Learning Flashcards
Do well in exam
Define learning
A relatively permanent change in capacity for behaviour as the result of experience
Classical conditioning
The process by which innate, reflexive behaviour come to be produced in new situations, e.g. Pavlov’s dog
Operant conditioning
Strengthening or weakening behaviour as a result of its consequences (trial and error learning) - can be reward or punishment
Vicarious conditioning
Observable learning
The Grandmaster experiment
A psychologist raises his children on chess, who all become extremely successful professionals. This demonstrates learning’s (nurture’s) role in ability
Summary of history of nativism vs empiricism
Plato - knowledge present at birth (nativist)
Aristotle - knowledge through experience (empiricist)
Descartes - knowledge from divine / rational mind
Locke - knowledge through senses (empiricist)
Watson - evolution important and learning is simple stimulus and response
Hull… then Tolman… then Bandura… then Skinner
Watsons (1924) main ideas (3)
Behaviour is reflexive and evolution dependent
Learning is simple stimulus and response
Infants born with love, fear and rage (all else learnt)
Clark Hull’s main ideas (2)
Thought unobservable events CAN be studied (if they can be operationalised)
Assumed internal processes were dictated by physiological mechanisms
Edward Tolman’s main ideas (3)
Interested in goal directed behaviour
Internal processes were mental and physiological
Suggested that behaviour effects the environment
Albert Bandura’s main ideas (2)
Emphasises the importance of observable learning and cognitive variables in behaviour
And that behaviour significantly effects the environment
BF Skinner’s main ideas (3)
A radical behaviourist, focused on environment’s influence on behaviour
Did not need to quantify or focus on internal events, more scientific to quantify consequences
Great advocate for operant conditioning
Stimulus
Anything that impinges on an organism, potentially effecting behaviour
Response
Any overt or covert behaviour triggered by a stimulus
Elicit behaviours
Responses automatically drawn out by stimulus
Emitted behaviours
Responses voluntarily triggered by the environments context
Fixed action patterns
Usually just for animals, complex behaviours completed automatically
Overt
Behaviour that has the potential to be directly observed
Covert
Behaviour only perceived by the performer of it
How can covert behaviours become overt
By using a means other than the senses to observe someone else (covert anxiety becomes overt when heart rate measured)
Simple learning, and two types
Non associative, often short lasting
Types: Habituation, Sensitization
Habituation
The reduction in effectiveness of a stimulus eliciting a response (if stimulus is repeatedly applied with no attention grabbing effects)
Sensitization
An increase in responsiveness to a stimulus following repeated presentation (stimulus has attention grabbing effects)
Associative learning
Learning to associate two events/stimuli that occur together
Contiguity
Contiguity
The principle that events occur together (temporally or spatially) and therefore associated