Ch 3- Learning

Question 1

Learning

Answer 1

acquiring new behaviours

Question 2

Stimulus

Answer 2

Anything the organism can respond to

Question 3

Habituation

Answer 3

Reduced response to a stimuli after repeated exposures

Question 4

Dishabituation

Answer 4

when your response returns to a previously habituated stimuli (usually due to the simultaneous introduction of a new stimuli

Question 5

Associative learning

Answer 5

association between two stimuli or a behaviour and a response

Question 6

Explain these classical conditioning terms:
UCS
UCR
Neutral stimuli
CS
CR
acquisition

Answer 6

Neutral stimuli is the stimuli before it is conditioned

Acquisition is the transfer of the UCR to the Neutral stimuli

Question 7

Extinction and Spontaneous recovery

Answer 7

Extinction is the gradual loss of the CR as the CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS.
After full extinction sometimes the CS will still elicit a weak CR; this is spontaneous recovery

Question 8

Generalization

Answer 8

Stimuli similar to the CS can cause the CR to be elicited (even though they were never paired with the UCS

Question 9

Discrimination

Answer 9

When stimuli similar to the CS do not elicit the CR

Question 10

Behaviourism

Answer 10

A theoretical framework rooted in the assumption that all behaviours are conditioned

Question 11

Escape learning and Avoidance learning. What operant category do these fall under?

Answer 11

These fall under negative reinforcers
Escape–> When you are getting rid of something that is already unpleasently affecting you
Avoidance–> Avoiding something that will have an unpleasant effect in he future

Question 12

Primary and secondary reinforcer

Answer 12

A primary reinforcer is something that naturally will act as a positive reinforcer (eg food). A secondary reinforcer is paired and conditioned with the primary to elicit the behaviour (eg verbal command)

Question 13

Explain each schedule and how behaviour responding to it would look
Fixed-Ratio
Variable-Ratio
Fixed-Interval
Variable-Interval

Answer 13

Fixed-Ratio–> Reinfocement happens after a specific amount of performances
Variable-Ratio–> Reinforment occures on average after a certain amount of performaces (but the actual amount is variable)
Fixed-Interval–> Reiforcement occures on the first performance after a set period of time
Variable-Interval–>Reiforcement occures on the first performance after a variable set of time

Variable-ratio creates the most constanst responding

Fixed schedules create a drop in responding right after the reinforcement because the organism learns that reinforcement will not come right after

Question 14

Shaping

Answer 14

Using reinforcement to influence increasingly complex leading to a desired complex behaviour gradually

Question 15

Latent learning

Answer 15

Learning occurs without reward but the behaviour isn’t elicited until the reward is introduced

Question 16

Problem-solving

Answer 16

Applying learned priciples in a novel way

Question 17

Prepardeness

Answer 17

When a organism is predisposed to learn a certain behaviour (humans are predisposed to learn language

Question 18

Instinctual Drift

Answer 18

When learning contradicts the natural tendencies of the organism it is much harder to have it occur (the animal usually reverts to it’s natural tendencies

Question 19

Mirror neurons and what type of learning they are involved in? Where are they located

Answer 19

They are nerons that fire when we are obsvering a behaviour and when we are performing that same behaviour. They are an important component of observational learning. Frontal and parietal lobes

Question 20

Modeling

Answer 20

Usually we do what others do and not what they say

Question 21

If a parent tells a child not to swear but then swears infront of the child what is the child likely to learn?

Answer 21

They will learn that swearing is ok.