L15 - Learning Flashcards
What is habituation?
When animals stop responding to repeated stimuli
Name and describe the other phenomena often gets confused with habituation
Adaptation - when an animal adapts to its surroundings eg walking into dark room, eye acuity improves after time
Which animal has been important in study of habituation? And how?
Aplysia - exhibits a reflexive withdrawal of its gill and siphon in response to tactile stimulation of its skin
Explain the habituation shown in aplasia regarding synaptic changes
There are less effective Ca2+ channels in the synapse which leads to decreased neurotransmitter release therefore decreased firing rate
What is sensitisation?
When an animal’s response becomes amplified upon repetition of the stimulus
What is an example of sensitisation in rats?
After giving birth mothers show new behaviours which were not seen before e.g the latency to picking up a pup decreases dramatically
What is the decrease in the latency of a mother rat picking up a pup due to?
Response to smell of pup
What is learning?
The strengthening of a synapse
What is an engram?
The physical basis of memory, patterns of synapses
What does the dunce mutation do? (regarding drosophila)
Affects learning and memory in odour/shock experiment
Where are the olfactory memories in insect brain stored?
Mushroom bodies
What happened when the male blue gourami were conditioned to the arrival of gravid (pregnant) females?
There is an increase in fitness
- bite females less
- build nests more
- spawn quicker
- produce more offspring
What does predator learning lead to?
Aposematic colouration in prey, mimicry
How does the Bombardier beetle to threat?
Releases a chemical which leads to predators spitting it out if eaten
What is one-trial learning?
When learning occurs after just experiencing something once
With taste, sound, shock, nausea which kinds of learning (connections) have been encouraged?
Taste and nausea
Sound and shock
What is operant conditioning?
When an action leads to a punishment or reward
What is classical conditioning?
A learning process which occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired
Give an example of operant conditioning with blue tits
They learnt to open milk bottles which were left on the doorstop to get the cream, this spread through the population via social learning
Give an example of social learning in honeybees
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
Give an example of social learning in Japanese macaques. And what was interesting about this?
Macaques learned to wash the sweet potatoes on the sand in the sea - however only younger animals learnt
What is insight learning?
When an animal learns the answer to a problem when they have not seen or heard the answer before
Give an example of insight learning
Sultan (name of chimpanzee) tied two sticks together to reach food
What is the learning ability of an animal based on?
The context of the task it is trying to learn
