L15 - Learning

Question 1

What is habituation?

Answer 1

When animals stop responding to repeated stimuli

Question 2

Name and describe the other phenomena often gets confused with habituation

Answer 2

Adaptation - when an animal adapts to its surroundings eg walking into dark room, eye acuity improves after time

Question 3

Which animal has been important in study of habituation? And how?

Answer 3

Aplysia - exhibits a reflexive withdrawal of its gill and siphon in response to tactile stimulation of its skin

Question 4

Explain the habituation shown in aplasia regarding synaptic changes

Answer 4

There are less effective Ca2+ channels in the synapse which leads to decreased neurotransmitter release therefore decreased firing rate

Question 5

What is sensitisation?

Answer 5

When an animal’s response becomes amplified upon repetition of the stimulus

Question 6

What is an example of sensitisation in rats?

Answer 6

After giving birth mothers show new behaviours which were not seen before e.g the latency to picking up a pup decreases dramatically

Question 7

What is the decrease in the latency of a mother rat picking up a pup due to?

Answer 7

Response to smell of pup

Question 8

What is learning?

Answer 8

The strengthening of a synapse

Question 9

What is an engram?

Answer 9

The physical basis of memory, patterns of synapses

Question 10

What does the dunce mutation do? (regarding drosophila)

Answer 10

Affects learning and memory in odour/shock experiment

Question 11

Where are the olfactory memories in insect brain stored?

Answer 11

Mushroom bodies

Question 12

What happened when the male blue gourami were conditioned to the arrival of gravid (pregnant) females?

Answer 12

There is an increase in fitness
- bite females less
- build nests more
- spawn quicker
- produce more offspring

Question 13

What does predator learning lead to?

Answer 13

Aposematic colouration in prey, mimicry

Question 14

How does the Bombardier beetle to threat?

Answer 14

Releases a chemical which leads to predators spitting it out if eaten

Question 15

What is one-trial learning?

Answer 15

When learning occurs after just experiencing something once

Question 16

With taste, sound, shock, nausea which kinds of learning (connections) have been encouraged?

Answer 16

Taste and nausea
Sound and shock

Question 17

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 17

When an action leads to a punishment or reward

Question 18

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 18

A learning process which occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired

Question 19

Give an example of operant conditioning with blue tits

Answer 19

They learnt to open milk bottles which were left on the doorstop to get the cream, this spread through the population via social learning

Question 20

Give an example of social learning in honeybees

Answer 20

Bees had to perform a task to earn food:
- performed at 99% when a bee demonstrated task before
- performed at 78% when a magnet demonstrated the task before
- performed at 34% when no demonstration was given

Question 21

Give an example of social learning in Japanese macaques. And what was interesting about this?

Answer 21

Macaques learned to wash the sweet potatoes on the sand in the sea - however only younger animals learnt

Question 22

What is insight learning?

Answer 22

When an animal learns the answer to a problem when they have not seen or heard the answer before

Question 23

Give an example of insight learning

Answer 23

Sultan (name of chimpanzee) tied two sticks together to reach food

Question 24

What is the learning ability of an animal based on?

Answer 24

The context of the task it is trying to learn