Chapter 1: Flashcards
History of Learning
Nativism vs. Empiricism:
Ancient Greeks to ~1800
Now we understand that its not nature OR nurture.
The argument is not “either, or.”
Rather it’s “both, and.”
The question now it to what extent? which is ore influential?
Beginning in 19th century:
New theoretical models of L&M
- Maine de Biran
- William James
Experimental Psychology
- Herman Ebbinghaus
- Classical and Instrumental Conditioning
Schools of Thought:
- Behaviorism
- Cognitive Revolution
- AI / Connectionist Modeling / Neural Networks
Plato: Nativist
We learn by remembering knowledge already acquired by the soul
The Republic: idealized society in which individuals are born with innate differences
People are born with innate differences, some are born to be philosophers, others were born to be laborers, etc.
Rene Descartes
The mind is distinct from the body and is the source of free will and voluntary behavior
The body is governed by physical principles
“Cogito ergo sum”:
“I think, therefore I am.”
The Reflex Action:
For every bodily action there is a stimulus that makes it happen
Believed that there were animal spirits in the ventricles of the brain that circulated and caused different behaviors.
He thought that the PINEAL gland moved to allow the spirits to move through the ventricles. The pineal gland was basically thought to be the joystick of behavior.
The Reflex Action
For every bodily action there is a stimulus that makes it happen
Rene Descartes
This idea was disproven by Galvani (1780) who showed that the nervous system operated by electrical transmission
Erasmus Darwin
Charles Darwin’s grandfather
Proponent of the theory of evolution—i.e., descent with modification
Could not suggest a mechanism by which evolution occurs
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Thought that traits are passed from parent to offspring based on circumstance.
Giraffe necks stretching by staring over time.
He was largely ignored until very recent years because of the study of epigenetics.
Darwin talked about change over a very long time, a people thought that that was the only way.
But epigenetics shows that parents can be affected by their experience, and pass those genetic changes in a single generation.
Charles Darwin
The Beagle
The idea of evolution was already there, but he put forth a mechanism: Natural Selection
Natural Selection
Inheritability (genetics)
Variability
Fitness (how many offspring)
Evolutionary Psychology:
examines how behavior evolves through natural selection
Organisms with greater capacity for Learning & Memory are more fit
Sexual selection
when females select a mate, males will compete for the opportunity
Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection
Peacocks
Stalk-eyed fly:
Gulp in air to cause the eyes to push out from the head, seem to see less poorly after doing this. So not evolutionarily advantageous, but sexually/fitness-wise it is advantageous because the females prefer males with eyes farther away from their heads
Natural Selection
vs.
Epigenetics
Meiosis
Crossing Over
Mutations
The environment can induce epigenetic changes in gametes which can be passed on to offspring
Francis Galton
cousin of Charles Darwin
Erasmus Darwin’s grandson
Human variability:
Man’s natural abilities are derived by inheritance under exactly the same limitations as are the form and features of the physical world (1869)
Eugenics
Survival of the Fittest
Modern Statistics & Scientific Methodology
Normal distribution or Bell-shaped curve
Correlation Study on People who were prayed for very much (monarchs) versus people who who were less prayed for (everyone else)
Aristotle: Empiricist
All knowledge is acquired through experience
World’s First Naturalist
- Data & Theories
Associationism
Contiguity: spatial or temporal
Frequency
Similarity
Aristotle was always collecting data
Associative learning
Associationism
Contiguity: spatial or temporal
Frequency
Similarity
John Locke
Empiricist
Influenced by contemporary physical scientists Complex Associations (cf., light)
Tabula Rasa (Blank Slate) This concept had a profound affect on Thomas Jefferson “All men are created equal”
Newton and prisms:
Breaking down a seemingly super complex things into simpler components
Like light into a prism
Nature vs. Nurture
Our genetic constitution (genotype) characterizes the range of our capacities, but does not determine the scope of our neurocognitive abilities (phenotype)
Maine de Biran
Memory can be divided into 3 forms:
Representative memory:
Can think and relive prior experience (facts & events, Declarative)
Mechanical memory:
Movement learning through repetition (habits)
Sensitive memory:
Emotional memory
William James
The very 1st formal psychologist
The 1st to write a psychology textbook
Influenced by descriptions of reflex arcs
Habits form by strengthening neural pathways through repeated experience
Practiced behaviors and skills mediated through sequentially linked discharges that “awaken each other in succession”
William James remembered a man that was an army veteran. The kids would yell “Attention!” and he would salute automatically from habit.
Memory depends on strengthening of reflex pathways.
Memories are encoded & retrieved based on associations.
Conscious Memory
- Primary memory: ability to hold and manipulate information in mind for a short period of time (working memory)
- Secondary memory: permanent memories (long-term memory)
Conscious Memory
- Primary memory: ability to hold and manipulate information in mind for a short period of time (working memory)
- Secondary memory: permanent memories (long-term memory)
William James
Nativism:
knowledge is inborn
Not dependent on experience
Empiricism:
knowledge is acquired through experience
Hermann Ebbinghaus
First rigorous studies of human memory
Nonsense words: KIB, FOM, DAK
He got his nonsence words from Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass.
He was poor
Learning, Delay, Test, Relearn
Experiments
Experiment
Test validity of given hypothesis by actively manipulating the variables under investigation
Ivan Pavlov
Classical Conditioning: Stimulus predicts upcoming event
Canine Digestion: Nobel Prize, 1904
Learning Curve
Extinction
Essentially Associative Learning
Extinction Learning
Edward Thorndike
Instrumental / Operant Conditioning
- Particular response required for reward
cats in puzzle cages
Associative Learning
Law of Effect
- Responses with positive outcomes increase in probability
- Responses with negative outcomes decrease in probability
Law of Effect
Responses with positive outcomes increase in probability
Responses with negative outcomes decrease in probability
Behaviorism
Psychology should restrict itself to the study of observable behaviors and avoid reference to unobservable, ill-defined mental events.
The point were psychology became more scientific.
Up to this point, Psychology was based on introspective observations and anecdotes
John Watson
John Watson
Maze Learning
- Rats learn motor habits for moving through maze independent of external sensory cues
Behaviorist
Classical conditioning & Generalization
- Little Albert
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.”
Little Albert didn’t learn to just fear the white rat, but he also apparently generalized fear to a large white rabbit and even Santa Clause.
Strong Empiricist:
Had an affair with his research attendant, ended up leaving the research facility because of the scandal
Entered the Advertising game. Created the Blind taste test.
Maze Learning
Rats learn motor habits for moving through maze independent of external sensory cues
John Watson
B.F. Skinner
Skinner Box
Schedules of Reinforcement
Made them repeat the action many more times to get the reward.
Lead to more robust responding
Project Pigeon: Skinner was enlisted by the army to use pigeons to guide bombs. The project didn’t go anywhere
Intermittent Reinforcement
Skinner was a radical
Behaviorist: He believed that humans emit nothing more than learned responses to environmental stimuli
Wrote Walden Two
Edward Tolman
“Behavior reeks of purpose”
Cognitive Maps
Latent Learning
Neo-Behaviorist
Latent Learning: we learn a ton of info about an environment, not just the action
Tolman was not into the Extreme Behaviorism.
Cognitive Revolution
Focus on human abilities such as thinking, language, and reasoning
The Pushback against Behaviorism
This became big in the 1960’s
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky:
Political
Rejected Extreme Behaviorism
Believed that we are hardwired to learn certain things
Universal Grammer
The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or ‘hypothesis-formulating’ ability of unknown character and complexity.
W.K. Estes
Conditioned emotional response
Noticed how perople respond to bombs in Engalnd, during WW2
Gordon Bower
Learning by insight
Research data was improved after this
George Miller
Information theory.
Measure of information contained in a message, based partly on listener’s prior knowledge
The Magical Number 7
Short-term memory can hold 5-9 objects
Capacity of learning.
He worked with phone companies. This is why phone numbers are 7 digits long.
Information theory
Measure of information contained in a message, based partly on listener’s prior knowledge
George Miller
“Chris is a male student in my class”
Connectionist & Neural Network Models
Attempts to model neural function, including encoding, storing, and retrieving information
Computational models
Herbert Simon
Father of Artificial Intelligence
Symbol-manipulation model
Learning not based on associations, but on the mental manipulation of symbols
David Rumelhart
Connectionist models
Distributed representations
No labeling of nodes or connections
