Learning by example

Question 1

What is observational learning?

Answer 1

1. The learning actively monitors events and chooses later actions based on those observations
2. Copying - Doing what one observes another doing:
   - True imitation - Involves reproducing motor acts
   - Emulation - Replicates an outcome
   - Difficult to predict

Question 2

What is Morgan’s canon?

Answer 2

1. Psychologists should explain behaviour in terms of the simplest psychological mechanisms possible
2. Some believe that both perspective taking and awareness of the observer that she is voluntarily copying actions is necessary, but that seems too complex

Question 3

What is the template model of song learning?

Answer 3

1. Memorise song
2. Practice song
3. Learn uses of song
4. Adult song

Question 4

What is social learning theory?

Answer 4

The kinds of reinforcements an individual has experienced in the past will determine how that individual will act in any given situation – Through conditioning, 4 basic processes:

1. The presence of a modal increases the observer’s attention to the situation
2. Memories for the observed situation must be stored in an accessible format
3. The observer must have the ability to reproduce the action
4. The observer must have some motivation to reproduce the action

Question 5

What is contagion?

Answer 5

1. Tendency to react emotionally to visual or acoustic stimuli that indicate an emotional response by other members of a species – The matching reaction is an UR
2. An individual can also learn an emotional response by observational learning

Question 6

What is the social transmission of information?

Answer 6

1. An observer learns something through experience with others - Like food preference, which may pass down generations
2. Social conformity – Tendency to adopt the behaviour of the group

Question 7

Is there a correlation between TV and violent behaviour?

Answer 7

1. Because reinforcement/punishment?
2. Because violent individuals like watching TV?
3. Because violence is exciting?

Question 8

How are imitation memories formed?

Answer 8

1. Visual hypothesis - Memories for perceived acts are stored in the visual cortical regions
2. Direct-matching hypothesis - Memories for actions are stored in cortical regions that map observed actions onto the motor representations of the acts

Question 9

What brain parts are involved?

Answer 9

1. Mirror neurons:
   - Neurons that fire both during the performance and the visual observation of a task
   - Maybe actions are neuronally mapped
2. But the cerebellar is also involved
3. Hippocampus - Lesions create retrograde amnesia
4. Basal forebrain cholinergic neurons lesions can create anterograde amnesia

Question 10

What is Asperger’s syndrome? And autism?

Answer 10

1. Asperger’s syndrome – Normal intellectual abilities but a reduced capacity for social skills
2. Autism – Impaired social interactions, restricted behaviour patterns, delayed language development, echolalia
3. Difficulties copying because:
   - Not as reinforcing than for normal individuals
   - Problems with perspective taking
   - Anatomical abnormalities in sensory cortex, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, amygdala, basal ganglia, temporal lobes
   - Decrease in activity-related circulation of blood within the temporal lobes as well as abnormal patterns of cortical activation

Question 11

What about frontal lobe lesions?

Answer 11

1. Inability to repeat observed actions
2. Tendency to produce unintended imitative responses
3. Perhaps some inhibitory mechanism is necessary to prevent the external stimuli from initiating the action