CHAPTER 3:

Question 1

Habituation

Answer 1

Decrease in strength or occurrence of behavior after repeated exposure to same stimulus.

When you first move in to a new house, the neighbors’ dog barking annoys you. But over time you get used to it and eventually, you will sometimes not even notice it.

Learning about repeated events:
Novel events are arousing

Regulated by the form of stimulus, the number of exposures, and time between exposures

Question 2

Orienting Response

Answer 2

Innate reaction to novel stimuli

Fixation time

Question 3

Acoustic Startle Reflex

Answer 3

Defensive response to loud, unexpected noise

Loud noise startles the rodent initially, but responses to the same noise will subsequently decrease.

Question 4

Why Habituate?

Answer 4

Stimuli are now familiar & predictable

Avoid wasting time and energy

It’s stressful to be overwhelmed by all the stimuli present.

We are able to be more aware of other more important/novel stimuli

Question 5

Risks to Habituation

Answer 5

Danger may lurk in unattended stimuli

Little boy cries wolf. The towns people habituate to the false alarms, such that when it is real, they don’t pay attention.

Question 6

Habituation increases in response to…

Answer 6

1. less arousing events
2. when stimulus has been presented multiple times
3. exposures are separated by short intervals.

Question 7

Habituation is Regulated by…

Answer 7

the form of stimulus,
the # of exposures, and
the time between exposures

Question 8

Habituation differs from non-learning situations such as ____ and ____

Answer 8

Habituation differs from non-learning situations such as adaptation and fatigue.

Adaptation (sensory) and Fatigue (motor) are types of diminished response that aren’t as cognitive

Habituation is learning-dependent independent of sensory and motor neurons.

Question 9

Stimulus Specificity

Answer 9

Subject perceives that new stimulus is different from the habituated stimulus

Object discrimination in infants

Can be used to assess Perceptual capabilities of subjects

Stimulus Generalization** Infants and attending

Question 10

Dishabituation

Answer 10

Recovery of behavioral response when new (novel & arousing) stimulus presented

Coolidge Effect
Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge, poultry breeding…

Think of the Acoustic Startle Reflex that rodents show to noise.

Rodent sex:
Males have much more sex when presented with new females than if they are paired with the same female.

Question 11

Human Sexual Dishabituation?

Answer 11

The relationships subjective and physical arousal relationships in males are very directly related.

This not true at all for women.
For women, arousal is more cognitive.
That’s why women don’t really have a female version of men’s Viagra.

Male arousal is subject to habituation.
Females do not habituate as strongly to sexual stimuli.

Is this why men tend to cheat on their relationships more?
Maybe, maybe not.

Question 12

Sensitization

Answer 12

Startling stimulus leads to stronger response to subsequent stimulus, more than would have normally been evoked

Hurricane Katrina sensitized people to subsequent hurricanes, such that subsequent less serious hurricanes caused mile-long traffic jams as people panicked and tried to get out of the area.

Question 13

Habituation
vs.
Sensitization

Answer 13

Sensitization:

1. GENERAL to a VARIETY of stimuli and responses.
2. Results in INCREASED response magnitude.
3. Occurs only after EMOTIONALLY arousing stimuli.
4. Normally lasts for only SHORT period of time

Habituation:

1. SPECIFIC to a PARTICULAR stimulus and response.
2. Results in DECREASED response magnitude.
3. Occurs after REPETITION of a variety of stimuli.
4. Exhibited BOTH short term and long term.

Question 14

Dual Process Theory

Answer 14

The idea that Habituation & Sensitization are two forms of learning that are independent but operate in parallel

One’s response to stimulus reflects combined effects of habituation and sensitization.

Question 15

Exposure Weakens Connection

Answer 15

Habituation

Question 16

Exposure Strengthens Connection.

The ability of a certain stimulus, as well as stimuli that are similar to it, to trigger a response increases.

Answer 16

Sensitization

Question 17

Perceptual Learning

Answer 17

Experience with a set of stimuli makes the same stimuli easier to distinguish

Increased ability to make fine distinctions between highly similar stimuli

Discrimination learning

Assessing the gender of a chick;
Eventually you begin to recognize

More accurate when appropriate feedback is given

Learning Languages

Coke versus Pepsi example:
They taste a lot alike on the first time of trying pop in general.
But soda drinkers can tell the difference.

Question 18

Mere Exposure Learning

Answer 18

Learning without explicit training

A type of Latent Learning

Learning occurs Independent of training or reward

Experimental group rodents grow up surrounded by to–be-descriminated figures on cage walls.
Control group rodents don’t experience the figures until discrimination traintin during adulthood

The experimental rodents were exposed to the neutral stimuli of the shapes for awhile before being rewarded for discriminating the shapes from each other. In the tests, they did better than controls.

Dog training: fine differences

Question 19

Discrimination Training:

Learning Specificity

Answer 19

Learning Specificity:
Learning about one group of stimuli does not transfer automatically to another group of stimuli.
Like from dogs to chickens.

Difficult discrimination = Greater specificity

Subjects improve to near perfect ability to detect subtle differences.

Perceptual skills don’t generalize much: learning specificity

Feedback is critical.
Have to know if ne is wrong or right to improve

Question 20

Learning through Exploration

Answer 20

Organisms can exert control over the kinds of stimuli they repeatedly experience.

Spatial Learning and Rat Mazes

Question 21

Spatial Learning

Answer 21

Acquisition of information about one’s surroundings

Mere exposure learning: only evident at test

Exposure-first group:
First 10 days: the animals are just moving around. No reinforcement or encouragement.
Just moving through the environment led the animal to learn about its environments

The exposure-first group did better than the group that was trained the entire time

Niko Tinbergen: Landmark based learning; bees & displaced nests

In humans: Men are much more likely to use spatial cues than women

Question 22

Niko Tinbergen

Answer 22

Landmark based learning

bees & displaced nests

Spatial Learning

In humans: Men are much more likely to use spatial cues than women

Question 23

Novel Object Recognition

Answer 23

Most animals generally prefer novel objects and situations

Familiarity: A sense of sameness (William James, 1890)

Neophobia:
Active avoidance of novel objects.
Dolphins do not like novelty.

Question 24

A sense of sameness

Answer 24

Familiarity

Question 25

Priming

Answer 25

Prior exposure to stimulus improves ability to recognize same stimulus later (even minus the sense of familiarity)

Priming does not require explicit memory of primed stimuli

Question 26

Priming & Amnesiacs

Answer 26

Do anterograde amnesic patients show priming effects?
YES!!!

The amnesiacs perform almost identically with the control group of regular people in a Priming experiment.

Priming does not require explicit memory of primed stimuli

Question 27

Anterograde Amnesia:

Answer 27

inability to form new declarative memories following hippocampal damage

Question 28

Remember these Points!

Answer 28

Perceptual learning: recognition and discrimination.
The finer the discrimination, the less generalization that will occur.

Priming: setting yourself up to respond in a particular way

People living in the city walking past homeless people: Habituation

Wine tasters:
Discrimination Learning

Question 29

Brain Substrates??

Answer 29

Pavlov found that decorticated dogs do not habituate to auditory stimuli…
So we need the cortex to inhibit orienting responses??

Spinal cats do habituate to body tactile stimuli…
So cortex in not required???

How to Reconcile?
When the auditory stimuli comes to the brain, it has to be translated before it can translate to motor action.
But the touching the body…

Question 30

Learning with Aplysia:

Giant sea slug

Answer 30

Invertebrate learning offers a simpler system in which to isolate neurobiological correlates of learning

Giant sea slug:
Simple nervous system (~20,000 neurons).
Neuronal development is hard-wired, does not very from slug to slug.
Identifiable individual neurons.

24 sensory neurons, 6 motor neurons

Gill withdrawal: Sensitization