H8 Basic processes of learning

Question 1

Definition learning

Answer 1

Any process through which experience at one time can alter an invidivual’s behavior at a future time.

Question 2

What is the classical conditioning procedure?

Is it a reflex or not?

Answer 2

At its most basic, classical conditioning is a learning process that creates new reflexes.

1. Unconditioned response (e.g. food > salivation)
2. A neutral stimulus (e.g. sound) is presented just before the unconditioned stimulus (e.g. food)
3. After sufficient pairings, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus, which by itself elicits a responce (e.g. sound > salivation)

Question 3

What is extinction in classical conditioning?
Is it permanent?
What does this mean, neuroscientifically?

Answer 3

If a CS is repetedly presented without the US the CR stops.
No, CR is not unlearned, merely suppresed as shown by spontaneous recovery due to the mere passage of time + a single pairing can renew the CR.
Conditioning and extinction apparently involve different sets of neurons: one promoting CR and the othe inhibiting it.

Question 4

What are generalization and discrimination in classical conditioning?
Can it be based on meaning?

Answer 4

Generalization: when a stimulus similar to CS elicits CR. Can be based on meaning (e.g. words similar in meaning elicited CR more than words that were physically similar).
Discrimination: reduced generalization. Repeatedly presenting US followed by CS, and the similar stimulus followed by nothing

Question 5

What is learned in classical conditioning?

Explain S-R theory and S-S theory

Answer 5

S-R theory: early behaviorists, link between CS and response learned
S-S theory: link between CS and US is learned. This implies expectancy and is supported by Rescorla’s experiment: when habituating subject to US the subject will not provide a CR to CS anymore. Consistent with the expectancy idea, conditioning occurs best when the CS is a reliable predictor of the US.

Question 6

What is the appetizer effect?

Answer 6

Conditioning of hunger.

Anything indicating the coming of food prepares the body for food (digestion).

Question 7

What is evaluative conditioning?

Answer 7

Changes in strength of liking or disliking of a stimulus as a result of being paired with another positive or negative stimulus (e.g. marketing: beautiful people with product)

Question 8

What do conditioned sitmuli prepare individuals for, in general?

Answer 8

Biologically significant events

Question 9

What 2 distinctions can be made when it comes to conditioned drug reactions?

Answer 9

1. With some drugs, repeated pairing with a conditioned stimulus causes that stimulus to elicit the same type of response as the drug
2. With some drugs, the CS elicits a response that is opposite to the drug response. Such conditioned compensatory reactions contribute to the drug tolerance and drug relapse. Because only responses that occur in a reflexive manner involving the CNS can be conditioned.

Drug tolerance: partly phsyiological, partly: cues in environment become CS > countereffect on direct effect of drug; therefore dangerous for drug addict to take usual drug in unusual environment.

Question 10

What are the 3 conditions in which the pairing of a new stimulus with an US does result in classical conditioning?

Answer 10

1. CS must precede US
2. CS must signal heightened probability of occurence of US
3. Conditioning is ineffective when animal already has a good predictor (blocking effect)

Question 11

How has sexual arousal been conditioned in humans and other animals?

Answer 11

CS that pedict copulation prepare the body for copulation. Research has shown that this conditioning increases number of offspring.

Question 12

Wat is operant response?
What is the law of effect?
What is a refinforcer?
Can operant conditioning occur without awarenesss?

Answer 12

An operant response is an action that produces an effect. Nonreflexive in contrast to classical conditioning.
Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments (animal goes outside the box in contrast to skinne’s box) led him to postulate the law of effect: behavior that leads to desirable effects are more likely to occur again in the future in the same situation.
Skinner defined reinforcer as a stimulus change that follow an operant esponse and increase the frequency of that response
Yes

Question 13

1. When does shaping occur in operant conditioning? When is it used?
2. And what is extinction? Is it unlearning?
3. What does punishment do to the response rate vs reinforcement? And can they both be positive and negative? And what does this mean?

Answer 13

1. When successive approximations to the desired response are reinforced. Is used when the desired response never occurs naturally.
2. Decline in response rate that occurs when an operant response is no longer reinforced. Just like with classical conditioning it is not unlearning.
3. Reinforcement increases response rate, while punishment decreases response rate. Yes, both can be positive and negative. Positive: arrival of a stimulus following a response makes the response more likely to occur. Negative: removal of stimulus following a response makes response more likely to occur

Question 14

What is discrimination training in operant conditioning?
Does generalization happen in operant conditioning?
What are discrimination and generalization used for?

Answer 14

If reinforcement is available only when a specific stimulus is present, that stimulus becomes a distriminative stimulus. Subjects learn to respond only when it is present.
Yes, Learners generalize to stimuli that they perceive as similar to the discriminative stimulus but can be trained to discriminate.
Used to identify concepts a subject has learned.

Question 15

What is the overjustification effect in operant conditioning?
What is its effect on previously reinforced behavior?

Answer 15

Previously reinforced behavior declines because the reward presumably provides an unneeded extra justification for engaging in the behavior. Especially happens when the task was initially enjoyed for its own sake.

Question 16

Does behavior analysis use skinner’s principle of operant conditioning?
For which disorders esp?

Answer 16

Yes, esp. with people with intellectual impairment (tokens) and autism. Reinforcer is used to modify behavior.

Question 17

What partial and continuus reinforcement in operant conditioning?
What are 4 types of partial reinforcement schedules?
How do variable-ratio and variable-interval schedules produce behavior that is highly resistant to extinction?

Answer 17

Sometimes a reinforcers vs always. Continuus is best for initial training.

1. Fixed-ratio: reinforcer occurs every nth time
2. Variable-ratio: reinforcer occurs on average every nth time
3. Fixed interval: reinforcer occurs e.g. every 30 sec
4. Variable interval: reinforcer occurs on average every e.g. 30 sec

Animals have learned to be persistant.

Question 18

In what species is play most frequent?

Answer 18

Species that have most to learn.

Question 19

Do human children only play at skills that are crucial to people everywhere, or also at unique skills that are crucal to their cultue?

Answer 19

Also at unique cultural skills.

Question 20

What does symbolic play promote in children?

Answer 20

Development of language, perspective taking and executive function abilities

Question 21

What is exploration compared to play? Which one is more primitive?
By what drives is it motivated and inhibited by?

Answer 21

Exploration is more primitive. Play = learning to do. Exploration = learning about the environment. Occurs in more species and across ages.
Curiosity and fear.

Question 22

What does exploration alone without external reward produce?

Answer 22

Useful knowledge

Question 23

What does Albert Bandura’s social learning theory emphasize?

Answer 23

Role of vicarious reinforcement in social learning: ability to learn from consequences of others’ actions.

Question 24

What are stimulus enhancement, goal enhancement and emulation compared to imitation?

Answer 24

Simpler forms of observational learning

Question 25

What is the most sophisticated form of social learning?

Answer 25

Teaching. Rare in other animals.

Question 26

What is Groos’s theory about the evolutionary function of animals’ play, and what are five lines of evidence supporting that theory?

Answer 26

Animals are born with certain instincts and drives. Play helps them to refine those.

1. Young play more than elders
2. Play is challenging
3. Play involves a lot of repitition
4. The content of play is in line with what they need to learn
5. The more a mammal needs to learn, the more it plays

Question 27

What is latent learning?

Answer 27

Learning that is not immediately demonstrated in the animal’s behavior.

Question 28

How does food-avoidance learning differ (2x) from classical conditioning?

Answer 28

Rats and people avoid foods that they had eaten some minutes or hours before becoming ill.

1. Optimal delay between CS and US
2. The CS must be a distinctive taste or smell (chemical quality counts, not how the food looks).

Question 29

Does the observation of what othes eat influence food choice differently in rats than in people?

Answer 29

Yes.
Rats: sniff at mouths of rats that have recently eaten
Humans: what mother ate during pregnancy. What they have seen others eat

Question 30

Can taste preferences be acquired before birth?

Answer 30

Yes

Question 31

What is imprinting on mother in ducklings and goslings?

How can it be that Ducklings will appraoch the maternal call of their species shortly after hatching?

Answer 31

They follow the first moving object they see within a critical period and continue to follow it
Ducklings will appraoch the maternal call of their species shortly after hatching, and auditory experience while still in the egg is critical for this adaptive behavior to develop.

Question 32

What is sexual imprinting?

Answer 32

Process by which some animals mate preferences as adults are influenced by their early rearing experience.

Question 33

What is the westermarck effect?

Answer 33

Incest aversion in humans is related to early cohabitation.

Question 34

In sum, what has natural selection imparted to young omnivores about food selection?

Answer 34

1. WHen possible, eat what elders eat
2. When you eat a new food, remember its taste and smell. If the food is followed within a few hours by feelings of improved health, continue to eat it, if you feel sick, avoid it.

Question 35

What is some evidence that people and monkeys are biologically predisposed to learn to fear some things more easily than other things?

Answer 35

Because when you try to make someone fearful to a cloth (CS) by combining it with a loud noise (UC) it does not work.

Question 36

De principes van operante conditionering zijn oorspronkelijk gebaseerd op de ‘Law of effect’ van Thorndike. Toen Skinner veertig jaar later onderzoek deed naar de houdbaarheid van deze wet, verving hij een aantal specifieke termen. Welke woorden verving hij, en waarom deed hij dat?

Answer 36

Skinner (1938) verving in deze formulering de woorden ‘bevredigend’ en ‘onaangenaam’ en verving ze door ‘bekrachtigd’ en ‘bestraft’. Hij sprak dus niet over gedrag dat tot een bevredigend of onaangenaam resultaat leidde, maar over gedrag dat bekrachtigd of bestraft wordt. Dit deed hij omdat hij, geheel in lijn met de uitgangspunten van Watsons (1913) behaviorisme, uitsluitend wilde verwijzen naar observeerbare zaken. Gevoelens van bevrediging of ongemak spelen zich af in de ervaring van het individu en zijn dus niet observeerbaar, terwijl bekrachtiging en bestraffing van gedrag observeerbare handelingen zijn.

Question 37

Name 4 types of specialized learning

Answer 37

1. Choosing food
2. Objects of fear
3. Imprinting on mother
4. Specialized imprinting and the westermarck effect