Chapter 7: Learning Flashcards
What is Classical Conditioning?
• In classical conditioning behaviour is controlled by associations:
- We learn about how things in the environment occur together, predict each other
What is Operant Conditioning?
• In operant conditioning-‐ behaviour is controlled by consequences:
- We learn about how our behaviour effects the environment…
- …or perhaps – how the environment affects our behaviour
What is learning?
• Learning is a process by which experience produces a relatively enduring change in an organism’s behaviour or capabilities. Learning is measured by changes in an organism’s responses and is a form of personal adaptation to the environment.
List some characteristics of Learning?
- A change in behaviour or behaviour potential
- A relatively consistent change
- process based on experience
Explain - A change in behaviour or behaviour potential
- Cannot ‘see’ learning per se
- Can see the results of learning:
- An improvement in performance
- Acquired general attitudes: An appreciation of modern art, an understanding of eastern philosophy
• The latter may influence how you spend leisure time
Explain - A relatively consistent change
- Consistent over different circumstances: can ride ANY bicycle
- Not necessarily permanent changes: stop practicing a skill and performance deadlines
- BUT: the skill is much more easily learned the second time, and so change may be permanent.
Explain - Process based on experience
- Learning can only take place through experience
- Experience is taking in information and making responses that affect the environment
- Learning happens when a response is influence by the lessons of memory: As apposed to being influence by maturation, illness or brain damage
Explain = Learning vs Performance
- Learning in and of itself is difficult to observe
- However leaning is a factor in performance
- Performance can be observed and measured
- Not a perfect correspondence, but the best we have
What are the two types of learning
- Associative
2. Non-‐Associative
Which Behaviours do NOT NEED LEARNING?
- Reflexes are: adaptive, unlearned (but not invariant), non-‐associative
- Habituation and Sensitization
Orienting responses: Habituation vs. Sensitization
Orienting responses:
Managing Environmental Stimulation: There is constantly masses of it…What is important-‐ what is not?
- Habituation: Response to stimuli decreases with frequent presentation
- Sensitization: Response to stimuli increases with frequent presentation
Define and explain HABITUATION:
• Habituation is a decrease in the strength of a response to a repeated stimulus. It allows organisms to attend to other stimuli that are more important.
• “A decline in responding to repeated presentations of a stimulus” (Bond & McConkey, 2001, p 4) - Busy roads, railways and sleep • Fits the definition of learning • Not merely fatigue - Test for dishabituation
- Example: Startle to a 1kHz tone is initially large and declines over time, but spikes when a flash of light is applied, showing the decrease in response is not due to fatigue
- Testing flavors: steadily decreases for the first 10 drops, flavor changes – dramatic spike
SOLOM AND CORBIT (1974) OPPONENT PROCESS THEORY:
- Whenever an A process is recruited, so too is a B process, which is opposite to the effects of A
- A process = being in love
- B process= not being in love; takes a while to turn off and a while to turn off
- Current state is the sum of the two processes:
- The B process grows with repeated presentations, The A state gets progressively smaller (every relationship you have and the B process gets bigger)
- The person eating the chips more regularly had a higher rate of craving;
Explain “opponent process theory of colour visions”
- We perceive colour as red or green, blue or yellow
- After-‐images appear in complementary colours: E.g. red images after exposure to green
- Evidence: thalamic and retinal ganglion cells that respond to red are inhibited by green.
Explain Sensitisation:
- Increased responsiveness with repeated stimulation
- Generally with stronger/important stimuli
- Generally relatively short lived
- Cyclone survivors sometimes sensitized to weather sounds (e.g. living in Queensland lots of cyclones)
Explain in Summary what learning is
- Learning is: an enduring change in behaviour potential
- Learning is not: temporary states, maturation or physical modification
- Learning allows: flexible adaptation to environmental demands:
- Different forms: habituation/Sensitization, classical conditioning, operant learning, vicarious learning
Classical Conditioning and definitions - Classical Conditioning
- Classical conditioning involves pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that elicits an unconditioned response (UCR).
- Through pairing the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) that evokes a conditioned response (CR) similar to the original UCR.
Classical Conditioning and definitions - Acquisition
• Acquisition involves CS-‐UCS pairings. Extinction represents the disappearance of the CR when the CS is presented repeatedly without the UCS.
Classical Conditioning and definitions - Extinction
• Extinction: is a process, which the CS is presented repeatedly in the absence of the UCS, causing the CR to weaken and eventually disappear
Classical Conditioning and definitions - Spontaneous recovery
• After Extinction spontaneous recovery of the CR may occur when the CS is presented after a rest period and without any new learning trials.
Classical Conditioning and definitions - Stimulus Generalisation
• Stimulus generalization occurs when a CR is elicited by a stimulus similar to the original CS.
Classical Conditioning and definitions - Discrimination
- Discrimination occurs when a CR occurs to one stimulus but not another.
- In higher-‐order conditioning, once a stimulus (e.g. a tone) becomes a CS, it can be used in place of the original UCS (food) to condition other neutral stimuli
Examples of CLASSICAL CONDITIONING PRACTICALITY - exposure Therapy, Systematic Desensitisation, Flooding, Eversion Therapy.
- Bodily and psychological responses can be classically conditioned, including fears, sexual attraction, positive and negative attitudes, nausea and immune system responses.
- Techniques based on classical conditioning are highly successful in treating phobias.
- Exposure therapies: in which a patient is exposed to a stimulus (CS) that arouses an anxiety response (such as fear) without the presence of the UCS, allowing extinction to occur. (treatment of phobias)
- Systematic desensitisation: the patient learns muscle relaxation techniques and is gradually exposed to the fear-‐provoking stimulus.
- Flooding: immediately exposes the person to the phobic stimulus.
- Eversion Therapy: which attempts to condition an aversion (an repulsion) to a stimulus that triggers unwanted behaviour, by pairing it with a noxious UCS (e.g. treating pedophiles with pictures of children and an electric shock)
Classical Conditioning in Sickness and Health = ALLERGIC REACTIONS
• Allergic Reactions: classical conditioning can often account for the appearance of physical symptoms that do not seem to have a medical cause. (e.g. by consistently pairing a neutral stimulus (distinctive odour) with a substance that naturally triggers an allergic reaction, the neutral stimulus can become a CS that elicits a similar allergic response.
Classical Conditioning in Sickness and Health = Anticipatory nausea and vomiting
• Anticipatory nausea and vomiting: Initially neutral stimuli, such as hypodermic needles, the hospital room become associated with the treatment (the UCS) and acts as conditioned stimuli that trigger nausea and vomiting.
Classical Conditioning in Sickness and Health = THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
• The immune system: After being paired with an immunosuppressant drug (UCS), sweet water(neutral stimulus) becomes a CD that triggers a reduced immune response.
Who is Ivan Pavlov?
Ivan Pavlov (1849-‐1936)
- Russian Physiologist and Nobel Prize Winner
- Original interest in animal digestion
- Best known for his work on classical conditioning
Explain Pavlovs Dogs
- The dogs started to salivate prior to the food being delivered, due to the meat powder
- Neutral Stimulus: stimulus that elicits no response
- Unconditioned response/stimulus: a response/stimulus that is automatic
Explain ACQUISTION OF PAVLOV’S DOGS
Acquisition: the period during which a condition is being learned.
- Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): stimulates an unconditioned response; the meat
- Unconditioned response (UCR): salivation to the meat
- Conditioned stimulus (CS): stimulates a conditioned stimulus; the bell
- Conditioned response (CR): salivation to the bell
- Pavlov found greater salivation occurred with acquisition trials (increased slope) v extinction trials (decreased slope)
Possibilities after conditioning:
• Extinction:
- Acquired behaviour
- Not really gone – just suppressed
• Reconditioning:
- Relearning acquired behaviour is faster than original conditioning
• Spontaneous recovery:
- Extinguished behaviour suddenly reappears
Official Definition of Classical CONDITIONING
• “The pairing, in some fixed temporary relationship, of a neutral stimulus (to be conditioned stimulus) with a stimulus (unconditioned stimulus) capable of regularly and reliably eliciting a response (unconditioned response) [leading to a conditioned response]” (after Bond &McConkey 2011, 4.7)
What is Temporary Association (contingency) between stimuli
• Is a central factor in classical conditioning
