Avoidance response

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The Kellet's whelk does not display an avoidance response in the presence of the sea star Pisaster giganteus. The sea star is eating the bivalve Chama pellucida while three Kelletia kelletii are attempting to get to the prey. Kelletia kelletii and Pisaster giganteus 2.png
The Kellet's whelk does not display an avoidance response in the presence of the sea star Pisaster giganteus . The sea star is eating the bivalve Chama pellucida while three Kelletia kelletii are attempting to get to the prey.

An avoidance response is a response that prevents an aversive stimulus from occurring. It is a kind of negative reinforcement. An avoidance response is a behavior based on the concept that animals will avoid performing behaviors that result in an aversive outcome. This can involve learning through operant conditioning when it is used as a training technique. It is a reaction to undesirable sensations or feedback that leads to avoiding the behavior that is followed by this unpleasant or fear-inducing stimulus.

Contents

Whether the aversive stimulus is brought on intentionally by another or is naturally occurring, it is adaptive to learn to avoid situations that have previously yielded negative outcomes. [2] A simple example of this is conditioned food aversion, or the aversion developed to food that has previously resulted in sickness. Food aversions can also be conditioned using classical conditioning, so that an animal learns to avoid a stimulus previously neutral that has been associated with a negative outcome. [3] This is displayed nearly universally in animals since it is a defense against potential poisoning. [4] [5] A wide variety of species, even slugs, [6] have developed the ability to learn food aversions.

Experiments

An experiment conducted by Solomon and Wynne [7] in 1953 shows the properties of negative reinforcement. The subjects, dogs, were put in a shuttle box (a chamber containing two rectangular compartments divided by a barrier a few inches high). The dogs had the ability to move freely between compartments by going over the barrier. Both compartments had a metal floor designed to administer an unpleasant electric shock. Each compartment also had a light above each, which would turn on and off. Every few minutes, the light in the room the dog was occupying was turned off, while the other remained on. If after 10 seconds in the dark, the dog did not move to the lit compartment, a shock was delivered to the floor of the room the dog was in. The shock continued until the dog moved into the other compartment. In doing this, the dog was escaping the shock by jumping the barrier into the next room. The dog could avoid the shock completely though by jumping the barrier before the 10 seconds of darkness led to a shock. Each trial worked this way with avoiding the shock as the response. In the first few trials, the dog did not move until the shocks began and then it jumped over the barrier. However, after several trials, the dog began to make avoidance responses and would jump over the barrier when the light turned off, and would not receive the shock. Many dogs never received the shock after the first trial. These results led to questioning in the term avoidance paradox (the question of how the nonoccurrence of an aversive event can be a reinforcer for an avoidance response?)

Because the avoidance response is adaptive, humans have learned to use it in training animals such as dogs and horses. B.F. Skinner (1938) [8] believed that animals learn primarily through rewards and punishments, the basis of operant conditioning. The avoidance response comes into play here when punishment is administered. An animal will presumably learn to avoid the behavior that preceded this punishment. A naturally occurring example for humans would be that after a child has been burned by a red stove, he or she learns not to touch the stove when it is red. The child avoids that behavior in the future. For a non-human animal, an example would be that of invisible fences which prompt a dog to learn not to cross a certain (invisible) boundary because its collar shocks it when it does.

Disorders

Although the avoidance response is often advantageous and has developed because it is adaptive, it can sometimes be harmful or become obsessive. Such is the case with obsessive compulsive disorder, a disorder involving mental obsessions followed by actions performed often repetitively, to relieve the anxiety of the obsessions, panic disorder, and other psychiatric disorders. In panic disorder, a person learns to avoid certain situations such as being in crowded places because when they enter these situations, a panic attack (aversive stimulus) ensues. People with obsessive compulsive disorder may learn to avoid using public restrooms because it produces anxiety in them (aversive stimulus).

Neuropharmacology

The posterior and intermediate lobes of the pituitary are necessary for maintenance of the avoidance response once learned. [9] When these areas of the brain are lesioned or removed, animals display difficulty in maintaining a conditioned avoidance response. The avoidance response can be extinguished using a procedure called "flooding" or response prevention. This is a method in which the subject is forced to remain in the fearsome or aversive situation and not allowed the opportunity to avoid it. [10] This is sometimes used in treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder. Systematic desensitization can also be used to extinguish avoidance response behaviors. See for example studies involving avoidance response. [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

Phobia Anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically, result in a rapid onset of fear and are present for more than six months. Those affected will go to great lengths to avoid the situation or object, to a degree greater than the actual danger posed. If the object or situation cannot be avoided, they experience significant distress. Other symptoms can include fainting, which may occur in blood or injury phobia, and panic attacks, which are often found in agoraphobia. Around 75% of those with phobias have multiple phobias.

Operant conditioning is a type of associative learning process through which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment. It is also a procedure that is used to bring about such learning.

Classical conditioning refers to a behavioral mechanism in which a biologically potent stimulus is paired with a previously neutral stimulus. It also refers to the learning process that results from this pairing, through which the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response that is usually similar to the one elicited by the potent stimulus.

Reinforcement Consequence applied that will strengthen an organisms future behavior

In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is a consequence applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher frequency of behavior, longer duration, greater magnitude, or shorter latency. There are two types of reinforcement, known as positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement; positive is whereby a reward is offered on expression of the wanted behaviour and negative is taking away an undesirable element in the persons environment whenever the desired behaviour is achieved. Rewarding stimuli, which are associated with "wanting" and "liking" and appetitive behavior, function as positive reinforcers; the converse statement is also true: positive reinforcers provide a desirable stimulus. Reinforcement does not require an individual to consciously perceive an effect elicited by the stimulus. Thus, reinforcement occurs only if there is an observable strengthening in behavior. However, there is also negative reinforcement, which is characterized by taking away an undesirable stimulus. Changing someone's job might serve as a negative reinforcer to someone who suffers from back problems, i.e. Changing from a labourers job to an office position for instance.

Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations with the intention of quelling the targeted behavior.

Fear conditioning Behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events

Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus is associated with a particular neutral context or neutral stimulus, resulting in the expression of fear responses to the originally neutral stimulus or context. This can be done by pairing the neutral stimulus with an aversive stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus alone can elicit the state of fear. In the vocabulary of classical conditioning, the neutral stimulus or context is the "conditional stimulus" (CS), the aversive stimulus is the "unconditional stimulus" (US), and the fear is the "conditional response" (CR).

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.

Clicker training

Clicker training is a positive reinforcement animal training method based on a bridging stimulus in operant conditioning. The system uses conditioned reinforcers, which a trainer can deliver more quickly and more precisely than primary reinforcers such as food. The term "clicker" comes from a small metal cricket noisemaker adapted from a child's toy that the trainer uses to precisely mark the desired behavior. When training a new behavior, the clicker helps the animal to quickly identify the precise behavior that results in the treat. The technique is popular with dog trainers, but can be used for all kinds of domestic and wild animals and small children.

Motivational salience is a cognitive process and a form of attention that motivates or propels an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object, perceived event or outcome. Motivational salience regulates the intensity of behaviors that facilitate the attainment of a particular goal, the amount of time and energy that an individual is willing to expend to attain a particular goal, and the amount of risk that an individual is willing to accept while working to attain a particular goal.

Dog training Practice of teaching behaviors to dogs

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Animal training

Animal training is the act of teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Training may be for purposes such as companionship, detection, protection, and entertainment. The type of training an animal receives will vary depending on the training method used, and the purpose for training the animal. For example, a seeing eye dog will be trained to achieve a different goal than a wild animal in a circus.

Conditioned taste aversion occurs when an animal associates the taste of a certain food with symptoms caused by a toxic, spoiled, or poisonous substance. Generally, taste aversion is developed after ingestion of food that causes nausea, sickness, or vomiting. The ability to develop a taste aversion is considered an adaptive trait or survival mechanism that trains the body to avoid poisonous substances before they can cause harm. The association reduces the probability of consuming the same substance in the future, thus avoiding further poisoning. It is an example of Pavlovian conditioning

An avoidance response is a natural adaptive behavior performed in response to danger. Excessive avoidance has been suggested to contribute to anxiety disorders, leading psychologists and neuroscientists to study how avoidance behaviors are learned using rat or mouse models. Avoidance learning is a type of operant conditioning.

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Shock collar

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Parrot training

Parrot training, also called parrot teaching, is the application of training techniques to modify the behavior of household companion parrots. Training is used to deal with behavior problems such as biting and screaming, to train husbandry behaviors such as allowing claw trimming without restraint or accepting a parrot harness, and to teach various tricks.

Conditioned place preference

Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a form of Pavlovian conditioning used to measure the motivational effects of objects or experiences. By measuring the amount of time an animal spends in an area that has been associated with a stimulus, researchers can infer the animal's liking for the stimulus. This paradigm can also be used to measure conditioned place aversion with an identical procedure involving aversive stimuli instead. Both procedures usually involve mice or rats as subjects. This procedure can be used to measure extinction and reinstatement of the conditioned stimulus. Certain drugs are used in this paradigm to measure their reinforcing properties. Two different methods are used to choose the compartments to be conditioned, and these are biased vs. unbiased. The biased method allows the animal to explore the apparatus, and the compartment they least prefer is the one that the drug is administered in and the one they most prefer is the one where the vehicle is injected. This method allows the animal to choose the compartment they get the drug and vehicle in. In comparison, the unbiased method does not allow the animal to choose what compartment they get the drug and vehicle in and instead the researcher chooses the compartments.

Pain in invertebrates

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Association in psychology refers to a mental connection between concepts, events, or mental states that usually stems from specific experiences. Associations are seen throughout several schools of thought in psychology including behaviorism, associationism, psychoanalysis, social psychology, and structuralism. The idea stems from Plato and Aristotle, especially with regard to the succession of memories, and it was carried on by philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, and James Mill. It finds its place in modern psychology in such areas as memory, learning, and the study of neural pathways.

References

  1. ↑ Rosenthal R. J. (1971). "Trophic interaction between the sea star Pisaster giganteus and the gastropod Kelletia kelletii". Fishery Bulletin , U.S. Department of Commerce, 69(3): 669-679.
  2. ↑ Bernstein, I.L. (1999). "Taste aversion learning: A contemporary perspective". Nutrition. 15 (3): 229–234. doi:10.1016/s0899-9007(98)00192-0. PMID   10198919.
  3. ↑ Garcia, J (1996). Relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learning. Foundations of animal behavior: Classic papers with commentaries. pp. 374–375.
  4. ↑ Garcia, John; Frank R. Ervin; Robert A. Koelling (1966). "Learning with Prolonged Delay of Reinforcement". Psychonomic Science. 5 (3): 121–122. doi: 10.3758/bf03328311 .
  5. ↑ Garcia, John; W.G. Hankins; K.W. Rusiniak (6 September 1974). "Behavioral regulation of the milieu interne in man and rat". Science. 185 (4154): 824–831. Bibcode:1974Sci...185..824G. doi:10.1126/science.185.4154.824. PMID   11785521. S2CID   46537706.
  6. ↑ Sahley, C.L.; A. Gelperin; J. Rudy (1981). "One-trial associative learning modifies food odor preferences of a terrestrial mollusk". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 78 (1): 640–642. Bibcode:1981PNAS...78..640S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.78.1.640 . PMC   319110 . PMID   16592960.
  7. ↑ Wynne, Solomon (1953). "TRAUMATIC AVOIDANCE LEARNING: THE OUTCOMES OF SEVERAL EXTINCTION PROCEDURES WITH DOGS".
  8. ↑ Skinner, B.F. (1938). The behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. New York, NY: Appleton-Century.
  9. ↑ Wled, D.D. (1965). "The influence of the posterior and inter-mediate lobe of the pituitary and pituitary peptides on the maintenance of a conditioned avoidance response in rats". International Journal of Neuropharmacology. 4 (3): 157–167. doi:10.1016/0028-3908(65)90005-5. PMID   14342019.
  10. ↑ Baum, M (1970). "Extinction of avoidance responding through response prevention (flooding)". Psychological Bulletin. 74 (4): 276–284. doi:10.1037/h0029789. PMID   5479591.
  11. ↑ Gannon, Steven. Roche, Bryan. Kanter, Jonathan. Forsyth, John. Linehan, Conor. "A DERIVED RELATIONS ANALYSIS OF APPROACH-AVOIDANCE CONFLICT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS OF HUMAN ANXIETY", Psychological Record1 March 2011. Retrieved on 2011-10-2.
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