned Response NS Neutral Stimulus CS Conditioned Stimulus CR Conditioned Response Stimulus Any characteristic of the environment affecting human or animal behavior Extinction The dying out of a CR by breaking the connection between the US and the CS Response The action brought about by the stimulus, such as, the salivating response from Pavlovs experiments with dogs Generalization When a stimulus similar to the CS also elicits a response Statement of the Experiment Aim and general description of the experiment, including key variables In this report, an experiment was carried out to determine whether or not Perruchets dissociation was still evident even when participants have a good reason to expect that one outcome is more likely than the other. Participants were expected to score as many points as possible in a coin toss task where the outcome of the coin flip was presented as either Heads or Tails. If the result was Heads, the participants had to press space bar as fast as possible (Livesey Costa, 2013). Conscious expectancy was also included where these participants had to predict whether the next test will be Heads or Tails. Prediction converted to expectancy rating of -5 to 5. Hypothesis in relation to relevant theory (or theories) The main hypothesis in relation to this particular experiment and relevant theories was that there would be a stronger expectancy in Heads predictions than Tails. It was also hypothesized that predictions that are influenced by runs of occurrences are always consistent with the Gamblers Fallacy theory. Method The experiment consisted of 127 university students as the respondents who completed this particular experiment in a tutorial class. There were a total of 86 female students whose average age was 22 years. Participants were randomly allocated to either a tails biased, heads biased, or unbiased condition in each session. Notably, none of the respondents were excluded from the experiment. The devices that were used were the Apple iMac computers installed with programming software, MatLab. These devices were used to create stimuli, provide stimuli, and record reactions. For the experiment, a 3x8 design was utilized, with the between subjects conditions incorporating a heads biased, tails biased, and unbiased condition. While the probability of heads was 0.6, and tails biased 0.4, that of unbiased condition was 0.5 (Mitchell, De Houwer Lovibond, 2009). The basic run framework was consistent with previous studies on the Perruchet effect and the key within subjects factors were randomly ordered lengths of trials. Additionally, the kinds of trials were collated in consecutive 8-run length groups from -5 to 5. When assessing the progression of trials offered to each respondent, repetitions of the same or opposing US as equivalents of positive and negative runs of trials were examined. For the procedure, the participants were informed that they were to take part in a coin toss prediction game whose aim would be to score as many points as possible. The experiment basically consisted of two main tasks, that is a speeded response task and a prediction task. The latter measured conscious expectancy and required respondents to predict the outcome of the coin toss on the following trial. If the correct prediction was made, then the participant would win the number of points they chose, and vice versa. Results From the results, when the participants were presented with a biased coin, there was a stronger expectancy in Heads biased condition than Unbiased. Moreover, weaker expectancy was witnessed in Tails biased condition than Unbiased. Mean prediction was considered to be sensitive to the length of the previous run in all groups. With regards to reaction time, Tails biased condition was slower than the Unbiased one while Heads biased did not indicate any significant difference to the latter (Shanks Lovibond, 2002). Discussion Looking at the experiment that was conducted in relation to Perruchets dissociation, it was observed that predictions actually tend to be influenced by runs of events consistent with the Gamblers Fallacy. The speed of the participants response time was also influenced by runs of events consistent with conditioning. Explicit predictions were quite sensitive to the total probability of each outcome. Response times were not wholly sensitive to the total probability of each result, and the Tails biased group was much slower than their Heads and Unbiased counterparts. Despite these outcomes, Perruchets dissociation still holds true. When grouping participants on whether they exhibited a consistent Gamblers Fallacy or not, those who did not do so showed a downward linear trend on both forms of expectancy trials. The outcomes suggested that when the respondents are clearly asked to make an expectancy judgment, it affects the preparation of the successive choices in a manner that overrides a utomatic influences of learning (Soetens Notebaert, 2005). Since long successive runs of expectancy trials and no expectancy trials were not all inclusive in this experiment, the presence of the Gamblers Fallacy was founded on the results taking place on both these trials. Concurrent measurement of expectancy in choice response time tasks does not necessarily eliminate Perruchets dissociation, but rather prevents its manifestation. Participants still learn the connection between the tone and the result, and it is this learning that affects response time, as the downward linear trend can be seen on the no expectancy trials. Moreover, voluntary responses in the speeded tasks were affected by automatic learning dependent on trial history, and conscious beliefs with regards to upcoming events (Perruchet Vinter, 2002). Overall, the experiment proved reliability of Perruchet Effect when expectancy was moderated or manipulated. The limited number of relevant research studies has left much room for generalization and expansion. Future research is therefore necessary with regards to instructions conveyed to participants about the actual possibility of different results. A masking task often used in conditioning literature can also be exploited in order to limit participants engagement of higher-order cognitive processes (Clark, Manns Squire, 2001). The influence of greater variations in the procedure could be explored. Conclusion Concurrent measurement of expectancy in choice response time does not usually get rid of the Perruchet Effect. However, automatic facilitation founded on previous trial history is temporarily weakened when respondents have to clearly record their conscious expectations, especially when indicating a consistent Gamblers Fallacy bias in their expectancy ratings. In Perruchets experiment, studies tend to produce the opposite trend in conditioned responding. Additionally, priming of a voluntary action displays a similar trend to conditioned responding. The strength of the conditioned response is thus influenced by factors other than the conscious expectation of the outcome. References Burns, B., Corpus, B. (2004). Randomness and inductions from streaks: Gamblers fallacy versus hot hand. Psychonomic Bulletin Review, 11. Pp. 179 184. Clark, R.E., Manns, J.R., Squire, L.R. (2001). Trace and delay eyeblink conditioning: Contrasting phenomena of declarative and nondeclarative memory. Psycho Sci., 12. Pp. 304 308. Livesey, E.J., Costa, D.S.J. (2013). 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