Learning Flashcards
What is learning?
The process by which experience produces a relatively enduring and adaptive change in an organism’s capacity for behaviour
How is learning adaptive?
It allows organisms to predict what will happen next and to behave accordingly
What three things must each organism learn?
Which events are or are not important to survival and wellbeing
Which stimuli indicate that something important is about to happen
Whether it’s responses will produce positive or negative consequences
How does behaviourism describe learning?
The effect of environmental inputs on behavioural outputs
What are the three behaviourist theories of learning?
Habituation and Sensitisation
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
What is habituation?
A decrease in the response to a repeated stimulus
How is habituation adaptive?
It means organisms learn not to waste energy responding to irrelevant stimuli
What is sensitisation?
An increase in the response to a repeated stimulus
How is sensitisation adaptive?
It helps organisms respond appropriately when a stimulus is likely to be dangerous or threatening
What is classical conditoning?
A form of learning in which one stimulus is associated with another and comes to elicit the same response as that stimulus
What is the most famous illustration of classical conditioning?
Pavlov’s dogs
What was the unconditioned stimulus in Pavlov’s study?
The food
What was the unconditioned response in Pavlov’s study?
Salivation
What was the neutral (then later conditioned) stimulus in Pavlov’s study?
The tone
What was the conditioned response in Pavlov’s study?
Salivation
Why are the unconditioned stimulus and response unconditioned?
Because there is a pre-existing, reflective association between them
What is the difference between the unconditioned and conditioned response?
The conditioned response is dependent on the learned CS-UCS association
Give two examples of human classical conditioning:
Learning that certain flavours predict sickness
Learning that certain sights or sounds predict pain
Which temporal sequence produces the most effective classical conditioning?
Forward pairing, then simultaneous parking, then backward pairing
What is forward pairing?
Where the conditioned stimulus precedes the unconditioned stimulus
What are the two types of forward pairing?
Forward short-delay pairing
Forward trace pairing
What is forward short-delay pairing?
The conditioned stimulus appears and remains present when the unconditioned stimulus arrives
What is forward trace pairing?
The conditioned stimulus appears and then disappears before the unconditioned stimulus arrives
Which is more effective, forward short-delay pairing or forward trace pairing?
Forward short-delay pairing
What are the four characteristics that make classical conditioning most effective?
There are repeated CS-UCS pairings
The UCS is more intense
The sequence involves forward pairing
The time interval between CS and UCS is short
When is maintenance of classical conditioning best?
When there are occasional CS-UCS pairings after the initial learning period
What is extinction?
The process of presenting a conditioned stimulus without the accompanying unconditioned stimulus, meaning that over repeated trials, the conditioned stimulus loses the ability to produce the conditioned response
How is extinction adaptive?
It is a waste of energy to produce the conditioned response if the unconditioned stimulus is not going to appear
What is spontaneous recovery from extinction?
When there has been a delay between extinction trials, the subsequent re-presentation of the conditioned stimulus elicits the conditioned response again, however, the response is weaker than when originally learned
What does spontaneous recovery imply?
That extinction involved inhibiting the conditioned response rather than unlearning it
What is generalisation?
When stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus also elicit the conditioned response
What is discrimination?
Learning to produce a conditioned response to the conditioned stimulus but not to other stimuli which do not signal the arrival of the unconditioned stimulus, even if they are similar to the conditioned stimulus
How is discrimination adaptive?
It avoids wasting energy producing responses when the unconditioned stimulus is not likely to appear
What is higher-order conditioning (or second-order conditioning)?
First, the organism learns a CS-UCS pairing so that the conditioned stimulus elicits a conditioned response. A new conditioned stimulus is then repeatedly paired with the original conditioned stimulus, meaning that subsequently, the new conditioned stimulus produced the same conditioned response as the original one
What is different about the response elicited by higher-order conditioning?
It is usually weaker and more readily extinguished
What are exposure therapies?
Therapies seeking to extinguish learned associations
How do exposure therapies work?
Patients with phobias are exposed to the feared stimulus in the absence of an unconditioned stimulus, such that extinction occurs
What is aversion therapy?
A controversial “treatment” that attempts to instil an aversion to a stimulus by pairing it with an unpleasant unconditioned stimulus
How can classical conditioning affect medical treatments?
Chemotherapy treatments may show anticipatory nausea and vomiting at the sight of the treatment room
How else can classical conditioning be applied?
Influencing attitudes to products
What is operant conditioning?
It involved learning associations between actions and outcomes
What is a famous illustration of operant conditioning?
Thorndike’s study
What happened in Thorndike’s study?
Animals learnt to escape from a box by pressing a lever - initially they responded at random but over successive trials they learnt to press the lever straight away
What is Thorndike’s Law of Effect?
Actions which are followed by pleasant consequences become more likely
Actions which are followed by unpleasant consequences become less likely
What is a Skinner Box?
An apparatus in which a lever can be pressed to release a food pellet
What is Skinner’s three-part contingency?
Antecedent conditions
Behaviour
Consequences
Is generalisation involved in operant conditioning?
Yes
What are discriminative stimuli?
They signal that a particular behaviour will produce particular consequences - animals learn to discriminate between situations in which the response will lead to the outcome and those in which it will not
What is reinforcement?
It occurs when the consequences strengthen the behaviour
What is positive reinforcement?
The behaviour is repeated because it leads to the presentation of a stimulus
What is negative reinforcement?
The behaviour is repeated because it leads to removal of a stimulus
What is punishment?
It occurs when the consequences weaken the behaviour
What is positive punishment?
The behaviour becomes less frequent because the behaviour leads to presentation of a stimulus
What is negative punishment?
The behaviour becomes less frequent because it leads to the removal of a stimulus
What are primary reinforcers?
Stimuli that satisfy biological needs
What are secondary reinforcers?
Stimuli that are not intrinsically valuable to the organism but have acquired reinforcing properties by being associated with primary reinforcers
What is operant extinction?
The weakening of a learned response when the behaviour is no longer being reinforced
What is low resistance to extinction?
Behaviours that disappear rapidly when not being reinforced
What is high resistance to extinction?
Behaviours that continue to be performed long after the reinforcement has stopped
How is punishment used to modify children’s behaviour?
Positive punishment could be used, but could be counterproductive as it involves giving attention, which may serve as a positive reinforcer for the original behaviour
Negative punishment may be more effective
What is shaping?
A technique developed by Skinner in which an individual is rewarded for making progressively closer approximations to a desired behaviour
What is continuous reinforcement?
Every response is reinforced - it leads to faster learning
What is partial reinforcement?
Only some responses are reinforced - it usually leads to slower extinction
What are the four kinds of partial reinforcement?
Fixed interval
Variable interval
Fixed ratio
Variable ratio
What is fixed interval reinforcement?
Responses are reinforced a fixed amount of time after the last reinforced response
What is variable interval reinforcement?
Responses are reinforced a variable amount of time after the last reinforced response
What is fixed ratio reinforcement?
A fixed proportion of responses are reinforced
What is variable ratio reinforcement?
A variable proportion of responses are reinforced
What is the benefit of variable ratio reinforcement?
It tends to be especially resistant to extinction
