Chapter 12 Part 2

Okay, now we're back and we're going to
be talking about how

some of these biological dispositions
might be related to

what we've already learned
about classical conditioning.

Okay so now we're touched on this
just a little bit at the beginning

when we talked about factors influencing
classical conditioning

we did talk about this concept
of belongingness.

We're going to introduce this new term,
which is sometimes referred to as

conditioned stimulus-unconditioned
stimulus relevance,

and the basic idea is that some stimuli
connect to each other,

belong to each other more naturally.

So the conditioned stimulus-unconditioned
stimulus relevance has to do with

this concept that some stimuli
are more natural,

there's a more natural connection
they tend to belong together.

Now we did talk about this when we
talked about classical conditioning.

Remember our Garcia and Koelling
"Bright Noisy Tasty Water" study.

Now remember with that study they had
the groups of-of rats

that were learning to avoid and they had
different stimuli

and remember that they found that
taste and nausea

were easy to connect together, perhaps
there was that CS-US relevance

and also lights and noise were easily
connected with shock

but when the sti-the conditioned stimuli,

taste wasn't as easily connected
with shock

and lights and noise were not as easily
connected with nausea.

That was that concept of belongingness
and that some stimuli

were more naturally connected
to each other.

Now we also know that belongingness
impacts the way that we

develop certain kinds of fears and we
talked a lot about fears

with classical conditioning and developing
fears of insects, and snakes,

and perhaps heights, and water.

Well again from an evolutionary
perspective it would make sense

that we're going to learn to avoid things
that could really cause us harm.

You know snakes can-can bite us
and kill us and so it kind of makes sense

for us to avoid those creatures,
and it would make sense for us to learn

to fear them quickly.

And the same thing with insects, um,
and then heights and water

are again things that could bring about
our demise,

and so from an evolutionary perspective
it's going to be easier for us

to learn these kinds of fears

than to learn fears for objects that don't
have that kind of connection to, um, our

our general welfare.

So we're not as likely to develop
strong fears

for, um, inanimate objects; for a ball,
for a telephone, for a desk.

Because within the species history,
you know, we haven't had to

watch out for a ball, or a telephone,
or a desk.

So we have talked about this belongingness
already this CS-US relevance.

We're going to talk a little bit more
about this with respect to foods

because again we're focusing on
an appetitive stimuli

and behaviors today.

We're going to be talking
a little bit more

about taste diversions and other kinds
of classical conditioning learning

and specifically how when we develop
these strong taste aversions,

often times this is a little bit different

than other kinds of
classical conditioning.

So we're going to focus on differences
and taste aversions

and how those differences might be
attributed to the evolution of our species

and how perhaps taste aversions are
just different

from other kinds of
classical conditioning.

So with respect to taste aversions,

remember how perhaps
we've had a bad experience

with something, something was associated
with making us sick

and now we can't taste that food we can't
smell that food

because we've had this bad experience.
Well one of the difference-

one of the differences
with taste aversions

and other kinds of classical conditioning

has to do with how quickly
we learn these aversions.

Now, taste aversions, often times we
can learn in just one trial.

We can have a bad experience with tequila
and only has to happen once

and now we are going to do everything
possible to avoid the taste of,

or the smell of tequila.
Now that's really pretty different

than most of the other examples
of classical conditioning.

So if you remember back to
the very beginning of the term

we talked about Pavlov, and the dog,
and the bell.

Most of the time with classical
conditioning several trials are needed

to learn to, um, make the conditioned
response.

Now that's really different, you don't
have to get sick multiple times

to be able to learn to avoid something
with respect to taste.

Right, and again that makes sense
from an evolutionary perspective.

How many times can we consume
something that's going to make us sick

and learn to, you know and live.
So,

for the- you know, the-the evolution
of the species it really makes some sense

that we can learn quickly,
through just a single trial.

Another major difference with respect
to taste aversions and other forms of

classical conditioning is the timing
of the conditioned stimulus

and the unconditioned stimulus.
Now with taste aversions often times

there's a very long delay between
conditioned stimulus,

tasting something or smelling something,
and then the unconditioned stimulus

that-that experience of being sick.

It could be 30 minutes,
it could be an hour,

it could be anywhere up to 24 hours

between when we eat something
and when we have that sick feeling.

Now that's not typical for
classical conditioning, other forms of

classical conditioning, whoops
wrong direction,

we've got to come back to that idea
of continuity,

that the conditioned stimulus

and the unconditioned stimulus
must be close together.

Now again thinking about the
Pavlov Paradigm.

The bell and the meat were presented
within seconds of each other

and for learning to occur there's got to
be an easy connection between

that conditioned stimulus and the
unconditioned stimulus.

So we're talking about things typically
being connected

within seconds of each but with taste
aversions,

often times we consume something

and we don't feel sick for 30 minutes,
an hour, 24 hours.

For other kinds of learning this
isn't going to occur.

We're not going to have the connection
but with taste aversions we are able

to still make that connection, um,
despite the delay

between the conditioned stimulus
and the unconditioned stimulus.

And again this is something that-that
kind of makes sense

from an evolutionary perspective, again it
would be important for us

to be able to connect that feeling of
nausea with what we tasted

even though there has been a really long
delay between consuming the food

and getting sick later because again,
in order to be able to survive

we have to be able to remember what it was
that made us sick

and make that connection.

Now moving in the other direction, we've
talked a lot about, uh,

taste aversions but the same could be said
for taste preferences.

So, from an evolutionary perspective there
may be some belongingness components too.

So we've already mentioned that we
are going to have this predisposition

to seek out and try to make connections
with salty and sweet kinds of tastes.

And so the book even talks about,
you know, if we want to get kids to-

to like vegetables more w-we would be
well served to try to get them

um, connected with sweeter
tasting vegetables.

So sprinkling sugar on broccoli might be

the way to increase
preferences for broccoli.

Um, I would also argue th-that a lot of
vegetables have,

um, a bit of a bitter taste to them

and so we might have
this predisposition to avoid

certain kinds of, uh, vegetables that
have that kind of a bitter taste.

I know a lot of super tasters,
often times avoid vegetables

and it's probably likely
because of th-that

taste of bitter is very enhanced for them.

They can't get the sweet taste
out of th- the vegetables.

So we're going to prefer, we have this
predisposition to seek out salty and sweet

kinds of foods.
I would also argue that we've got

some very strong conditioned
flavor preferences

and there's something that's know as
"The Medicine Effect".

So we're going to talk a little bit about
that and how that fits

with our biological predispositions.
So we talked about how if we have a food

that we've connected with getting sick,
we've eaten something and then later

we get sick.
We tend to avoid that kind of a food,

but the medicine effect actually works
in the opposite direction.

Any kind of food that we connect with
feeling better, starting to feel better

we might start to connect that food
with that feeling of, um, wellness.

So here's how this might work with
classical conditioning:

if we have an illness that's dissipating,
we're starting to get better.

So the unconditioned stimulus of the
illness starting to go away,

is making us feel better,

any kind of food that we're
pairing with that feeling better

can also start to take on
those properties.

So the classic is, um, consuming
chicken soup, or chicken noodle soup.

Right, so having chicken noodle soup
as you're starting to-

as an illness is starting to go away.
If the illness is starting to go away

we start to feel better.
So chicken soup being paired

with the illness starting to go away,
the chicken soup

can also get us to just feel better
and this can happen even when

we're not really sick.
So anything that's paired with an illness

going away and our body
starting to feel better,

can start to take on those properties and
also elicit that same kind of a response.

And so I'd like to get you to think
a little bit about:

what are the things that you tend to
think of as comfort foods?

I know for my kids comfort foods tend to
have lots of carbs

and so they were happy to help me pick out
this picture,

of I think it's chicken-fried steak

and we have maybe some mash potatoes,
and some bread, and some corn, um,

and the joke in our family
is that they eat this

and they have their little carb coma.

So they go to sleep.

But, um, and then over here we've got
I think this is some kind of a

mac and cheese too but the idea here
and what I want you to think about

are the foods that you think of
as comfort foods.

Are these foods that in the past have been
associated with you feeling better,

being paired with something else
and perhaps, um,

that could have happened through
the process of classical conditioning.

So I want to give you one more example of
this

and this is one from my own childhood.

So I always saw my grandma as being
somebody who, um, was associated with

feeling good, feeling safe, feeling
comfortable with my grandma.

And then consistently my grandma made
cookies, mmm.

Now again, we've got this biological
predisposition for sweets

but if I consistently pair being with
my grandma

who elicits this, these feeling of joy
and comfort with cookies.

Since she made cookies,
cookies and grandma

now the idea of being exposed to cookies

is also going to elicit these feelings
of joy and comfort.

So if you have certain desserts, certain
kinds of treats that you associated

with, um, experiences, stimuli that
elicit these really positive feelings.

You know, whenever you get together
with your family you always have

these special kinds of desserts,

it's likely that those desserts
are going to also take on

those, um, those properties that
are associated with, uh,

the unconditioned stimulus.
So feeling good, feeling positive,

feeling comfortable, feeling joy,
alright.

Um, and again like we said if you've got,
if the foods have a salty or a sweet

um, component to them we're already going
to have that biological predisposition

to get connected more easily.

Alright, so let's shift gears and talk
a little bit about biological dispositions

and how they could be connected
to operant conditioning.

So before we get to operant conditioning,
let's briefly talk about

instrumental conditioning.

So as you remember, instrumental
conditioning is associated with Thorndike

and Thorndike did propose this
law of belongingness and remember

with the law of belongingness, he said
that certain stimulus response connections

are more natural.
So now remembering back,

remember Thorndike had the puzzle box
and the cat.

And he proposed this law of belongingness
to explain

why certain connections could be developed
rather than others.

Now remember, Thorndike wanted to train
the cat to get out of the puzzle box by

pushing a lever and he found that he could
very readily get the cat

to scratch and push a lever to get out
of the puzzle box

but despite all of his efforts he could
not get the cat to learn to groom himself.

So the cat couldn't be trained to groom
himself, herself to get out of the box

but the cat could be trained to push a
lever or to stra- to scratch to get out

and Thorndike talked about this
with respect to belongingness.

So scratching and pushing a lever
or a more natural connection

to the escape response where as, grooming
was not a natural connection,

not a natural, um, response to connect
with, um, escape.

And so law of belongingness would say
that some stimulus response connections

are more natural, so that's definitely
getting to this idea of

a biological predisposition.

Now with respect to operant conditioning,
I want you to try to remember

when we talk about Skinner, remember
Skinner created the skinner boxes

and the whole point of creating a
skinner box was he was trying to create

an environment that would avoid
fixed action patterns,

would avoid reflexes.

So Skinner was trying to do everything
possible to eliminate these

biological dispositions.
He created a little world and tried to, um

use responses that were within the
organism's repertoire, something that

they could do but not something that they
would normally do because he wanted

to avoid those reflexes.
He wanted to avoid those, those stimuli

that were naturally
connected to responses.

So now he tried to do that

and he tried to train his students
to do that but

what we're going to see is t-that
y-you know, w-we can't completely ignore

what our biological predispositions are
and there are, there is to some extent

a sense of belongingness with certain
kinds of reinforcers.

There is a biological predisposition to

act a certain way with
certain reinforcers.

So we're going to talk a little bit about
some of Skinner's students.

We're going to talk about the Brelands,
so this is Keller Breland

and this is his wife Marion Breland and the
Brelands were students of Skinner and, um,

they learned principles of operant
conditioning and shaping

and they went on to have a very successful
career and they spent a lot of their time

using techniques of shaping and operant
conditioning to train animals

to engage in different kinds of responses.
So here you've got a picture of an animal

learning to play a piano, but what the
Brelands found from all of their time

working with animals, and we'll talk more
about it, is that there is this

biological predisposition towards certain
kinds of reinforcers.

And so even though shaping could be used
to learn a set of responses, um,

the animals that they worked with
tended to revert back to some of their

natural tendencies, specifically with
food reinforcers.

Now the Brelands are famous for writing
this article,

"The Misbehavior of Organisms"

and this came out in 1961 and if you're
not as familiar with the literature

i-i-the name of the article might not make
a whole lot of sense to you.

So clearly they're talking about
misbehavior, and animal doing things

that they weren't trained to do but to
some extent this was poking fun at

their professor, Skinner, because Skinner
had earlier written a book entitled,

"The Behavior of Organisms", that was one
of his most famous works

and so what they're writing about in this
article, the misbehavior,

is they're kind of poking fun
at what Skinner taught them.

So lets talk a little bit about

what they meant by this misbehavior of
organisms and how they came to learn

what they did and how this relates back
to our topic for the day.

So I want to encourage you after you're
done with this segment to go and, uh,

click on this particular web page,
it's links to Moodle.

And this is the webpage for something that
the Brelands created

which is referred to as the "IQ Zoo".
So here's an advertisement for the IQ Zoo.

And so what, um, the IQ Zoo was, it was a
tourist attraction

that was open in the 1950's and it
operated continuously through the 1990's

and this was something that Keller
and Marion Breland, um,

created as an opportunity for the public
to see what animals could do, um.

They wanted to get animals familiar- they
wanted the public to see the skills

that animals have and how they can be

trained to do a wide range of
different things

and they were really interested in, um,
having-having people see how smart

animals were but also what they were
capable of doing based on

the principles of operant conditioning.
So in the 1940's the-the Belands,

the Keller and Marion Breland had started,
uh, training animals to do

these different kinds of tricks to help
General Mills sell farm feed

and then what they found was that they
could train animals to do a wide range

of different things and so then in the
1950's they opened up this IQ Zoo.

And the animals that they trained the-they
trained a wide range of different animals

and as is says in the advertisement here
their work has appeared on TV,

they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show,
on Animal Kingdom, um you might want to

ask your parents or ask your grandparents
if they've ever heard of the IQ Zoo,

or saw any of these kinds of animals, um,
it was super impressive

and like I said this is, uh, this is, um
a tourist attraction that ran from

the 1950's through the 1990's, it was
very well known in-in Arkansas.

So what did they train animals to do?
And if you go to t he webpage

it will show you lots of these different
behaviors.

They had a duck who could play a song on
the guitar,

they had trained hamsters to, um,

swing on trapeze, and this example we
have a pig that's been trained to, um,

pull down a watering can and the watering
can comes down and gives t-the pig

a little bit of, uh, bath.
Um, these are just small little snippets.

If you go to the IQ Zoo web page,
you'll see that they have, um,

20 or 30 different kinds of animals that
have been trained to do these

really interesting and entertaining kinds
of behaviors

and they used principles of
Operant Conditioning to do this

but so how does this relate to what we're
talking about right now

in misbehavior of organisms?
Well as I mentioned the Brelands

spent all this time training animals to
do these interesting things

but they ran into difficulties
along the way

and they wrote about those difficulties

in their article, "The Misbehavior of
Organisms".

And so we're going to talk about two of
their examples

and ultimately it comes down to this idea
of instinctive drift

and with instinctive drift

it's the concept th-that
organisms, animals,

but humans are the same, we tend to revert
back to our biologically based

response patterns.
So even though we can use shaping

and principles of operant conditioning
to learn different kinds of behaviors

we have this predisposition to go back

to what is part of our
innate response pattern.

So we're going to talk
about two examples here

and you've probably heard about these

in other classes but I think it-it's
worth while to talk about here.

So this is the example with the pig
and essentially they used

principles of shaping to get a pig to
pick up a coin, you can kind of see it

in this picture, the pig has the coin in
it's mouth.

The pig had to learn to pick up the coin
carry it in its mouth

and deposit it into, and it's kind of hard
to see in this picture

but this was like a little
metal piggy bank.

So they can use principals of shaping

remember with shaping it's reinforcing
closer approximations

of the correct response, they could get
the pig to do this, um,

and the pig did it for awhile, but what
they started to notice was the pig

started to engage in different kinds
of behaviors along the way.

So even after the pig had learned a
response pattern,

what the pig was supposed to do, it would
start to pick up the coin

and then toss it up in the air, and then
roll it around on the ground.

And these are not behaviors that have been
part of the original learning sequence.

But, um, as the Brelands paid more
attention to this and then

they paid more attention to pigs
and what pigs do.

If you've spent any time with pigs, um,
what you may know is that pigs

tend to root their food, then if they are
presented with food

they tend to roll it around of the ground
they may throw it up in the air

but this is a response patter that is
innate and part of what

pigs typically do when they're engaging
with food.

Now the coin wasn't food but they were
given a food reinforcer

at the end of completing the sequence
and what they started to do

was engage in that food sequence with
the coin.

So again they refer to this as that idea
of instinctive drift.

The pig was reverting back to its
biologically based response pattern.

It was acting upon the coin

as it would act upon the food
that it was going to receive.

So even though they could train the pig to
engage in the right kinds of responses

eventually instinctive drift
would kick back in.

So now here in this other picture
we've got the raccoon

and i'll have to explain what's going on
here with this particular picture

they've trained a raccoon to pick up a
ball and deposit it into

a little basketball net, right,
pretty cool.

What they had actually tried to do earlier

and they had to shift to this particular
behavior was they tried to get a raccoon

to do kind of a similar thing as the pig.
The raccoon had been trained to,

with shaping and food reinforcers, to pick
up a coin and put the coin into a bank

and they could get t-the raccoon
to do this with shaping but eventually

the raccoons started to engage in some odd
behaviors too.

So the raccoon would pick up the coin
and then it would kind of do this little

up and down motion with the coin
and that wasn't part of the, um,

original chained sequence of behaviors,

and then they gave the
raccoon another coin

and the raccoon would take the two coins
and kind of rub them together

in this miserly fashion and then take the
coins and then kind of put them

up and down into the, the piggy bank.
And again these were not behaviors that

had been reinforced, they were not hadn't
been shaped

and the raccoon was able to do the correct
responses but then across time

started engaging in these other kinds
of odd behaviors.

Now again, stepping back and paying
attention to raccoons, um,

if you've watching raccoons, if you know
anything about raccoons,

raccoons wash their food and so what the
Brelands noticed was happening was that

the raccoon was starting to act upon
the coins the same way

it would act upon its food.

So it would often times the raccoons will
take their food,

they'll dip it into a stream,

they'll kind of rub it around and, um,
the behaviors that they saw

the raccoon engaging with the coin were
really similar to the kinds of behaviors

that a raccoon would engage in it th-they
the raccoon was washing its food.

So, um, even though they hadn't trained
the raccoon to do this,

the raccoon kind of reverted back to those
biologically based response patterns.

So, then whats up with the deal with the
picture with the basketball?

So what the Brelands had to do was stop
using, uh, stop using stimuli

that were small with raccoons, so they
had to shift gears

and try to train the raccoon to use the
basketball because the basketball

was too big to be used for the same way
that they would normally, uh,

the same kinds of responses
that they would use with the food.

So they could get the raccoon to pick up
a basketball and put it into the hoop

because it was too different from the
kinds of, um, stimuli that raccoon

would normally use as far as eating.

So they could get the raccoon to engage
in the basketball,

picking up the basketball

and putting it into the hoop and the
instinctive drift didn't happen

with that particular stimulus because

it was too different to
what they were used to eating.

But again it kind of gets
back to this idea

of the misbehavior of organisms.

So even though operant conditioning can
be used, eventually we revert back

to these biologically based
response patterns.

So, thinking about this, we are all born
with these biological constraints,

these in born predispositions.

Certain kinds of learning are going to
be highly probably and easy

especially if they fit with what our, um,
response pattern is, our

inherited response pattern.
If we're trying to learn something

that is really different than what our
species has had to do in the past

it's going to be difficult and essentially
, you know, the more experiences

that we have, um, you know we-we
probably can learn it

based on shaping and principles of operant
conditioning but to some extent under-

under periods of stress we might start to
revert back to some of these

in born predispositions.

So you might be thinking, "Well, that's
that makes sense for raccoons,

that makes sense for pigs, what about
for humans?

Do we have any of the biological
predispositions

and you're certainly not going to see
much research on this

because humans don't like to think
of themselves as having, um,

instincts and these inborn predispositions
but let's talk about some possibilities.

Well, with humans, you know, you could-
you could argue the to some extent

the way that we respond to fearful stimuli
might have, um,

a biological predisposition too.
We talk about how some of our fears

make a little bit more sense, um, fears
of snakes, fears of-of, um,

animals that can harm us or insects that
could harm us, fears of heights, um,

we can say that we've got a biological
predisposition

to fear these kinds of things

and so even though, um, we may be able to
learn to work with snakes,

we may be able to learn to work at heights
if we have to work with heights, um,

these biological predispositions
were still there

and it might make it more challenging
to learn to work

under those kinds of circumstances
because we're fighting against

part of our biologically
based response pattern.

Recently a lot of people have talked about

how we might have a
biological predisposition

making it difficult for us to learn
technology, now that doesn't mean

that we can't learn technology but if you
think about it within the history

of our species working with computers, um,
hasn't been something

that we have had to in the past,
which is going to make it more challenging

for us to want to do it now.
Now that doesn't mean, again,

that we can't do it but because technology
hasn't been part

of our evolutionary history it might make
it more challenging for individuals

to learn technology, again, doesn't mean
you can't but it might make it

more difficult.

Uh, the last example I want to throw out
here

is having to do with eating behaviors.

So, you know, as a species we've had
to eat to stay alive, right?

If we don't eat, we don't stay alive.

And if we don't stay alive then we're not
going to be able to reproduce

and continue the species and so eating
serves a very strong biological function.

Now as humans, we also have
learned certain manners

that are associated with learning

and when we eat in a group setting,
in some kind of a public setting,

we probably have to adhere to following
those manners a little bit more

than we do when we're eating privately
but I want you to imagine

that you are super hungry and you are
in a position of having to eat

with others in a little bit more of a
formal setting.

So you're super hungry, and there's
food on the tables,

and there's everything in your mind
that's pushing you to grab that-

you know, to just kind of reach with
your hands and pick up

and start eating that food but you're in
a public setting and you're with people

and it's a little bit more formal and so,
you know, to some extent

you may have certain manners that you
have to follow.

Certain things that you have to follow
and at least in my household

one of the rules was you didn't
get to start eating

until everybody sat down to the table

and we also had to say some kind of prayer
or grace before every body

can jump in to eating and what
I'm saying is you still can maintain

those kinds of more formal rules but to
some extent you're fighting agianst

your biological predispositions which
would be grabbing that food

and just kind of picking
it up with your hands

and going to town eating, right.

So we have these biological, biologically
inborn predispositions to engage in

these kinds of responses, it doesn't mean
that we can't do the right thing

with respect to manners but we're fighting
against those biological predispositions,

especially if we're super hungry, right?
Alright.

So let's do a quick review.

Taste aversion conditioning differs from
other types of classical conditioning

in that associations are formed despite
very long delays between the BLANK

and BLANK.

Number 2, according to the BLANK effect,
any food that we associate with recovery

from an illness can lead us to feel better
at other times.

Last one, Sami tried to shape her squirrel
to fetch marbles in the back yard.

Things proceeded quite smoothly at first
and then the squirrel started burrying

the marbles rather than bringing them
to her.

This seems to be an example of-

Okay taste aversion conditioning differs
from other types of classical conditioning

in that associations are formed despite
very long delays between

the conditioned stimulus, the taste of the
food, and the unconditioned stimulus,

of being sick, right?
We talked about most of the time

in classical conditioning, the
conditioned stimulus

and the unconditioned stimulus

are presented within
seconds of each other.

But with taste aversions and taste
conditioning they can occur

in just a single trial and often times we
eat the food but then we're not sick

until 30 minutes, several hours later;
and that's different.

Okay, the medicine effect is when any food
we associate with recovery from an illness

can lead to us feeling
better at other times.

And what's going on with Sami
and her squirrel, well this is likely

an example of instinctive drift and it
makes sense, right?

Squirrels are not in the habit of, uh,
burying marbles but they are

in the habit of burying their food and,
um, if Sami is especially using

food reinforcers to shape her squirrel
then they're starting to act upon

those marbles like they would
with their food.

That's an example of instinctive drift.
Okay, I hope you did well.

We'll take a break and we'll come back
and talk about adaptive behaviors.