How have Psychologists challenged Pavlov’s traditional account for classical con

Question

How have Psychologists challenged Pavlov’s traditional account for classical conditioning? In your answer, make specific reference to potential cognitive contributions to classical conditioning and to biological constraints on classical conditioning. How have Psychologists challenged Pavlov’s traditional account for classical conditioning? In your answer, make specific reference to potential cognitive contributions to classical conditioning and to biological constraints on classical conditioning. How have Psychologists challenged Pavlov’s traditional account for classical conditioning? In your answer, make specific reference to potential cognitive contributions to classical conditioning and to biological constraints on classical conditioning.

Explanation / Answer

In classical conditioning, humans and other animals learn when to“expect” (cognition) a US, and their awareness of the link between stimuliand responses can weaken associations. Biological constraints predisposeorganisms to learn associations that are naturally adaptive. Training that attempts to override these tendencies will probably not endure because theanimals will revert to their biologically predisposed patterns. Classical conditioning used to be viewed as a type of learning that involves the acquisition of elicited responses (i.e., responses, like the defensive eye blink, that are preceded reliably by an identifiable eliciting stimulus and that are experienced phenomenologically as automatic or reflexive). Tolman and his colleagues produced a large body of data supporting the hypothesis that rats running in mazes behaved as if they had access to information, built cognitive maps of the mazes, and expected to find food in particular locations. Krech and Crutchfield (1948) defined learning as a “reorganization of the cognitive field”. Tolman credited Krechecsky with designing experiments suggesting that rats develop systematic choices or hypotheses in progressing down difficult mazes. For example, rats try a variety of different behaviors, such as choosing right-handed or dark doors, which continues at above-chance levels until a solution to the maze or discrimination task is achieved. Such trial-and-error behavior was viewed as goal directed and was thought to reflect the development of tentative cognitive maps that are subject to revision as learning occurs. Biological constraints on learning refer to any limitations on an organism's capacity to learn that are caused by the inherited sensory, response, or cognitive capabilities of members of a given species. Likewise Biological constraints are limitations on learning that result from biological factors rather than from experience. Classical conditioning principles, we now know, are constrained by biological predispositions, so that learning some associations is easier than learning others. Learning is adaptive: Each species learns behaviors that aid its survival. Garcia et al research (Mazure, 2004) proves otherwise, as he shows rats initially made to drink the saccharine-flavoured water, injected with the poison after a delayed interval between the drinking and the drug, developed aversions to the saccharine flavoured water even after 24hours of delay. This illustrates, even when the CS-US is delayed, learning takes place and the ability to do so is adaptive in all species supporting that a general process learning theory is effective. The rat’s biological make-up has an innate tendency to associate illness with the taste of food previously eaten after one trial. Pairing a light with a paw shock, on the other hand, takes several trials to acquire and has low tendency to associate illness with visual or auditory stimuli. Whereas the rats are more likely to associate a painful event like shock with external auditory and visual than with taste stimuli. This revolves around preparedness and we can say that the laws of learning may vary with preparedness of the organism for the association and for those different physiological and cognitive mechanisms (McGowan, & Green, 1971). Louge (1981) also supports taste aversion as a classical conditioning biological constraint learned behaviour on humans as he carried out a questionnaire which resulted in students declaring they were aversive to certain foods. Characteristics, such as smell, sight and texture were also discovered.

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