Learning Flashcards
Reflexes
- A motor or neural reaction to a specific stimulus in the environment
- Involve the activity of specific body parts and systems
- Involve more primitive centers of the central nervous system
Instincts
- Innate behaviors that are triggered by a broader range of events, such as aging and the change of seasons
- More complex patterns of behavior, involve movement of the organism as a whole, and involve higher brain centers
Learning
- Allows organism to adapt to its environment
- Learned behavior involve change and experience; relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience
Associative Learning
- Occurs when an organism makes connection between stimuli or events that occur together in the environment
- Central to all three basic learning process; classical conditioning, operant conditioning and observational learning
Classical Conditional
•A process by which we learn to associate stimuli and consequently, to anticipate events
Ivan Pavlov
- Pavlov, an early behaviorist, in his famous classical conditioning experiment
- He performed extensive research on dogs – trained them to salivate in response to the sound of a bell
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)
•A stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism
Unconditioned Response (UCR)
•An unlearned response that occurs naturally in reaction to the unconditioned stimulus
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
•A stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus
Conditioned Response (CR)
•The learned response to the previously neutral stimulus
Tone or Neutral Stimulus (NS)
•A stimulus that does not naturally elicits a response
Acquisition
- The initial period of learning in classical conditioning
- When an organism learns to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus
- During this phase, the NS begins to elicit the CR, and eventually the NS becomes a conditioned stimulus capable of eliciting the CR by itself
What is an important factor for conditioning to occur?
- Timing
* Typically, there should only be a brief interval between presentation of the CS and the UCS
Extinction
•Refers to the decrease in the CR when the UCS is no longer presented with the CS
Spontaneous Recovery
•The return of a previously extinguished CR following a rest period
Stimulus Discrimination
•When an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar
Stimulus Generalization
•When an organism demonstrates the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus
John B. Watson
•Watson’s behaviorist theory focused not on the internal emotional and psychological conditions of people, but rather on their external and outward behaviors. He believed that a person’s physical responses provided the only insight into internal actions.
Reflexive Fear
•Associate a particular stimuli with an emotional fear, causing the individual be afraid of the stimuli, hence, avoiding it.
Operant Conditioning
•The target behavior is followed by reinforcement or punishment to either strengthen or weaken it, so that learner is more likely to exhibit the desired behavior in the future