Chapter 6 -- Basic Learning and Perception

Question 1

Habituation

Answer 1

gradual decline in the intensity, frequency, or duration of a response over repeated or lengthy occurrences of the same stimulus

Question 2

Dishabituation

Answer 2

renewed response to a change in a stimulus, which indicates that the infant has detected that change

Question 3

Classical Conditioning

Answer 3

a neutral event paired with a stimulus that triggers an inborn reaction. It can begin to elicit a response similar to the one initiated by the original stimulus

Question 4

Operant Conditioning

Answer 4

the frequency of spontaneous, sometimes novel behavior changes as a result of positive and negative consequences

Question 5

Positive Reinforcement

Answer 5

occurrence of a stimulus that strengthens a preceding response. AKA a reward

Question 6

Negative Reinforcement

Answer 6

removal of an aversive stimulus, which strengthens a preceding response

Question 7

Positive Punishment

Answer 7

Occurrence of an aversive stimulus that serves to weaken or decrease the frequency of a preceding response

Question 8

Negative Punishment

Answer 8

removal or loss of a desired stimulus or reward, which weakens or decreases the frequency of a preceding response

Question 9

Deferred Imitation

Answer 9

ability to imitate a model’s behavior hours, days, and even weeks after observation

Question 10

Implicit Learning

Answer 10

learning abstract or correlated relationships among complex events without conscious awareness

Question 11

Visual Accommodation

Answer 11

visuomotor process by which small involuntary muscles change the shape of the lens of the eye so that images of objects seen at different distances are brought into focus on the retina

Question 12

Saccades

Answer 12

Rapid eye movement to inspect an object or view a stimulus in the periphery of the visual target

Question 13

Smooth Visual Pursuit

Answer 13

consistent, unbroken tracking by the eyes, which serves to maintain focus on a moving visual target

Question 14

Visual Acuity

Answer 14

ability of the eyes to rotate in opposite directions to fixate on objects at different distances; improves rapidly during first few months after birth

Question 15

Externality Effect

Answer 15

tendency for infants younger than two months to focus on the external features of a complex stimulus and explore the internal features less systematically

Question 16

Stereopsis

Answer 16

the ability to fuse the two distinct images from the eyes to perceive a single object

Question 17

Kinetic Clues

Answer 17

perceptual information provided by the movement of objects in the environment or changes in the positioning of the eyes, head, or body. Important source of information for depth perception

Question 18

Visual Cliff

Answer 18

Experimental apparatus used to test depth perception, in which the surface on one side of a glass covered table is made to appear far below the surface on the other side

Question 19

Sound Localization

Answer 19

ability to determine a sound’s point of origin

Question 20

Categorical Perception

Answer 20

inability to distinguish among sounds that vary on some basic physical dimension except when those sounds lie at opposite sides of a critical juncture point on that dimension

Question 21

Intermodal Perception

Answer 21

coordination of sensory information to perceive or make inferences about the characteristics of an object

Question 22

Perceptual Differentiation

Answer 22

process postulated by Eleanor and James Gibson in which experience contributes to the ability to make increasingly finer perceptual discriminations and to distinguish stimulation arising from each sensory modality