Chapter 7: Learning Flashcards
The process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information or behaviours.
Learning
Learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning).
Associative Learning
Any event or situation that evokes a response.
Stimulus
Behaviour that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.
Respondent Behaviour
Behaviour that operates on the environment, producing a consequence.
Operant Behaviour
The acquisition of mental information, weather by observing events, watching others, or through language.
Cognitive Learning
A type of learning in which we link two or more stimuli; as a result, the first stimulus comes to elicit behaviour in anticipation of the second stimulus (ex. Pavlov’s dogs).
Classical Conditioning
The view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behaviour without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).
Behaviourism
In classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.
Neutral Stimulus
In classical conditioning, an unlearned, naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus.
Unconditioned Response
In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers an unconditioned response.
Unconditioned Stimulus
In classical conditioning, a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.
Conditioned Response
In classical conditioning, an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.
Conditioned Stimulus
In classical conditioning, the initial stage—when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response (in operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response).
Acquisition
A procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus.
High-order Conditioning
The diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus; occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer enforced.
Extinction
The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.
Spontaneous Recovery
In classical conditioning, the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimulus similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses. (In operant conditioning, generalisation occurs when responses learned in one situation occur in other, similar situations.)
Generalisation
In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. (In operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced.)
Discrimination
A type of learning in which a behaviour becomes more likely to recur if followed by a reinforcer, or less likely to occur if followed by a punisher.
Operant Conditioning
Thorndike’s principle that behaviours followed by favourable consequences becomes more likely, and that behaviours followed by unfavourable consequences become less likely.
Law of Effect
In operant conditioning research, a chamber containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer, attached devices record the animal’s rate of bar pressing or key pecking.
Operant Chamber
In operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behaviour that follows.
Reinforcement
An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behaviour toward closer and closer approximation of the desired behaviour.
Shaping
Increasing behaviours by presenting a pleasurable stimulus. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.
Positive Reinforcement
Increasing behaviours by stopping or reducing an aversive stimulus. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response.
Negative Reinforcement
An innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need.
Primary Reinforcer
A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer.
Conditioned Reinforcer
A pattern that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced.
Reinforcement Schedule
Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.
Continuous Reinforcement Schedule
Reinforcing a response only part of the time; results in much slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement.
Intermittent Reinforcement Schedule
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.
Fixed-ratio Schedule
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.
Variable-ratio Schedule
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed.
Fixed-interval Schedule
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.
Variable-interval Schedule
An event that tends to decrease the behaviour that it follows.
Punishment
A biological predisposition to learn associations, such as between taste and nausea, that has survival value.
Preparedness
The tendency of a learned behaviour to gradually revert to biologically predisposed patterns.
Instinctive Drift
A mental representation of the layout of one’s environment.
Cognitive Map
Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.
Latent Learning
Learning by observing others.
Observational Learning
The process of observing and imitating a specific behaviour.
Modelling
Frontal lobe neurons that some scientists believe fire when we perform certain actions or observe another doing so. The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy.
Mirror Neurons
Positive, constructive, helpful behaviours. The opposite of antisocial behaviour.
Prosocial Behaviour
