Question

Pavlovian Conditioning: Design an experiment to test the effectiveness of temporal contiguity, contingency of the CS and US, and fear versus non-fear related US. Visualize your hypothesized data for the outcome of your experiment.

Answer 1

Introduction: Pavlovian Conditioning is also known as classical conditioning is a process by which we learn to associate stimuli and anticipate events. This process studied by Ivan Pavlov who was interested in studying stimulus-response relationship.

Temporal contiguity: In classical conditioning, strength of the association between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) is largely affected by temporal contiguity. Temporal contiguity occurs when 2 stimuli experienced close together in the time.

Contingency: This is dependence of one stimulus on another. The theory of contingency in classical conditioning states that if one stimulus depends on another, then they will become associated.

Fear and non-fear related US: If an organism predicts some adverse consequence associated with particular neutral stimulus, then it is fear-related conditioning. If there is no fear of bad consequences associated with stimulus, the it is non-fear-related conditioning. Example: Delivery of electric shock associated with stimulus of hearing bell sound is fear-related conditioning.

Aim of Experiment: Study classical conditioning theory and test the effectiveness of temporal contiguity, contingency of the CS and US, and fear versus non-fear related US.

Methodology: Place a small piece of cheese on floor near rat (unconditioned stimulus) and rat runs to cheese on floor to eat it (unconditioned response). Now, start making sound with cardboard before putting piece of cheese on floor (conditioned stimulus). Observe, whenever cardboard sound is heard, rat starts looking for cheese on floor and gets ready to run towards cheese (conditioned response). Next, hit the rat lightly with cardboard while it is reaching the cheese (fear related conditioning). Now, rat may not come near the cheese while cardboard is present.

Before Conditioning: Whenever rat sees piece of cheese on floor (US), runs to it to have it (UR).

After Conditioning: Whenever rat hears sound of cardboard (CS), it looks at the direction of sound and gets ready for cheese (CR). Also, when rat sees cardboard flying above the cheese, it tends to avoid reaching to cheese and waits till cardboard is taken back due to fear of getting hit by cardboard (fear related to conditioning). We can also observe extinction of response with absence of cheese and only cardboard sound.

Here, temporal contiguity is observed with association of cardboard sound and view of cheese at the almost same time. If the cardboard sound is followed by presentation of cheese compulsorily, then stimulus becomes dependent on each other. Without cheese, cardboard sound cannot elicit conditioned response in rat.

Outcome: We can observe the rat is conditioned to respond when it naturally responds to food. Also if some fear-related conditioning present, it tends to avoid the negative consequences. If there is no fear-related conditioning, then there is no avoiding behavior observed. We can observe the contiguity and contingency principles of conditioning in this experiment by considering the responses of rat with stimulus.