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.