Chapter 11 Flashcards
What happens when an observer rat smells a food smell from another rat?
It acquires a new food preference.
Social conformity?
Rats and other animals tend to follow what the majority of it’s colony members do.
Social conformity may have protective functions, but…
It may also hinder the development of novel behavior patterns that might be advantageous.
Brown and Laland 2003
Guppies were placed into a tank with an artificial predator (a net with 2 holes). One of the holes was covered, so the guppies constantly escaped through the uncovered hole. Naive guppies saw this, and when they were trapped they also escaped through that hole, even though the other was uncovered and a faster escape.
Much public transfer of information in the US occurs through?
Mass distribution of moving images and audio signals.
Many organizations feel that violence in mass media results in what?
Violent behavior.
Galef and Wigmore, 1983.
Although baby rats prefer food their mother ate because they had tasted it in her milk, older rats naturally pay attention to other rats and what they eat. Rats were housed in pairs. One rat was chosen to be the demonstrator at and is moved to another cage. The other rat, knows as the observer rat, stayed in the cage. The demonstrator rat was presented with two food choices eat their cinnamon flavored food or Coco flavored food. When the demonstrator rat is moved back into his old cage, the observer rat interacts with the demonstrator rat. The observer a rat is been provided with the choice of either cinnamon or Coco flavored food. The observer rat was more likely to choose the same food that the demonstrator at at Eden the day before. The conclusion is that the observer rat acquired information from the demonstrator rat.
Violence increased greatly since?
Television was invented
How are violence/media studies conducted usually?
Participant is presented with violent or non violent film and their behavior is observed afterwards b
Anderson 2010 and Irwin and Gross 1995 came to what conclusion about violent video games?
Children who played violent video games actually behaved more aggressively.
Social learning theory?
A human behavior theory (1940s to 1960s) that proposed that the kinds of reinforcements an individual has experienced in past social contexts will determine how that individual will act in any given situation
What does social learning theory propose?
That reinforcement determines personality traits. Also, that social learning is a special case of operant conditioning whereby imitative acts are reinforced either indirectly or directly.
What happens when an observer observes a model performing an action?
They gain information about whether that particular action will be rewarded.
What is the basic premise of learning theory?
Any behavior can be learned without direct reinforcement or punishment
Learning is taken to be the result of ____ rather than the result of conditioning.
Observation.
A relationship between an action and an outcome only needs to be _____, not performed, in order to be learned.
Observed.
Bandura’s four basic processes for copying?
- The presence model - a thought to increase an observers attention to the situation. The actions of others can be especially salient cues that act as a magnet for attention
- Accessible format - memories for the observed situation must be stored in an accessible format, so that they can guide later actions
- Ability to reproduce action - the observer must have the ability. If you see a 6’7 basketball player make a slam dunk, doesn’t necessarily mean you can do that as well unless you can jump that high
- Motivation for reproducing - the observer must have the motivation. You wouldn’t burn your money just because you saw someone burning theirs
What does social learning depend on?
Memories for facts/events and skill memories.
What is the basic problem that an imitating brain faces?
How to map observed events onto the motor commands that are needed to generate those same events.
Action imitation?
The model’s observed actions are the events to be replicated.
Vocal imitation?
The outcomes of the model’s actions (produced sounds) are the events to be replicated.
Direct-matching hypothesis?
Memories for actions are stored in specialized cortical regions that map observed actions onto the motor repetitions of the acts. (visually observing an action automatically activates the same neural systems required to perform the action, and the memories for the action are stores as a part of the process)
The human brain translates visual inputs into corresponding ____ patterns.
Motor.
What are mirror neurons?
Neurons that fire both during performance of an action and during visual observations of that same action were first identified in a monkey cortex.
Why are mirror neurons called mirror neurons?
They are called mirror neurons because they fire the same way when the monkey performs an action as they do when the monkey sees another monkey or person performing that action.
What mirror neurons are most common?
The ones that respond to hand or mouth.
What do mirror neurons do?
Provide a neural link between seeing an action and doing it.
Mirror neurons provide the kinds of neural links necessary for emulation(____) and imitation(____)
Copying a goal, copying an action
What was needed to find the presence of mirror neurons in humans?
Observation only condition, imitation only condition, instructed action condition.
In mirror neurons, there is shown overlap in the cortical regions that are activated by the performance of that action and cortical regions that are activated by what?
Observing that action being performed.
The neural mechanisms humans use to imitate actions are very similar to the ones used by?
Young birds learning to sing.
Birds use specific brain regions to ____ and other areas to _____.
Store memories of songs, learn perceptual motor skills for singing
What are the two neural regions that birds use for producing songs?
- High vocal centre (HVC) - controls timing for song production
- Robust nucleus of the archistriatum (RA) - controls more individual details
Neurons fire strongly when a bird here’s a song are also seen to become active just before the bird begins to sing, this means that the RA neurons fire similarly when the birds hear particular songs and when the bird sings those same songs
Birds have an area called ____ _. What is it similar to?
Area X, basal ganglia in mammals.
Lesions to area x in birds disrupts what?
Song learning
Area x recieves inputs from a region called?
lateral magnocellular nucleus of the anterior neostriatum (LMAN)
What does disrupting activity in LMAN neurons when a songbird is first hearing other birds’ songs does what?
Impairs but does not prevent song learning
Rats/food episodic memory study?
Study: observer rats were exposed to a food order on the demonstrator rat’s breath and then we’re given hippocampal lesions 1, 10 or 30 days later
In each case, the lesions reduced the observer rats preference for the food, but the disruption was worst when the lesion was produced right after the observational period
Conclusion: hippocampal damage disrupts the ability to learn from social interactions in ways that parallel episodic memory deficits in humans suffering from amnesia
