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Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding > Chapter 6 > Flashcards

Chapter 6 Flashcards

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1
Q

Habituation

A
  • process of responding less strongly over time to repeated stimuli; learning not to respond to unimportant and repeated stimuli
    Ex 1. Snails don’t retract into their shells after hearing someone tap after repeated tapping
  • However, this experiment is flawed because we are not sure if the snails actually learned to ignore the tapping or if they simply got too tired to keep retreating into their shell
    Ex 2. Worms always move away in response to heat, even after repeated exposures to the heat stimulus, but stop responding to tapping after several exposures to tapping.
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2
Q

Classical conditioning

A

a form of learning in which animals come to respond to a previously neutral stimulus that had been paired with another stimulus that elicits an automatic response.

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3
Q

Unconditioned stimulus

A

The stimulus that naturally triggers a response (the unconditioned response)
ie. The smell/presence of food

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4
Q

Unconditioned response

A

An unlearned response that occurs naturally in reaction to the unconditioned stimulus
ie. Drooling in response to the food

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5
Q

Neutral stimulus

A

A stimulus which initially produces no specific response other than focusing attention; becomes a conditioned stimulus after learning
ie. The sound of the bell (when it causes no reaction)

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6
Q

Conditioned stimulus

A

A previously neutral stimulus that, after becoming associated with the unconditioned stimulus, eventually comes to trigger a conditioned response
ie. The sound of the bell (when it causes drooling)

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7
Q

Conditioned response

A

An automatic response established by training to an ordinarily neutral stimulus; the learned response to the previously neutral stimulus
ie. Drooling in response to the bell

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8
Q

Acquisition (classical conditioning)

A

The initial stage of learning in which the UCS and CS are paired
Closer pairings are stronger (ie. shorter time between UCS and CS = stronger)
Novel stimuli are stronger than commonplace ones

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9
Q

Extinction (classical conditioning)

A

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response tendency
CS presented without the UCS

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10
Q

Stimulus generalization

A

Occurs when an organism has learned a response to a specific stimulus, responds in the same way to new stimuli that are similar to the original stimulus

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11
Q

Stimulus distinction

A

Occurs when an organism that has learned a response to a specific stimulus, does not respond in the same way to new stimuli that are similar to the original stimulus

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12
Q

Generalization gradient

A

The more similar the new stimulus is to the original conditioned stimulus, the stronger the response will be

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13
Q

Conditioned Compensatory Response

A

Physiological changes that occur as a result of conditioned cues associated with a particular drug, which increases the tolerance for that drug.
ie. Taking heroin generally results in a decrease in blood pressure; if you always take heroin in a certain bathroom stall, your blood pressure will rise as you enter that bathroom stall to counteract the effects of the heroin that you’re about to inject. This means that if you take the same dosage of heroin in any location other than that bathroom stall, you may overdose.

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14
Q

Conditioning and Advertising

A

Associate pleasant things with their products (ie. Coca Cola associating the beach with their product)
By repeatedly pairing the sights/sounds of products with pleasant things, they classically condition connections between their brand and positive emotions

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15
Q

Latent inhibition:

A

Difficulty in establishing classical conditioning to a conditioned stimulus we’ve repeatedly experienced alone, that is, without the unconditioned stimulus
Research shows that pairing products with pleasurable stimuli to classically condition participants works best with novel brands, rather than brands that they are already familiar with

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16
Q

Fetishism

A

Sexual attraction to non living things
Often arises in part from classical conditioning– in quails, a fetish was instilled by repeatedly associating a cylindrical object made of terry cloth with a female quail with which they could mate
- Evidence that some humans develop fetishes through the repeated pairing of neutral objects with sexual activity

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17
Q

Disgust Reactions

A

We acquire disgust reactions with ease
Often, disgust reactions are tied to stimuli that are biologically important to us – like dirty or potentially poisonous animals/objects
Probably a product of classical conditioning
Ie. We hesitate to eat fudge that is shaped like dog feces
- Actual dog feces = unconditioned stimulus
- Disgust to dog feces = unconditioned response
- Fudge shaped like dog feces = neutral / conditioned stimulus
- Disgust to the fudge = conditioned response

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18
Q

Higher order conditioning

A

The conditioning of a second CS by pairing it with the original CS, without the original UCS

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19
Q

Renewal effect

A

If a response is extinguished in a different environment than it was acquired, the extinguished response may reappear if the subject encounters the conditioned stimulus in the original environment where acquisition took place

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20
Q

Spontaneous recovery

A

The reappearance of an extinguished (extinct) response after a period of non-exposure to the CS

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21
Q

Define phobia

A

Persistent, irrational fear of a specific object or situation that poses no real danger and impacts daily functioning.

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22
Q

How are phobias acquired?

A
  • People acquire phobias by classical conditioning
  • The object/situation (neutral stimulus) is paired with an unpleasant stimulus (unconditioned stimulus) which results in fear (unconditioned response)
  • The object/situation (conditioned stimulus) alone now causes fear (conditioned response)
  • For example, the woman who has a bird phobia may have been attacked by birds, resulting in her fear of birds and feathers.
    • Feathers/Birds = neutral stimulus, which becomes the conditioned stimulus
    • Being attacked = unconditioned stimulus
    • Fear as a result of being attacked = unconditioned response
    • Fear of all feathers/birds = conditioned response
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23
Q

Why do phobias persist?

A

Due to escape/avoidance learning and two-process theory, phobias tend to persist without treatment
HOWEVER, once people have a phobia, they start to avoid their feared stimulus whenever they encounter it; this avoidance behaviour is negatively reinforced by their decreased anxiety (connection to operant conditioning!)
They are more likely to continue avoiding their feared stimulus due to operant conditioning
This also reduces the chances of extinction occurring because they need to experience the feared stimulus with no consequences to learn that the feared stimulus is not actually dangerous– if they keep avoiding it, then this won’t happen

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24
Q

How do you treat phobias?

A

Treatment with classical conditioning
In order for extinction to occur, we must encounter the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus several times– like how the dog needs to hear the bell ring several times without food being presented
In the woman’s case, she would need to encounter birds/feathers without being attacked several times, so that she can stop associating birds/feathers with being attacked and stop her conditioned response of being afraid

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25
Q

How does the renewal effect play a role in phobia treatment?

A

Encountering birds/feathers only within the laboratory may result in her fear coming back when she encounters birds/feathers outside, which is where she initially learned to associate birds and being attacked

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26
Q

Little Albert

A

Conditioned to fear rats and furry things
Little Albert did not initially fear rats
Every time Little Albert played with the rat, a steel bar was struck with a hammer, which startled him and made him cry
After 7 pairings, Little Albert began to cry to the rat, alone
He showed stimulus generalization, crying to rabbits/dogs/other furry things
He showed stimulus discrimination, not crying to cotton balls

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27
Q

Conditioned Taste Aversion

A
  • When eating a neutral stimulus (eating a specific food) is paired with an unconditioned response (getting ill after eating the food)
  • Usually only needs one pairing
  • Occurs only with food and nausea
  • There is often a ~6 hour gap between the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned response, yet the phenomenon still occurs (people not wanting to eat that food again, feel sick when thinking about the food)
  • Conditioned taste aversions tend to be very specific and display little evidence of stimulus generalization (can eat similar foods; only avoid that one particular dish)
  • Biological connections
    1. Don’t want to experience food poisoning repeatedly to learn to avoid a particular food item; thus we learn after only one exposure
    2. Delayed association between the conditioned stimulus (food) and unconditioned response (vomiting) is adaptive because it teaches ut to avoid dangerous foods we might have injected hours earlier
28
Q

Preparedness and Phobias

A
  • Many people have phobias of the dark/heights/spiders/snakes/blood despite not having a frightening experience with them
  • Many people do not fear knives/edges of furniture despite getting hurt with them
  • Monkeys were trained to fear snakes, toy snakes, and toy crocodiles by making them watch videos of monkeys reacting in horror to these objects
  • However, the monkeys did not develop a fear of flowers or toy rabbits when shown videos of monkeys reacting in horror to flowers/toy rabbits; perhaps because flowers and rabbits were not a threat to their ancestors
  • Biological connections
    1. Preparedness: Evolutionary predisposition to learn some pairings of feared stimuli over others, owing to their survival value
    2. Idea that we evolved to fear certain things, because they posed a threat to early human ancestors
    3. Alternative explanation to preparedness is latent inhibition (we routinely encounter knives/corners of furniture without having negative consequences, so these stimuli may be resistant to classical conditioning, unlike snakes which we do not often encounter)
    4. Genetic influences likely play a role in acquisition of certain phobias, as individuals with a dog phobia don’t differ from those without a dog phobia in their number of negative experiences with dogs; only half of people with a dog phobia have had a scary encounter with dogs
    Therefore, some people appear predisposed genetically to develop phobias given a history of certain classical conditioning experiences
29
Q

Instinctive Drift

A
  • the tendency for animals to return to innate behaviours following repeated reinforcement
  • Raccoons who were reinforced repeatedly for dropping coins into piggy banks eventually began to rinse the coins (rinsing is an innate behaviour)
  • Instinctive drift suggests that we can’t fully understand learning without taking into account innate biological influences
  • Innate biological influences place limits on what kinds of behaviours we can train through reinforcements
30
Q

Operant conditioning

A

Instrumental learning: A form or learning in which responses are controlled by their consequences
By B.F. Skinner out of Edward Thorndike
Can involve learning of new actions
Actions are voluntary

31
Q

Thorndike’s Law of effect

A

If a behavior (response) in a specific situation leads to satisfying effects, then that response is more likely to occur again in that situation

32
Q

Reinforcement

A
  • an event following a response that increases the organism’s tendency to repeat that response
    1. Positive - adding something that strengthens the response
    2. Negative - removing something that strengthens the response
33
Q

Punishment

A
  • an event following a response that decreases the organism’s tendency to repeat that response
    1. Positive - adding something to weaken response
    2. Negative - removing something to weaken response
34
Q

Discriminative stimuli

A
  • cues that influence operant behaviour by indicating the probable consequences (reinforcement) of a response
  • stimulus associated with the presence of reinforcement
35
Q

Acquisition (operant conditioning)

A

The learning phase during which an operant response is established

36
Q

Extinction (operant conditioning)

A

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a response tendency because the response is no longer followed by reinforcement

37
Q

Shaping by successive approximation

A

A process which consists of the reinforcement of closer and closer approximations of a desired response

38
Q

Resistance to extinction

A

When an organism continues to make a response after the reinforcer has been terminated
May be dependent on the schedule of reinforcement

39
Q

Two types of schedules of reinforcement

A
  1. Continual reinforcement

2. Intermittent/Partial reinforcement

40
Q

Continual reinforcement

A
  • reinforcing a behaviour every time it occurs, resulting in faster learning but faster extinction than only occasional reinforcement
41
Q

Intermittent/Partial Reinforcement

A
  1. Fixed ratio schedule
    - Reinforcement provided after a regular, set number of responses have been made
    - Eg. Every ten pizza, you get a free one
    - Low resistance to extinction
  2. Variable ratio schedule
    - Reinforcement provided after a variable number of responses, with the number randomly varying around some average
    - Higher resistance to extinction
  3. Fixed interval schedule
    - Reinforcement provided after the first response following a regular, set amount of time
    - Lower resistance to extinction
  4. Variable interval schedule
    - Reinforcement provided after the first response - following a random time interval, varying randomly around some average
    - Steady but lower rate of responding
    - Higher resistance to extinction
42
Q

Practical applications of operant conditioning

A
  1. Animal training
  2. Overcoming procrastination
  3. Therapeutic uses
43
Q

Applications of operant conditioning: Animal training

A

Animals/organisms can be trained to develop learned habits through shaping by successive approximation (see above)
Used to train animals to engage in behaviours outside their normal repertoires to perform in zoos/circuses/aquariums

44
Q

Applications of operant conditioning: Overcoming procrastination

A

Positively reinforce yourself after you complete your homework (ie. treat yourself to ice cream, watch TV)

45
Q

Applications of operant conditioning: Therapeutic uses

A
  1. Token economies: systems often set up in psychiatric hospitals for reinforcing appropriate behaviours and extinguishing inappropriate ones
    - Good behaviours are rewarded with tokens
    - Bad behaviours result in loss of tokens
    - Useful for improving behaviour in hospitals/group homes/juvenile detention units, but the behaviours do not always transfer to the real world
  2. ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis)
    - Reward autistic children with food/positive reinforcement as they reach processively closer approximations to certain words/sentences
    - Effective in improving language deficits
46
Q

Latent learning

A

something is learned, but is not manifested as a behavioral change until sometime in the future

47
Q

Tolman and Honzik’s research

A
  • 3 groups of rats running maze, one group reinforced with food, one never reinforced, one only reinforced starting day 11.
  • Until day 11, the group that was reinforced with food made the fewest errors.
  • However, the rats reinforced starting day 11 showed a large/abrupt drop in their number of errors after receiving their first reinforcer and within only a few days, their number of errors didn’t differ significantly from the number of errors among rats that were always reinforced
  • Tolman argued that the rats had been learning all along (latent learning) and had developed cognitive maps
48
Q

Cognitive maps

A

Mental representation of the physical features of the environment
Mental representation of how a physical space is organized

49
Q

Observational learning

A

when an organism’s responding is influenced by the observations of others, who are called models
learning by watching others

50
Q

Diffusion chain

A

the transmission of modeled behavior in which learners become models

51
Q

What are the basic processes of observational learning?

A

Attention
Retention
Reproduction
Motivation

52
Q

Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment

A

Kids who watch adult with aggressive behavior toward the doll are more likely to be aggressive to the doll

53
Q

Mirror neuron

A

a group of neurons in prefrontal cortex near motor cortex
Fire when seeing others perform an action and when performing the same action
Selective, and only active when see an action

54
Q

Implicit learning

A

learning that takes place largely independent of awareness of both the process and products of information acquisition
Not linked to IQ
Extends into old age
Implicit learning not impacted by amnesia
Eg. Habituation, language acquisition, and learning to walk (not purposely learning)

55
Q

Insight learning

A

Trial and error in the mind
chimps came up with a solution without trial and error
shortcoming: observations were anecdotal and unsystematic
Despite this, his work suggests that at least some smart animals can learn through insight rather than trial and error

56
Q

Classical vs Operant conditioning
Target behaviour is…
Behaviour is a function of…
Behaviour depends primarily on…

A

Classical
Elicited automatically
Stimuli that precede the behaviour
Autonomic nervous system

Operant
Emitted voluntarily
Consequences that follow the behaviour
Skeletal muscles

57
Q

Operant vs Classical conditioning

Acquisition

A

Operant response is established

Conditioned response is established

58
Q

Operant vs Classical conditioning

Extinction

A

Gradual reduction and eventual elimination of an operant response when the reinforcement is no longer presented
Gradual reduction and eventual elimination of the CR after a CS is presented repeatedly by itself

59
Q

Operant vs Classical conditioning

Spontaneous recovery

A

Reemergence of an extinguished operant response after a delay following extinction
Reemergence of an extinguished conditioned response after a delay following extinction

60
Q

Operant vs Classical conditioning

Stimulus generalization

A

The increased probability of responding in the presence of stimuli similar to the original discriminative stimulus
Elicitation of a response by stimuli similar to the original CS

61
Q

Operant vs Classical conditioning

Stimulus discrimination

A

Displaying less pronounced response to stimuli that is different from the original Sd
Displaying less pronounced response to stimuli that is different from the original CS

62
Q

Escape/avoidance learning & phobias

A
  • Operant and classical conditioning
  • Classical associated with escape
  • UCS shock, UCR fear, CS light, CR Fear
  • Operant associated with avoidance
  • Response run away
  • Aversive stimulus removed
  • Associated with perpetuating phobia.
  • acquire phobia by classical conditioning
  • avoid feared stimulus whenever they encounter it
  • when they do so, they experience a reduction in anxiety that negatively reinforces their fear
    this makes the avoidance behavior more likely and operantly conditioning cause their fear to persist
63
Q

List learning fads

A

Sleep assisted learning
Accelerated learning: SALTT
Discovery learning
Learning style

64
Q

Sleep assisted learning

A

Past studies support claim but neglect alternative explanation
No promising result when monitor to make sure subjects are asleep using EEG
Found classically conditioned response to smell during sleep
Doesn’t mean can learn more complicated facts

65
Q

SALTT

A

Superlearning or Suggestive Accelerative Learning and Teaching Techniques
Techniques to learn faster and better
Open to rival hypothesis
Positive result may be due to control condition in which student did little to nothing
Could also be placebo

66
Q

Discovery learning

A

Let students discover the answers on their own
David Klahr show direct instruction is more effective
Students who were assigned to the discovery learning were less likely to answer a slightly different problem correctly compared to students who received direct instruction
May encourage scientific thinking in the long term
Ill-advised as a stand-alone approach because many students may never figure out how to solve certain scientific problems independently

67
Q

Learning style

A

Belief that individuals have distinctive learning style or a preferred/optimal method of acquiring new information
Types of students according to learning style viewpoint:
Analytical: excel at breaking down problem into different components
Holistic: viewing problem as a whole
Verbal: prefer to talk through problems
Spatial: prefer to visualize problem in their head
Haven’t stood the test of research
Difficult to assess learning style reliability
Yield different assessment for preferred style with different measures
Certain teaching approaches (ie. setting high standards, providing them with motivation/skills to reach those standards) are more effective for learning. Specific learning style doesn’t always enhance learning

Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding (16 decks)

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