Chapter 7: OperantRespondent Interrelationships and the Biological Context of Conditioning

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Chapter 7Operant-Respondent Interrelationships
and the Biological Context of Conditioning
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Analysis of Operant/Respondent Interactions

• Operants and respondents are defined by
  experimental producers that produce them.
• Responses with similar topographies may be either
  operant or respondent.
• Intrusion of reflexive behavior can occur during
  operant conditioning.
• Respondent procedures are often embedded in the
  arrangement of operant contingencies.

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Analysis of Operant/Respondent Interactions

• Respondent Contingencies Predominate over Operant
  Regulation of Behavior
• Breland and Breland
• Instinctive drift
• Sign Tracking - approaching a sign stimulus
• Autoshaping (Brown and Jenkins, 1968)
• Negative Automaintenance (Williams and Williams,
  1969)

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Instinctive Drift

• Instinctive drift refers to species-characteristic
  behavior patterns that become progressively more
  invasive during training.
• The term instinctive drift is problematic because
  the concept suggests a conflict between nature
  (biology) and nurture (environment).
• Behavior is said to drift toward its biological
  roots. There is, however, no need to talk about
  behavior drifting toward some end. Behavior is
  appropriate to the operating contingencies.

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Misbehaving Subjects

• The little piggy who couldnt let go
• The miserly racoon

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Sign Tracking

• Sign Tracking- refers to approaching a sign that
  signals a biologically relevant event also
  referred to as autoshaping because of the
  elicited approach and manipulation of the sign
  stimulus. A pigeon typically approaches a lit key
  that precedes food delivery. The bird makes
  pecking movements at the key and eventually pecks
  the key itself. If food is then delivered, the
  elicited peck can be operantly reinforced. The
  peck comes to be more of an operant than an
  elicited response.

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Negative Automaintenance
In negative automaintenance, the autoshaping
procedure is slightly changed. The respondent
contingency of sign followed by food delivery is
in place but an actual peck to the lit response
key cancels food delivery for that trial, which
is operant extinction. In effect the respondent
contingencies are eliciting key pecks while the
operant contingencies are not reinforcing key
pecks and withholding a key peck does result in
food delivery the different processes are pit
against each other. The next slide illustrates
this. Result the subject continues to peck the
lit response key but at a lower rate of pecking.
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Slide 10 of 38
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Another example of operant-respondent
interaction When key- pecking is reinforced
with food, the pigeon pecks the key with
a closed-beak topography (top row). When
key-pecking is reinforced with water, the pigeon
pecks the key with an open-beak
topography, (bottom row). The topography of the
key-peck is different because the different
reinforcers are acting as US and eliciting
different respondent responses which are part of
the operant performance.
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Contingencies of Sign Tracking, Autoshaping, and
Instinctive Drift

• Stimulus substitution
• Autoshaping, sign tracking and instinctive drift
  represent similar processes.
• When a CS is paired with an US the conditioned
  stimulus is said to substitute the unconditioned
  stimulus.
• Ex. Food elicits salivation and by conditioning
  the light elicits the same behavior.

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Contingencies of Sign Tracking, Autoshaping, and
Instinctive Drift

• Timberlake (1983, 1993) suggests an alternative
  to stimulus substitution. The alternative states
  that each US controls a species specific response
  class or behavior system. For the raccoon, the
  coin acts to elicit behavior that consists of
  obtaining and ingesting food rather than dropping
  the coin into the piggy bank.
• Timberlakes story of throwing food to a barking,
  territorial dog

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Operant Contingencies and Regulation of Behavior

• Reinforcing Reflexive Behavior
• Water deprived dogs were reinforced for either
  increasing or decreasing saliva production. Dogs
  that were reinforced for increasing saliva flow
  showed an increase and dogs reinforced for less
  saliva showed a decrease (Miller and Carmona,
  1967).
• A change in the dogs operant behavior may have
  mediated salivary conditioning. The behavior
  pattern was reinforce and not actual salivation.

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Operant Contingencies and Regulation of Behavior

• To rule out operant conditioning of other
  behavior being reinforced, Miller immobilized
  rats with curare. Curare paralyzes all skeletal
  muscles and interrupts breathing. Reinforcement
  by ingesting food was not possible therefore
  electrical stimulation of the brain served as
  reinforcement. Half of the rats were reinforced
  for a fast heart rate and half reinforced for a
  slow heart rate. The rats average starting heart
  rate was 420 beats per minute. After conditioning
  the heart rates widely diverged (310 bpm for slow
  heart rate group and 500 bpm for fast heart rate
  group)

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Operant control of respondent behavior

• Obviously we can come to exert voluntary
  control over our reflexes or we couldnt become
  toilet trained (duh!)
• Various reflexes can be controlled by operant
  reinforcement contingent upon occurrences of the
  response
• Biofeedback demonstrates that such control can be
  acquired by everyday people in the real world
  but not as depicted on MTV

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Reinforcement andClassical Conditioning

• Are CRs controlled by their consequences?
• Potentially YES
• Can reinforcement control visceral responses?
• Miller, YES
• Biofeedback

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Conditioned taste aversion in humans

• Humans are more likely to develop an aversion to
  tastes and smells than sights and sounds, even
  when we know it wasnt the food that made us
  ill (sauce dbearnaise effect).
• Humans can develop anticipatory nausea and
  vomiting (ANV) to the sight of a doctor, a
  clinic, the day of chemotherapy among other
  stimuli.

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Seligman

• Prepared associations
• Counterprepared associations
• Unprepared associations

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Preparedness (Martin Seligman) Animals are
evolutionarily prepared to associate particular
CSs with particular USs. Not all CSs are equally
effective in classical conditioning. This
contradicted Pavlovs and others conclusions
concerning the uniformity (general process) of
classical conditioning.
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Preparedness is evolutionarily adaptive.
Why? Speculation Maybe the CSs that are most
predictive of the presence of food will be the
ones most effective in producing conditioned
taste aversions. Ex) Rats primarily use smell
to find food But what about birds? What sense
do birds primarily use to find food?
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Taste aversion learning

• Quail and rats were given blue flavored water.
  After drinking water, they became sick. Both the
  rats and quail were given a choice between blue
  unflavored water and clear flavored water. The
  quail avoided the blue water while the rats
  avoided the flavored water. Biologically,
  consuming foods which produce illness should be
  avoided. The quail chose the flavored water
  because they select food based on what it looks
  like while rats avoided the taste because it had
  been associated with sickness. Illustrated here
  is the phenomenon called preparedness.

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Wilcoxon et al (1971) experiment with
quail Blue, sour -------------------gt Nausea
(US) water (CS) Then test the two CS
separately Blue water (CS) ------------gt
?????? Sour water (CS) ------------gt
?????? Which CS produced a conditioned taste
aversion (CR) to water?
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Visual stimuli seem to be the most effective CSs
to condition taste aversions in birds. Ex)
Birds learn not to eat monarch butterflies. The
monarchs body contains chemicals that make
birds sick. Monarch (CS) ----gt Nausea (US) ----gt
Aversion (UR) Monarch ---------------------------
---------gt Aversion (CR) (visual CS)
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Garcia and Koelling (1966) Experiment 1 1)
Flavored --------gt Nausea (US) water
(CS) 2) Bright, noisy ---gt Nausea (US)
water (CS) Which CS produced a conditioned
aversion (CR) to water?
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Experiment 2 1) Flavored ---------gt Shock (US)
water (CS) 2) Bright, noisy ---gt Shock
(US) water (CS) Which CS produced a
conditioned emotional response (CR) to water?
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Garcia and Koelling (1966) Taste aversions (CR)
are more easily conditioned to smells and tastes
than to lights and sounds (CS). However, fear
(CR) is more easily conditioned to lights and
sounds than to smells and tastes (CS) Animals
are more evolutionarily prepared to associate
some CSs with USs than others. Contiguity and
contingency are not enough. Preparedness is also
important.
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Garcia and Koelling (1966)

• During traditional respondent conditioning, the
  CS and US typically overlap or are separated by
  only a few seconds
• In Garcia and Koellings experiment, the taste CS
  was followed much later by the US, drug, or X ray
• It is often assumed that the choice of CS and US
  is irrelevant for respondent conditioning
• Taste and gastrointestinal malaise produced
  aversion, but taste and shock did not condition
• Therefore, it appears that for some stimuli the
  animal is prepared by nature to make a
  connection, and for others they may even be
  contraprepared
• For other kinds of classical conditioning many
  CS-US pairings are required, but aversion to
  taste conditioned after a single pairing of
  flavor-illness

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Conditioned taste aversions differ from other
CRs. The CS-US interval can be very long
(several hours). Most effective CSs are
tastes smells (not lights, tones, etc.) for
CTA Conditioning can occur after only one trial
and be very hard to extinguish. Conditioned
taste aversions are evolutionarily adaptive. Why?
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Food aversions sometimes develop in chemotherapy
patients through second-order conditioning.
Food ----gt Chemotherapy-----gt Nausea -----gt
Aversion (CS2) (CS1) (US)
(UR) Food --------------------------------------
-------------gt Aversion (CS1)
(CR)
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Adjunctive Behavior

• On time-based or interval schedules, organisms
  may emit behavior patterns that are not required
  by the contingency of reinforcement.
• Staddon (1977) has noted that during the time
  between reinforcers, animals engage in three
  distinct types of behavior.
• Immediately after food reinforcement, interim
  behavior like drinking water may occur next an
  organism may engage in facultative behavior that
  is independent of the schedule of reinforcement
  finally, as the time for reinforcement gets
  close, animals engage in food-related activities
  such as approaching, sniffing gnawing or pecking
  at the food delivery device, called terminal
  behavior.

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The behaviors that follow reinforcement at the
beginning of the interfood interval, the interim
behaviors, are often excessive in measure. In
polydipsia, a rat will drink 50 or more of its
weight in a 60 minute period. Adjunctive
behavior can also take the form of gnawing on
and and consuming excessive amounts of
non-nutritive substances (pica). These interim
behaviors begin at low levels and peak about 2/3
of the way through the interfood interval and
then decline to low levels as the time of food
delivery draws near, as shown in the previous
slide. Humans have been observed to display this
pattern of behaviors with cigarette puffing,
coffee consumption and other behaviors. Many of
our nervous habits can be seen as being
adjunctive behaviors. Try to observe your pattern
and amount of coffee or soft drink consumption
while you are at your computer while you have to
sit and wait (and wait) though a period of
enforced waiting
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• Staddon and Simmelhag found that inter-reinforcer
  behavior was grouped into two categories
• 1. Terminal behavior behavior right before the
  delivery of reinforcer
• Usually behavior that is directed toward food
  source
• 2. Interim behavior behavior occurring early in
  interval
• Behavior directed away from food source
• Hard-wired behavior that occurs when Rft.
  probability is low

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• Many scientists refer to terminal and interrim
  behavior as adjunctive behavior, esp when these
  two types of behavior are identical
• Schedule-induced polydipsia under time-based
  deliveries of reinforcement, the addition of a
  water source? excessive drinking
• Also works with wheel-running and drug
  self-administration
• Does this apply to humans?
• Athletes and sport-related superstitions
• Compulsions
• Primitive religious rituals?

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Adjunctive Behavior

• Falk (1961)
• Excessive pattern of behavior that emerges as a
  by-product of an intermittent schedule of
  reinforcement for some other behavior.
• Schedule-induced polydipsia

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Adjunctive Behavior

• Occurs during a period immediately following
  consumption of an intermittent reinforcer
• Affected by level of deprivation for the
  scheduled reinforcer
• Function as reinforcer for other behaviors
• Optimal interval for development of adjunct

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Adjuncts in Humans

• Nail biting, talkativeness, snacking, coffee
  consumption
• Drug and alcohol abuse??

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Displacement Behaviors

• Falk argued that what operant researchers are
  seeing as adjunctive behaviors, ethologists see
  as displacement behaviors. When a
  highly-motivated or biologically relevant
  behavior is prevented, animals will often engage
  in a species-typical (innate) behavior which
  seems out of its proper context. The housecat
  who has the starling but then it slips away will
  suddenly begin to lick and groom itself. The
  squirrel who is about to try the massive 6-foot
  leap to the birdfeeder will pause and scratch an
  itch. The male goose who is threatening an
  intruder will start to peck at and pull up
  mouthfuls of grass. The boyfriend having just had
  a fight and a break-up with his girlfriend, walks
  into the office building and suddenly has an
  attack of deep, wide mouth yawns.
• When we are asked a question for which we are
  sure we know the answer but we cant quite think
  of it and it really irritates us, why do we
  scratch our heads or touch our chins?

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Biological Context of Conditioning

• Behavior principles of conditioning can be
  considered universal principles.
• From species to species, some differences occur
  which do not invalidate behavioral principles but
  that an organisms physiology and evolutionary
  history must be taken into consideration in
  conducting and evaluating conditioning studies.
• Different species have different evolutionarily
  prepared responses.

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Activity Anorexia

• Exercise will decrease subsequent food intake in
  humans
• Running in an activity wheel will decrease food
  intake in rats
• Decreased food intake will lead to increased
  activity levels in both rats and humans
• Human subjects in a study of the effects of a
  semi-starvation diet were often excessively
  exercising, in addition to daily forced hiking
  and fitness routines
• Anorexia patients are often almost hyperactive
  and constantly exercising

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Activity Anorexia

• Both rats and people can adapt to an intense
  exercise routine or a restricted diet and
  moderate their weight loss. But if a restricted
  diet and increased activity are introduced
  abruptly together, both rats and humans are
  likely to lose control of their eating and
  self-starve while exercising excessively.
• Excessive exercise leads to increased endorphin
  production which reduces the effectiveness of
  food as a reinforcer. Eating becomes much less
  reinforcing than exercise and exercise displaces
  eating as a high-probability behavior. As to why
  the subject does not eat even though eating is
  now far below its former probability
  (response-deprivation hypothesis), the excessive
  exercise-decreased food intake produces the
  physiological changes (endorphin production) that
  disrupt both behavioral and physiological
  homeostasis mechanisms