Chapter 1 Flashcards
Learning Is…
Acquiring new info
- making a response or not making a response
What is behaviour?
Anything a person or animal does that can be measured
- actions
- physiological reactions
- thoughts/feelings
What is learning?
An enduring change in the mechanisms of behaviour involving specific stimuli and or responses that results from prior experience with those or similar stimuli and response
A change in behaviour due to changes in the environment
Natural selection
variation, inheritance, reproductive success
works on physical traits
Behaviour and evolution
behaviours that can be selected for
i.e. mimic cuddle fish
Natural selection of behaviour advantages and disadvantages
advantages
- reflexes
- crossed extensor reflex
- more complex behaviour
disadvantages
- not helpful for new change s
-slow
i.e. an invasive species can cause local species to go extinct
if the local species is unable to learn new behaviour they can’t react to these new changes
- process of natural selection is helping in the now, and does not prepare species for future changes, this leads to extinctions
Why learn?
Fitness!
Organisms who can learn outcompete those who can’t because they adapt to changes!
How is learning studied?
Experimentation
- allows for control of environmental stimuli
- observation of behaviour
- understanding general processes
- different species might have quantitative differences, but the underlying process of learning is similar
Animals in research
Why?
- controlled subjects and lab setting
- neurobiological bases of learning
- no language
- not trying to please experimenter
- to study animals
lots of benefits!
- ecology, veterinary, health benefits
example: how might this help animals - Fear conditioning:
- help animals learn to avoid roads
- preferentially use alternate routes
- help birds nest closer to roads
Is it ethical?
- unethical practices = bad data
Neurological bases of learning
in humans = need scanning techniques
In animals can use singe celled recording, drugs, etc.
language
tendency to always rely on language with humans limits understanding with preverbal children, autistic children and other animals
Demand characteristics
humans will try to please the experimenter even if asked not to
- bias results
- biased by different experimenters
cross animal comparison
search for commonalities
formulate general rules that exist among all animals
(do they learn at the same rates, learn in the same ways?)
Association
a connection between the representations of 2 events (2 stimuli or a stimulus and a response) such that occurrences of one of the events activates the representation of the other
dualism
the view of behaviour according to which actions can be separated into 2 categories: voluntary behaviour controlled by the mind and involuntary behaviour controlled by reflex mechanisms
