Experience & behavioural development Flashcards
Development
Innate + Learned = development
Experience
An experience is a change in the brain that results from information acquired from outside the brain
This information can originate in the environment or within the body:
e.g. sensory input, low oxygen availability or change in hormone concentration
Learning
Experience + behavioural change = learning
Learning is a change in the brain which results in behaviour being modified for longer than a few seconds as a consequence of information acquired from outside the brain
Stimulus perception (development)
Without the ability to perceive stimuli, animals cannot respond, therefore cannot experience, learn or develop
Learning mechanisms
Involves brain mechanisms that perform very complex processes enabling:
- Awareness of what is occurring now (perception)
- Memory of what occurred in the past (recent or distant)
- Prediction of what is likely to occur (future)
Pre-disposition to learn
Animals are much more likely to learn to associate some cues with an action or another cue better than others
Develop as a consequence of genetic and environmental factors
E.g. rats learned to show an avoidance reaction to an aversive stimulus e.g. electric shock –> they learnt this faster than responding to a signal indicating imminent food arrival by pressing a lever
Rate of learning is probably associated with relevance for survival
Imprinting
Occurs at a critical sensitive period during early post-natal life
Dominant sense involved is vision
More important in precocial than altricial species
Irreversible
Some behaviours are more affected by imprinting than others (not all behaviours are affected)
Imprinting can lead to differences in an animals predisposition to learn
Two major categories of learning
- Non-associative learning - response to a single stimulus
e. g. habituation or sensitisation - Associative learning - a relationship between at least two stimuli
e. g. Classical conditioning or operant conditioning
Habituation
The waning of a response to a repeated stimulus
If the stimulus is not relevant, then a response is not required
evolutionary adaptation to save wasting energy on repeated responses to trivial stimuli
E.g. seagulls at the beach not afraid of people
Sensitisation
Increase in the probability of a response resulting from repeated presentation of a biologically significant stimulus
If the stimulus is relevant an appropriate response will be advantageous to survival
Classical conditioning
When an animal learns to associate one stimulus with another, a conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus. Through repeated presentation of the conditioned stimulus in a certain relationship with an unconditioned stimulus that originally elicits a response.
E.g. Pavlov’s dogs or electric fence or virtual fence
Trial and error learning
Reward is used to strengthen (or reinforce) the correct response.
The animal sees a cue (the trigger)
Performance a response
Gets a reward
The process in which a reinforcer follows a particular behaviour so that the frequency that behaviour is performed increases.
Operant conditioning - define
Enables an animal to associate events over which it has control
This increases the controllability of the environment and represents the crucial difference between classical and operant conditioning.
In classical conditioning, rewards become associated with stimuli while in operant conditioning they become associated with responses
Most animal training involves some classical conditioning but mainly relies on operant conditioning
Operant conditioning - example
Skinner box - subject learns by trial and error that bar/lever press = food
Learning depends upon the strengthening of the response by reinforcing the stimulus (in this example the presentation of food)
An operant response is a voluntary activity that brings about a reward
