Chapter 6: Learning* Flashcards
What is nonassociative learning?
A form of learning that involves a change in the magnitude of an elicited response with repetition of the elicited stimulus.
What is associative learning?
A form of learning that involves making connections between stimuli and behavioural responses.
What is habituation?
A form of nonassociative learning by which an organism becomes less responsive to repeated stimuli.
What is sensitization?
A form of nonassociative learning by which an organism becomes more responsive to a repeated.
What is dishabituation?
The recovery of a response that has undergone habituation, typically as a result of the presentation of a novel stimulus.
What is classical conditioning?
A passive form of learning by which an association is made between a reflex-eliciting stimulus (e.g. a shock) and other stimuli (e.g. a sound)
What is an unconditioned stimulus (US)?
A stimulus that produces a reflexive response without prior learning.
What is an unconditioned response (UR)?
A response that is automatically generated by an unconditioned stimulus.
What is a conditioned stimulus (CS)?
A stimulus that has no prior positive or negative association but comes to elicit a response after being associated with the unconditioned stimulus.
What is a conditioned response (CR)?
A response that occurs in the presence of a conditioned stimulus after an association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus is learned.
What are the five fundamental processes for learning, according to Pavlov?
Acquisition, generalization, discrimination, extinction, and spontaneous recovery.
What is acquisition?
The initial learning of an association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli during classical conditioning.
What is generalization?
The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus, so that learning is not tied too narrowly to a specific stimulus.
What is discrimination?
Learning to respond to a specific stimulus but not to similar stimuli, thus preventing overgeneralizations.
What is extinction?
An active learning process in which there is a weakening of the conditioned response to the conditioned stimulus in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus.
What is spontaneous recovery?
The reappearance of an extinct behaviour after a delay.
What is the residual plasticity hypothesis?
Neural networks of learning persist even after extinction, providing a residual memory trace of the association, which can lead to ‘savings’ if conditioning is reintroduced.
What is blocking?
A classical conditioning phenomenon whereby a prior association with a conditioned stimulus prevents learning of an association with another stimulus because the second one adds no further predictive value.
What part of the brain is a key feature for making emotional CS-US associations?
The amygdala. It plays a very important role in fear associations and other emotional learning.
What is preparedness (and give an example with humans)?
It is the species-specific biological predisposition to learn some associations sooner than others.
An example of human preparedness is our tendency to learn specific phobias. The most common phobias (snakes, spiders, heights) are things that would have threatened our ancestors, but hold less of a threat in modern-day society.
What is operant conditioning?
A mechanism by which our behaviour acts as an instrument or tool to change the environment and, as a result, voluntary behaviours are modified.
What is Thorndike’s law of effect?
The idea that behaviour is a function of its consequences - actions that are followed by positive outcomes are strengthened, and behaviours that are followed by negative outcomes are weakened.
What are the ABCs of operant conditioning?
Antecedent, Behaviour, and Consequence.
Antecedent: the stimulus that precedes behaviour and signals a context in which certain behaviours can lead to certain consequences.
Behaviour: self-explanatory, learning cannot influence behaviour unless the behaviour occurs.
Consequence: the stimulus after the behaviour that either increases or decreases the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated.
What are reinforcement and punishment, in terms of operant conditioning?
Reinforcement is a consequence that increases the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated.
Punishment is a consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated.
