Hoofdstuk 8

Question 1

Learning

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Classical conditioning

Answer 2

A form in which organisms learn to predict events based on relationships between events. It is a form of reflex learning that does produce a new stimulus-response sequence.

Question 3

Reflex

Answer 3

A simple, relatively automatic, stimulus-response sequence mediated by the nervous system

Question 3

Habituation

Answer 3

A decline in the magnitude of a reflexive response when the stimulus is repeated several times in succession-> we get used to something. It does not produce a new stimulus-response sequence, but only weakens one that previously existed.

Question 3

Conditioned stimulus

Answer 3

The introduced stimulus (the bell).

Question 3

Unconditioned stimulus

Answer 3

The original stimulus (food placed in the mouth).

Question 4

Conditioned response

Answer 4

The response to the conditioned stimulus (salivation).

Question 4

Unconditioned response

Answer 4

The response to the unconditioned stimulus (salivation).

Question 5

Extinction

Answer 5

When the conditioned stimulus is presented, but the reward is not, the conditioned response decreases and eventually disappears. But extinction does not bring the animal to the fully unconditioned state. The conditioned response is not truly lost, but is somehow inhibited.

Question 6

Spontaneous recovery

Question 7

Generalization

Answer 7

When an animal after conditioning shows a conditioned response not just to the original conditioned stimulus, but also to new stimuli that resembled that stimulus. This occurs when two stimuli are physically similar to one another, but also when they are similar in their subjective meaning to that person (humans).

Question 8

Discrimination training

Answer 8

The abolishment of generalization. This happens when the response to one is reinforced while the response to the other is extinguished.

Question 9

Behaviourism

Answer 9

Avoiding terms that refer to mental entities (thoughts, emotions, motives, etc) because such entities cannot be directly observed. Focusing on the relationship between observable events in the environment (stimuli) and observable behavioural reactions to those events (responses). Learning trough past experiences with the environment.
 John B Watson: Did not deny the existence of mental processes, but he believed that these are too obscure to be studied scientifically; instead he argued that behaviour could be understood and described without reference to mental processes.

Question 10

Why were Pavlov’s findings on conditioning practically appealing to behaviourists?

Answer 10

Because this shows the relationship between past experiences and learning, through an objective stimulus-response way of studying and understanding learning.

Question 11

S-R theory (watson)

Answer 11

Conditioning produces a direct bond between the conditiond stimulus and the response.

Question 12

S-S theory (Pavlov)

Answer 12

Learning a connection between two stimuli, through classical conditioning. It proposes that a neural bond it formed between their representations in the brain, so the two stimuli (conditioned and unconditioned) get linked together in the mind of that person. An expectancy is created.
-> most evidence for this theory.

Question 13

3 conditions for conditioning

Answer 13

1. The conditioned stimulus must precede the unconditioned stimulus.
    It must precede to be able to create expectancies.
2. The conditional stimulus must signal heightened probability of occurrence of the unconditioned stimulus.
    The link between the two must be strong; when a number of stimulus occurring without pairing increases, the conditioning is weakened.
3. Conditioning is ineffective when an animal already has a good predictor.
    Blocking effect: the already-conditioned stimulus blocks conditioning to the new stimulus that has been paired with it.

Question 14

Evaluative conditioning

Answer 14

Changes in the strength of liking or disliking of a stimulus as a result of being paired with another positive or negative stimulus.

Question 15

Drug tolerance

Answer 15

The decline in physiological and behavioural effects that occur with some drugs when they are taken repeatedly.

Question 16

Why is it dangerous for a drug addict to take his or her usual drug dose in an unusual environment?

Answer 16

Because cues in the usual drug-taking environment produce a conditioned compensatory reaction that allows the addict’s body to tolerate a large doses of the drugs-> unusual environment: no cues, the full impact of the drugs kicks in before a counteractive reaction begins (can cause death or severe illness).

Question 17

Operant responses

Answer 17

Actions that are operated on the world to produce some effect.

Question 18

Operant conditioning

Answer 18

The process by which people or other animals learn to make operant responses.

Question 19

Law of effect

Answer 19

Responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation.

Question 20

Reinforcer

Answer 20

A stimulus change that follows a response and increases the subsequent frequency of that response (Skinner preferred this term instead of reward/satisfaction).

Question 21

Shaping

Answer 21

Successively closer approximations to the desired response are reinforced until the desired response finally occurs and can be reinforced.

Question 21

Conditioned reinforcers

Answer 21

Stimuli that have reinforcing value because of previous learning.

Question 22

What is one fundamental difference between Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning and Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning?

Answer 22

In operant conditioning the individual emits, a behaviour that has some effect in the environment; whereas in classical conditioning a stimulus elicits, a response form the organism.

Question 23

Fixed-ratio schedule

Answer 23

A reinforcer occurs after every nth response, where n is some whole number greater than 1.

Question 24

Variable-ratio schedule

Answer 24

A fixed-ratio schedule except that the number of responses required before reinforcement varies unpredictably around some average.

Question 25

Fixed-interval schedule

Answer 25

A fixed period of time must elapse between one reinforced response and the next. Any responses occurring before that time elapses in not reinforced.

Question 26

How do variable-ratio and variable-interval schedules produce behaviour that is highly resistant to extinction?

Answer 26

Because reinforcement often comes after a long, unpredictable period of nor reinforcement, the human/animal learned to be persistent (resistant to extinction).

Question 26

Variable-interval schedule

Answer 26

Like a fixed-interval schedule except that the period that must elapse before a response will be reinforced varies unpredictably around some average.

Question 27

Reinforcement

Answer 27

The process that increases the likelihood that a particular response will occur.

Question 28

Positive reinforcement

Answer 28

Occurs when the arrival of some stimulus following a response makes the response more likely to occur.

Question 28

Negative reinforcement

Answer 28

The removal of some stimulus following a response makes the response more likely to recur.

Question 29

Punishment

Answer 29

The opposite of reinforcement. The process trough which the consequence of a response decreases the likelihood that the response will occur.

Question 30

Positive punishment

Answer 30

The arrival of a stimulus (electric shock etc), decreasing the likelihood that the response will occur again.

Question 31

Negative punishment

Answer 31

The removal of a stimulus (taking food away etc), which decreases the likelihood that the response will occur again.

Question 32

Over justification effect

Answer 32

The reward presumably provides an unneeded extra justification for engaging in the behaviour. The result is that people come to regard the task as something that they do for external reward rather than for its own sake. When they come to regard the task as work, they stop doing it when they no longer receive payoff for it, even though they would have otherwise continued to do it for fun.

Question 33

play

Answer 33

Behaviour, engaged in apparently for its won sake, that serves no obvious immediately useful purpose.

Question 34

What is Groos’s theory about the evolutionary function of animals’ play?

Answer 34

Primary purpose of playing is to provide a means for young animals to practice their instincts- their species-typical behaviour.

Question 35

Symbolic play (fantasy)

Answer 35

An ‘’as if’’ orientation to objects, actions and other people and increases during early childhood as a result of children’s growing abilities to use symbols to represent something as other than itself.

Question 36

How does exploration differ from play in its evolutionary function?

Answer 36

Exploration learns the human/animals about (information) and playing learns to do (skill learning).

Question 37

Latent learning

Answer 37

Refers to learning that is not immediately demonstrated in the animal’s behaviour.

Question 38

Vicarious reinforcement

Answer 38

The ability to learn from the consequences of other’s actions.

Question 39

Emulation

Answer 39

Involves observing another individual achieve some goal, then receiving the same goal by their own means.

Question 40

Imprinting

Answer 40

The very sudden and apparently irreversible nature of the learning process of seeing the first person/animal as their mother. Sight and sound are involved.

Question 41

critical period

Answer 41

The first 5 days where imprinting can take place.

Question 42

Westermarck effect

Answer 42

The aversion having sex with related people. This is mostly based on growing up in the same household (also seen with adoptive children, cousins, foster siblings).
 Smell also plays a role.