Chapter 5: How do We Learn? Flashcards
Learning
A relatively permanent change in behavior, or behavior potential, as a result of experience.
Orienting Reflex
The tendency of an organism to orient its
senses toward unexpected stimuli.
Habituation
The tendency of an organism to ignore repeated stimuli. Keeps our brain from being overstimulated.
Dishabituation
Re-responding to a stimulus to which one has been habituated. I.E. You are accustomed to ignoring the jackhammer, but then the worker begins to sing loudly over the noise and you find it hard to ignore.
Unconditioned Stimulus
A stimulus that naturally elicits are response in an organism.
Unconditioned Response
The response that is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.
Neutral Stimulus
A stimulus that does not naturally elicit an unconditioned response in an organism.
Conditioned Stimulus
A stimulus that elicits a conditioned response in an organism.
Conditioned Response
The response that is elicited by a conditioned stimulus.
Classical Conditioning
Learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus; because of this pairing, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus with the same power as the unconditioned stimulus to elicit the response in the organism.
Contiguity
The degree to which two stimuli occur close together in time.
Contingency
The degree to which the presentation of one stimulus reliably predicts the presentation of the other.
Real world classical conditioning
Little Albert and the white rat
Stimulus Generalization
Responding in a like fashion to similar stimuli (i.e. I am afraid of bees, so I also fear hornets, wasps, and yellow-jackets).
Stimulus Discrimination
Responding only to a particular stimulus (i.e. I work with snakes, so the only snake that I hold fear for are Cobras).
Taste Aversion
Classical conditioning that occurs when an organism pairs the experience of nausea with a certain food and becomes conditioned to feel ill at the sight, smell, or idea of the food.
Biological Preparedness
A genetic tendency to learn certain responses very easily.
Extinction
The removal of a conditioned response
Acquisition
The process of learning a conditioned response or behavior.
Spontaneous Recovery
During extinction, the tendency for a conditioned response to reappear and strengthen over a brief period of time before re-extinguishing.
Operant Conditioning
A type of learning in which the organism learns through the consequences of its behavior.
E.L. Thorndike’s Law of Effect
A principle discovered by E.L. Thorndike, which states that behaviors that lead to positive consequences will be strengthened and behaviors that lead to negative consequences will be weakened.
Reinforcement
The strengthening of a response that occurs when the response is rewarded.
Positive Reinforcement
Strengthening a behavior by ADDING something pleasant to the environment.
Negative Reinforcement
Strengthening a behavior by REMOVING something unpleasant from the environment.
Punishment
The weakening of a response that occurs when a behavior leads to an unpleasant consequence.
Positive Punishment
Weakening a behavior by adding something unpleasant to the environment.
Negative Punishment
Weakening behavior by removing something pleasant from the environment.
Extinction Burst
A temporary increase in a behavioral response that occurs immediately after extinction has begun.
Schedule of Reinforcement
The timing and the consistency of the reinforcement.
Continuous Reinforcement
A schedule of reinforcement in which the organism is rewarded for every instance of the desired response. Leads to high rates of responding but the quickest extinction.
Partial Reinforcement
A schedule of reinforcement in which the organism is rewarded for only some instances of the desired response.
Fixed Ratio Schedule
A schedule of reinforcement in which the organism is rewarded for every Xth instance of the desired response. Leads to higher rates of responding than interval schedules of reinforcement.
Variable Ratio Schedule
A schedule of reinforcement in which the organism is rewarded on average for every Xth instance of the desired response. Leads to higher rates of responding than interval schedules of reinforcement.
Fixed Interval Schedule
A schedule of reinforcement in which the organism is rewarded for the first desired response in an Xth interval of time. Lead to behaviors that are the most resistant to extinction.
Variable Interval Schedule
A schedule in which the organism is rewarded for the first desired response in an average Xth interval of time. Lead to behaviors that are the most resistant to extinction.
Shaping
Using operant conditioning to build a new behavior in an organism by rewarding successive approximations of the desired response.
Primary Reinforcer
Something that is reinforcing in and of itself.
Secondary Reinforcer
A reinforcer that is reinforcing only because it leads to a primary reinforcer. I.E. Money, tokens.
Token Economy
A system of operant conditioning in which participants are reinforced with tokens that can later be cashed in for primary reinforcers.
Behaviorism
A school of thought in psychology that emphasizes the study of observable behavior over the study of the mind.
Insight
A sudden realization about how to solve a problem that occurs after an organism has studied the problem for a period of time.
Latent Learning
Learning that cannot be directly observed in an organism’s behavior.
Cognitive Map
A mental representation of the environment that is formed through observation of one’s environment.
Observational Learning
Learning through observation and imitation of other’s behavior. AKA modeling
4 steps for modeling to occur
- Attention: The observer must first pay attention to the model’s behavior before he or she can model it.
- Retention in Memory: The observer must retain a cognitive representation or memory of the model’s behavior.
- Reproduction of the Behavior: The observer must have a mental representation of the behavior stored in memory that can be retrieved and used to reproduce the behavior, and the observer must be physically capable of reproducing the behavior.
- Motivation: After retrieving the memory of the behavior and figuring out how to produce the behavior, the observer must be motivated to actually execute the behavior
