Fear conditioning is a commonly used behavioral paradigm to test an organism’s ability to create associations and learn to avoid aversive stimuli. There are two methodologies: cue and contextual fear conditioning (Kim & Jung, 2006). In cued fear conditioning, a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) which activates a strong unconditioned fear responses (UR). After a continued training period, the neutral CS is now able to activate a conditioned response (CR). Similarly, context conditioning occurs when the background or context cues, during the condition training, is able to predict the US and activate the fear response. For example, a mice can be placed in a novel environment and given an aversive stimulus (e.g. footshock). When the mice is returned to that same environment, it will display a CR (e.g. freezing). The mice’s ability for contextual fear conditioning is dependent on whether it was able to learn and associate its environment with the aversive stimulus. (Curzon, Rustay, and Browman, 2009)
One of the most famous example of fear conditioning is the Little Albert experiment conducted by Watson and Rayner in 1920. In this experiment, an infant, Albert, was presented with a white rat, and as expected, Albert initially displayed no signs of fear and began touching and playing with the rat. Soon, the experimenters began pairing the presentation of the rat with a loud noise (US) produced by banging a hammer on a steel bar. The noise caused Albert to startle and cry (UR). After several pairing, Albert learned to fear the rat (CS) and would crawl away or cry (CR) when the rat was subsequently presented (Watson and Rayner, 1920)
Fear conditioning occurs when an organism is able t...
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...as long term potentiation have different roles in fear conditioning. Hippocampal LTP is responsible for assembling and consolidating context into the hippocampus. The context then becomes associated with the US in the amygdala. Finally, the amygdala plays an important role in constructing and storing CS-US association during fear conditioning (Maren, 2001). Studying these mechanism will prove to be valuable in understanding the synaptic plasticity in other learning and memory systems. It is also possible to use fear conditioning as a model for fear disturbances disorders. Researching fear conditioning at the intracellular level, such as the role of glutamate receptors, provides a foundation in understanding memory formation, as well as begin unraveling disorders that have fear as a component: anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Kim & Jung, 2006).
In the following essay I will be looking into the study conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920) on a small child known as ‘Little Albert’. The experiment was an adaptation of earlier studies on classical conditioning of stimulus response, one most common by Ivan Pavlov, depicting the conditioning of stimulus response in dogs. Watson and Rayner aimed to teach Albert to become fearful of a placid white rat, via the use of stimulus associations, testing Pavlov’s earlier theory of classical conditioning.
Kurayama, Matsuzawa, Komiya, Nakazawa, Yoshida, Shimizu, (2012) confirmed that these neutral stimuluses deed indeed has an effect and played a role in fear conditioning in people. The case showed that Treena had indeed learned to be scared of the incident and it proceeded to become a cue for to get anxious and get panic attacks. It has been claimed that patients with panic disorder exhibited fear potentiated startle responses to safety cues and therefore reduced discrimination between safety and danger signals during acquisition, indicating that the safety signal was processed as the aversive event in contrast to the danger signal (Nees, Heinrich, Flor, 2015). It also showed that the her failing to answer the question had affected her in other classes when she would not participate in other classes hence, this showed that the neutral stimulus has developed and grew into a conditioned stimulus which evoked feelings of fear and anxiety in her, in other words it had become a cue for her to be scared and
Watson and his team opened the experiment by questioning if a loud noise would cause a fear reaction. A hammer struck against a steel bar was an abrupt sound causing Albert to throw his hands in the air. By the third and last strike, the child was crying; this was the first time an emotive state (in the lab) produced fear, causing Albert to cry. The sound conditioning led to Watson and his team questioning whether they could condition an emotion while presenting a white rat to the child at the same time they strike the steel bar.
In observational learning, a child takes note of what his or her mother or father considers to be threatening. On the other hand, children can also be conditioned by their own life experiences through a process called operant conditioning (SOURCE). In some instances, children tend to generalize their fears, subsequently forming a phobia. For example, a young girl who became increasingly cautious of flying insects after an unpleasant encounter with a nest of agitated yellow jackets. After being assaulted by these creatures, she associated all flying bugs with the painful sting of a yellow jacket. Of course, children can also be classically conditioned to display a fearful response; that is, they learn to associate an unconditioned fear-relevant stimulus with a conditioned stimulus, provoking a conditioned, fearful response. One of the most well-known examples of this is an experiment involving a young boy, famously dubbed Little Albert. Little Albert learned to fear small furry animals in a laboratory setting when the presence of these creatures was paired with loud banging noises (SOURCE). From the aforementioned experiments and studies, it is undeniable that external circumstances and experiences assist in the configuration of fear in
Under stress, the nucleus that stimulates fear and anxiety is triggered and impairs the ability to differentiate between true and false memories. As a result torture triggers irregular patterns in the frontal and temporal lobes, subsequently impairing memory. Consequently, a question t...
“At the University of California at Irvine, experiments in rats indicate that the brain’s hormonal reaction to fear can be inhibited, softening the formation of memories and the emotions they evoke” (Baard).
Stage 3: After Conditioning. Now the conditioned stimulus (CS) has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus (US) to create a new conditioned response (CR).” (McLoed. 2008)
These differences turned out to be due to the details of the procedure, they performed separate scans for the actual presented words, and the not presented but related words, and for unrelated new words (Schacter, 2001). Epinephrine and norepinephrine also have shown to improve memory because increase glucose levels in the blood, and they affect the amygdala, which plays a part in emotional memory (Durand, 2005). Neurons in the basolateral amygdala that were activated during a fear conditioning were activated again during memory retrieval of the feared object. The amount of reactivated neurons showed a correlation with the behavior associated of that fear memory; this indicates a correlation between neurons of the amygdala and memory (Scripps, 2007).
Fear messages are first processed in the thalamus and then branch off along two different pathways. One pathway, a “low road,”
Pitman, R. K., Milad, M. R., Igoe, S. A., Vangel, M. G., Orr, S. P., Tsareva, A., & ... Nader, K. (2011). Systemic mifepristone blocks reconsolidation of cue-conditioned fear; Propranolol prevents this effect. Behavioral Neuroscience, 125(4), 632-638. doi:10.1037/a0024364
amygdala and the hippocampus. Those parts of the brain link fear and memory together. With
I. Introduction of classical conditioning Classical conditioning also called as Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning. It is a kind of learning a new behavior through association that when a conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) and evokes a conditioned response (CR). It also is a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus (Cherry, 2014). Classical conditioning has much strength such as can help to explain all aspects of human behavior and many of advertisers will use classical conditioning to advertise their produces, however it also have some weaknesses such as all classical conditioning responses must involve a reflex and classical conditioning is a completely physical process, learning is not important as reflected in scenario. This paper will talk about the strengths and the weaknesses of classical conditioning theory followed by a brief description of the scenario and the strengths and weaknesses of applying classical conditioning on it.
...first started out with cats being exposed to mild shocks accompanied by specific sounds and visual stimuli. The cats connected the shocks with the sounds or visual stimuli that produced fear in them. When the cats were exposed to the same sounds or visual stimuli plus receiving food instead of shocks, they eventually unlearned their fears. Eventually this behavior therapy would be applied to humans.
The importance of this research is that it can help improve fear extinction training with humans and animals. Previous experiments have indicated that enriched environments have changed the way people and animals act in different situations and increases cognitive functions (NIthianantharajah & Hannan, 2006). Additionally, it has been found prior to this study that enriched environments tend to improve stimulus discrimination (Duffy, Craddock, Abel, & Nguyen, 2001).
This is selective reinforcement. Pavlov and his dogs were and excellent example of operant conditioning. Pavlov rang a bell when it was time for the dogs to eat; eventually the dogs associated the bell with food. Each time the bell rang the dogs salivated. On the other hand, N.Chomsky who was a nativist argued that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD).