Chapter 7: Learning Flashcards
What isn’t learning?
Things that just happen. Motor or neural reactions to stimuli in the environment typically involving a specific body part or system. Inate behaviours that can be triggered/facilitated by our environment.
Ex: Pupil constriction in ligh (sensory adaptation)
Reflexes and Instincts
Allows for adaptation to ones environment
A lasting change caused by experience, study, or practice. It has to be inferred from behaviour.
Learning
Learning that does not involve forming associations between stimuli; it is a change resulting from experiences with a single sensory cue.
Non-Associative Learning
A change as a result of experience where two or more stimuli become linked.
Getting sick while eating sour cream at the beach, never eating sour cream again, even though it was the heat that made you sick.
Associative Learning
Category of Non-Associative Learning
Repeated presentation of a stimulus leads to a reduction in response (learned ignoring).
Habituation
Full strength recovery of the habituated response.
“Ba, ba, ba” - “Ba, ba, ba, ha, ba”
Dishabituation
Category of Non-Associative Learning
A strong stimulus results in an exaggerated response to the subsequent presentation of a weaker stimuli.
Ex: watching a scary movie; every creek in the house now feels threatening: exaaggerated response
Sensitization
Associative Learning Paradigm
Two previously unrelated stimuli are now associated and results in a learned response. Same response to different stimuli. Cat comes running when can gets opened; association with being fed.
-Pavlovian
-Two things are paired enough together that our brain thinks they belong together
Classical Conditioning
Associative Learning Paradigm
Response based on what will follow.
-Positive reinforcement
Operant Conditioning
Response based on observations of others. What happened to that other person, do I want that to happen to me. Also referred to as Vicarious Learning
- BoBo Doll experiment
Observational Learning (Modelling)
An automatic involuntary response that typically occurs without learning (“hard wired”).
Natural Reflex
Stimulus that causes the reflexive response (food).
-Exists in nature
Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
The reflexive response; does not need to be learned (salivation)
Unconditioned Response (UR)
A neutral stimulus that eventually ellicits the same response as the unconditioned stimulus (bell)
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
The response elicted by a conditioned stimulus; usually the same as the unconditioned response, but has been learned. (salivation)
Conditioned Response (CR)
When previously conditioned stimulus functions as if it were an unconditioned stimulus for further conditioning.
Pavlovs dogs: Lab assistants were the conditioned stimulus, say a bell was paired with the lab assistants, now the bell is the conditioned stimulus 2 and can ellicit the conditioned response.
Higher-Order Conditioning
The initial learning of the stimulus-response relationship; the most rapid acquisiton followed by the strongest response is a hlaf minute delay between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus.
-Frequency and timing of pairing (liklihood decreases> 30 sec apart)
Acquisition
-30 seconds or less is what we want when a stimulus is being paired with something else.
A previously neutral stimulus (often an odour or taste) elicits an aversive reaction after its paired with illness (nausea). Can result from a single pairing and up to 12 hours after consumption.
-Eat sushi, drink too much and get sick, never eat sushi again.
Conditioned Taste Aversions
-Some are more susceptible than others (pregnant women and those undergoing chemotherapy)
-When it comes to food aversions, highly adaptive for species to make these connections even over a long period of time.
Rats were given specific foods and nausea was induced by injection or radiation poisoning :(. Rats rapidly learned the association between the pair.
The Garcia Effect
-We are biologically prepared for food aversions, its an adaptive trait.
-Some animals use smell or taste, but others such as birds use visual cues.
Reduction of a conditioned response after repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus alone. (reduction in salivation when the bell is rung but no food shows up)
Extinction
-If dogs continued to hear the bell but didnt get food, the dogs will no longer connect the two; extinction
Re-emergence of the conditioned response sometimes as extinction has occured.
Spontaneous Recovery
What happens when the stimuli is similar to the original conditioned stimuli, trigger the same conditioned response. (the dogs responded to every research assistant). When at play, we know higher order conditioning is happening.
Stimulus Generalization
-Generalization about similar stimuli: cottage cheese- sour cream
