Conditioning & Learning Flashcards
What are Instincts?
Innate behaviors triggered by a broader range of events = not learned.
- Most instincts are driven by the need to survive, either in response to environmental cues or internal signals from the organism itself.
i.e. Migration, hibernation, eating, drinking, and sleeping are examples of instinctual behaviors.
- Dog protecting its owners.
- A snake’s knowledge of how to hunt.
- Birds migrating.
- A mother responding to her distressed baby.
What are Reflexes?
motor or neural reaction to a specific stimulus.
an involuntary response that happens without conscious effort.
ex: touching a hot kettle.
Baby rooting/grasping / toe curling / moro
reflex etc.
What is Learning?
Relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.
Involves a complex interaction of conscious and unconscious processes.
The change in the learner may happen at the level of attitude, knowledge, or behavior.
Does NOT include temporary changes due to disease, fatigue, injury, maturation, or drugs, since these do NOT qualify as learning, even though they can alter behavior.
What is Associative Learning?
Occurs when an organism makes connections between stimuli or events that occur together in the environment.
A stimulus is anything that can trigger a physical or behavioral change.
Central to all three basic learning processes
Classical conditioning: Involves unconscious (automatic) processes.
Operant conditioning: Involve conscious processes. (reward / punishment)
Observational learning: Adds social and cognitive layers to all the basic associative processes.
What does reinforcement & response mean?
Reinforcement: Any event that increases the probability (chances) that a response will re-occur.
Response: Any identifiable behavior that when performed, is reinforced
What is conditioning?
Training a person / animal to respond to a stimulus in a certain way.
How?
By exposing them repeatedly to a stimulus until they behave in a desired manner.
Define NS, UCS & UR.
Neutral stimulus (NS): Stimulus that does not naturally evoke a response.
ex: bell/tuning fork
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): A stimulus innately capable of eliciting a response.
ex: see food –> salivation
Unconditioned response (UCR): An innate reflex response elicited by an unconditioned stimulus (UCS).
ex. see food — > salivation
Define CS & CR.
Conditioned stimulus (CS): A stimulus that evokes a response because it has been repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus. ex: hear bell/tuning fork —> salivation
Conditioned response (CR): A learned response elicited by a conditioned stimulus ex: hear bell/tuning fork —> salivation
What are the principles of classical conditioning?
Acquisition,
Extinction &
spontaneous recovery
Acquisition: Training period in conditioning when a response is first established and gradually strengthened (CS is paired with US and begins to elicit CR).
Extinction: Weakening of a conditioned response through the removal of reinforcement.
Spontaneous recovery: Reappearance of a learned response following apparent extinction
What do STIMULUS GENERALIZATION & STIMULUS DISCRIMINATION mean in the principles of classical conditioning?
Stimulus generalization: A tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar, but not identical, to a conditioned stimulus (e.g., responding to a buzzer when the conditioning stimulus was a bell)
Stimulus discrimination: The learned ability to respond differently to similar stimuli (e.g., Aishah will respond differently to various bells: alarms, school, timer)
What is Phobia?
Fear that persists even when no realistic danger exists (e.g., arachnophobia; fear of spiders)
What is Conditioned emotional response (CER)?
Learned emotional reaction to a previously neutral stimulus.
ex: Little Albert experiment
ex: Bitten by a cat- u will pair with the memory of it and the pain u went through
How do you fix phobias?
By Desensitization
- Decreasing fear or anxiety by exposing phobic people gradually to feared stimuli while they stay calm and relaxed.
What is Operant conditioning?
Learning is based on the consequences of responding; we associate responses with their consequences.
ex: reward /punishment
Who is the founder of the “Law of effect” and what does it say?
Founder- Thorndike
The probability of a response is altered by the effect it has:
- responses that lead to desired effects are repeated
- responses that lead to undesired effects are not repeated
