Chapter 4 - Section 3 Beyond Classical and Operant Theories of Learning: Play, Exploration, and Observation Flashcards
What is play?
Behavior that serves no obvious immediately useful purpose. It is behavior engaged in apparently for its own sake.
The demeanor of the playing animal, just like that of a playing child, is often high-spirited and bouncing, which suggests that the animal is having fun.
Nobody has to teach social mammals to play; they just do it. (p. 127)
30: What is Groos’s theory about the evolutionary function of animals’ play, and what are five lines of evidence supporting that theory?
Groos argued in a publication in 1898 that the primary purpose of play is to provide a means for young animals to practice their instincts - their species-typical behaviors.
He recognized that animals, especially mammals, must to varying degrees learn to use their instincts.
Young mammals come into the world with biological drives and tendencies to behave in certain ways, but to be effective such behaviors must be practiced and refined. Play provides that practice.
Evidence supporting this theory:
1 Young adults play more than do adults of their species
2 Species of animals that have the most to learn play the most (to survive and thrive)
3 Young animals play at those skills that they most need to learn
4 Play involves much repetition
5 Play is challenging
(pp. 127-128)
What is culture?
The set of learned skills, knowledge, beliefs, and values that characterize a group of interconnected individuals and are passed along from generation to generation. (pp. 129)
Or:
The beliefs and traditions that are passed along from generation to generation. (p. 133)
31: How does exploration differ from play in its evolutionary function?
Learning can be divided at least roughly into two broad categories - learning ‘to do’ (skill learning) and learning ‘about’ (information learning). Play evolved to serve the former, and exploration evolved to serve the latter.
Exploration is a more primitive and widespread category of behavior than is play. Animals whose activities are rather rigidly controlled by their genetic makeup so that they don’t have much to learn in the ‘to do’ category must nevertheless learn ‘about’ their environment.
EXPLORATION, UNLIKE PLAY, IS OFTEN MIXED WITH A DEGREE OF FEAR. EXPLORATION IS ELICITED BY NOVEL STIMULI, AND NOVEL STIMULI OFTEN INDUCE FEAR UNTIL THEY ARE FULLY EXPLORED.
In fact, one purpose of exploration, in animals and people, is to determine whether or not an unfamiliar object or place is safe.
Explorers are often caught in a balance between curiosity, which drives them toward the unfamiliar terrain or novel object, and fear, which drives them away. (pp. 130-131)
32: How do rats explore a novel environment? How did Tolman and subsequent researchers show that rats learn useful information in their exploration?
Through exploration, without rewards, rats learn the layouts of mazes and then are able to take the shortest route to a reward when a reward is introduced.
Tolman (1948) argued that rewards affect what animals ‘do’ more than what they ‘learn’. Animals learn the locations of distinctive places in their environment through exploration, whether or not they have ever found rewards there, but they do not run directly to those places unless they have found rewards there.
Tolman used the term ‘latent learning’ to refer to learning that is not immediately demonstrated in the animal’s behavior. Figure 4.15 (p. 131)
What is social learning?
Occurring in a situation “in which one individual comes to behave similarly to another”. This is usually done simply by watching others and is referred to by psychologists as ‘observational learning’. (p. 131)
What are key cognitive capabilities in Bandura’s social-cognitive theory?
1 Symbolization: The ability to think about social behavior in words and images
2 Forethought: The ability to anticipate the consequences of our actions and the actions of others
3 Self-regulation: The ability to adopt standards of acceptable behavior for ourselves
4 Self-selection: The ability to analyze our thoughts and actions
5 Vicarious reinforcement: The ability to learn new behavior and the consequences of one’s actions by observing others (p. 132)
Through observation we learn about the unique charateristics of others, so we can judge how to get along with them and know who is likely to help us or hurt us in a given situation.
When we ae in a new social environment, we look frequently to others to learn what sorts of behavior are normal or expected in that setting - so when in Rome, we can do as the Romans do.
To learn a new skill - whether it’s a new dance step, driving a car, or surgery - we usually begin by observing the actions of a person who has already mastered the skill. (p. 132)
33: How does observation of skilled performers help animals learn new operant tasks? How does imitation differ from stimulus enhancement, goal enhancement, and emulation? What evidence suggests that primates (especially chimpanzees), but not other mammals, are capable of imitation?
To imitate, an individual must observe, remember, and reproduce the specific pattern of movements that were produced by the model. To reproduce the movements, the learner must map the observed actions onto its own movement control system. Many researchers argue, with evidence, that real imitation does not occur in mammals other than primates (and perhaps only in humans).
Stimulus enhancement refers to an increase in the salience or attractiveness of the object that the observed individual is acting upon.
Goal enhancement refers to an increased drive to obtain rewards similar to what the observed individual is receiving.
Emulation involves observing another individual achieve some goal (picking up and dropping a log to reveal tasty ants, for instance), then reaching that same goal by their own means (bouncing up and down on the log).
Chimpanzees seem to be more focused on the goal and less on the means used to achieve it, a characteristic of emulation.
The same neurons that become active when the individual makes a particular motion also become active when the individual sees another individual make that motion: ‘mirror neurons’. (pp. 132-133)
34: What is the evidence that chimpanzees transmit cultural traditions from generation to generation?
Wild chimpanzees living in different groups, geographically isolated from one another, have different cultural traditions, which pass from generation to generation.
Researchers studying wild chimpanzees at seven different field stations have identified at least 39 different behaviors, ranging from tool design to mating displays, that are distinct to specific groups and that seem to arise from cultural tradition rather than from constraints imposed by the environment. (p. 134)
35: How might gaze following help us learn from other people? What characteristic of human eyes makes gaze following easier for us than for other primates?
Gaze following is the reflexive action, that our eyes move in the same direction another person’s eyes move, when we are attending to the person, so we look at the same object at which he or she is looking.
Such gaze following ensures that infants pay attention to the same objects and events in their environment that their elders attend to, which may be the most important things to learn about for survival in their culture. If you are an infant and hear your mother say some new word - maybe goat - for the first time, you have a chance of learning what that word refers to if you are looking at the same object that she is looking at.
In fact, the unique coloring of our eyes may be a special human adaptation that came about through natural selection to enable us to follow each others’ gazes and thereby understand each other better. The relatively dark circular iris of the human eye is sharply set off by the bright white of the rest of the visible portion of the eyeball, the sclera, which makes it easy for others to see where we are looking. Other primates have dark sclera, which do not contrast with the iris, so it is not possible to see which way their eyes have shifted. (pp. 134-135)
What is the most sophisticated form of social learning and what does it involve?
Teaching. It involves the teacher modifying his or her behavior in order that the “student” acquires new knowledge. Teaching requires that the learner appreciates the perspective of the teacher and that the teacher is sensitive to the knowledge, motivations, and emotions of the learner. (p. 134)
