Fear Conditioning Lab Report

Learned helplessness is a behavior typically associated with painful or otherwise aversive stimuli in which the person is unable to escape or avoid the feelings. A person who experiences learned helplessness usually fails to learn or accept "escape" or "avoidance" in new situations where such behavior would likely be effective. This results in the person giving up. Biological explanation of disordered mood focus on the effects of chemicals on the brain. Scientists have identified genes that make individuals more vulnerable to low moods and influence how an individual responds to drug therapy. Social cognitive theorists believe that depression or mood disorders stems from blowing negative events out of proportion and minimizing positive good events. These depressed people continually have negative thoughts that depress them further than they already

The question being investigated is, what impact does classical conditioning have on animal or human life? Classical conditioning is the theory of learning that we will be using to investigate this question. The three aspects of the learning process that were evaluated is acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery. During the acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery trials there were different stimulus presented. In the acquisition trial, the US and NS were presented. In the extinction and spontaneous recovery trial, the US were only presented. There were five analysis conducted. In the first analysis it was expected for Sniffy to freeze more frequently in the post-acquisition trial than in the pre-acquisition trial. Second, it was expected for Sniffy to stop and freeze immediately when the light was presented, in extinction trial

A critique of “Ehrlich, David E, and Donald G Rainnie. 'Prenatal Stress Alters The Development Of Socioemotional Behavior And Amygdala Neuron Excitability In Rats '.

“In the course of raising these infants we observed that they all showed a strong attachment to the cheesecloth blankets which were used to cover the wire floors of their cages. Removal of these cloth blankets resulted in violent emotional behavior. These responses were not short-lived; indeed, the emotional disturbance lasted several days, as was indicated by the infant's refusal to work on the standard learning tests that were being conducted at the time” (Harlow, 1959). The infant monkey would become distressed when its comfort blanket, a cheesecloth, was removed so this started the experiment to see if the monkey would prefer a nourishing mother or a comforting mother.

The classical conditioning model was one of the first theories used to describe phobias. Many years ago, scientists observed that one could willingly elicit a fear response in an animal or human through systematic teaching. For example, if every time a rat is presented with a low buzzing noise, it is electrically shocked, eventually, when it hears the noise alone (with no shock), it will exhibit symptoms of fear. (3) Scientists

Albert’s baseline reactions to the stimuli were noted. He showed no fear when presented with a rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, a mask with hair, or cotton wool. When Albert was 11 months old the experiments started.

In Learning to Be Depressed, Martin Seligman and Steve Maier explored learned helplessness. If a persons' efforts at controlling their life events failed repeatedly, would they stop trying to exert control altogether? This was the point of focus for their experiment. Seligman and Maier conducted their experiment on dogs, where they could study the causes and effects of learned helplessness. There were 3 groups of dogs: the escape group, the np-escape group, and the no-harness control group.

“I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration”

There appears to be a slight negative association between exposure to 7 days of relative confinement and feeding activity (Fig 2). Salamanders housed in the 76 cm3

This experiment was designed in order to explore whether false memories generated by the fear conditioning technique could generate an observable active fear response through conditioned place-avoidance (CPA).

Learned helplessness can be observed in both humans and animals, when they have be treated to expect a certain outcome, usually suffering without a way to avoid it. Eventually you’ll stop trying to avoid the pain, even if there is an opportunity to escape it. In “Learned Helplessness: Seligman’s Theory of Depression(+ Cure)” it says, you’re not born with this it’s a learned behavior, experiences that condition you to have no control or believe you have no control over circumstances. This experiment was formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier. They tested with dogs and their response to electrical shocks. They realized some dogs didn’t attempt to jump over the low barrier. Those who didn’t

Condition suppression technique was a new way for studying learned fear. According to (William K Estes, Biography, American Psychology, Britannica.com), rats were repeatedly given food after pressing the lever. An electric shock was applied immediately after the food was given. That caused the lever pressing to be suppressed. This allowed Estes to conduct trial by trial in the changes in the learned response. This Paradigm became one of the most widely used techniques for studying animal behavior, and still is used today, according to (Smith, 2014, para.

Arguably, an organism is better described as an information seeker, forming relations amongst events from information provided by a stimulus. For example, Rescorla suggests that contiguity is an insufficient example of Pavlovian Conditioning. As shown in simple CS/US parings, learning was determined by how the two stimuli differ, not in what they share, showing that contiguity is not a necessity, (Rescorla, 1988). Furthermore, systematic fear conditioning scenarios imply the base rate of US occurrence against a CS/US contiguity is also sensitive to conditioning. Evidence for this can be found in previous work that validates the current conclusion. Rescorla (1968, p. 1), argues that contingency over contiguity is an important determinant of fear conditioning, and refers to contingency as the “relative probability of occurrence of US in the presence of a CS as contrasted with its probability in the absence of CS.” Rescorla’s (1988) adaptation of these results measures asymptotic fear levels, (where each curve shows conditioning as an increasing function of the likelihood of receiving a shock during the tone), supporting the continued importance of perceived fear in associations. Furthermore, results from studies on Blocking, Conditioned Inhibition and Auto-shaping in pigeons suggest that the simplistic notion of previous theory

Learned helplessness occurs when a person is repeatedly exposed to an aversive stimuli and feels that no matter how much they try to escape; they are not successful. Therefore, they tend to cave in since a sense of being helpless has been developed to escape the situation. Early studies on the idea of learned helplessness occurred accidently since psychologists were initially studying avoidance learning in dogs. These dogs were subject to a few foot shocks and at first would attempt to escape the shock however, these dogs later on stop attempting to escape and would submissively accept the foot shocks. Then these psychologists tried numerous situations to examine this sensation by placing the dogs in different cages where it would be easier

A biological constraint in learning theory refers to an inherited tendency to learn and create certain relationships, and it has been said that some species are much more readily than others in learning such behaviour. Therefore it involves the factors which make populations resistant to evolutionary change and the animals biological make up. In this paper I will attempt to explain the bases of the original biological approaches to learning in classical conditioning in humans and animals, make comparison between animals and the association of fears