Learning Pt. 1

Question 1

What is learning?

Answer 1

Process of acquiring through experience, new info, or behaviors

Question 2

What are the bio psychological influences on learning?

Answer 2

• biological: genetic predispositions, neural mirroring, adaptive responses, etc.
• psychological: previous experiences, predictability of connections, generalization, expectations, etc.
• social-cultural influences: culturally learned preferences, motivation by presence of others, modeling, etc

Question 3

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 3

learning that one event follows another

Question 4

What was Ivan Pavlov’s Discovery?

Answer 4

• studied salivation in dogs
• salivation occurred from eating food was caused by neutral stimuli such as:
  
  • seeing the food, seeing the dish, seeing the person who brought the food, and hearing that person’s footsteps
• neutral stimulus = stimulus that ≠ cause a response

Question 5

What are the phases of classical conditioning?

Answer 5

• before conditioning = unconditioned stimulus and response
  
  • stimulus which causes a response before/ without conditioning
  • e.g. unconditioned stimulus = dog food + unconditioned response = salivation
• during conditioning (acquisition)
  
  • neutral stimulus is repeatedly presented with the unconditioned stimulus
  • e.g. NS (bell) + US (food) = UR (salivation)
• after conditioning
  
  • UR becomes a conditioned response + NS becomes a conditioned stimulus

Question 6

What is acquisition?

Answer 6

initial stage of learning/conditioning

• NS must appear before the US

Question 7

What are the trends of classical conditioning?

Answer 7

• extinction: decrease of a conditioned response
  
  • occurs when a repeated presentation of a CS without a UCS the CR to decrease
• spontaneous recovery: reappearance of an extinguished CR

Question 8

What are biological constraints of classical conditioning?

Answer 8

• animals + human are biologically prepared to learn associations
• conditioning is stronger when the CS is ecologically relevant

Question 9

What is higher order conditioning?

Answer 9

Procedure when the CS is paired with a new NS = second, weaker CS

Question 10

What is stimulus generalization?

Answer 10

• generalization = once a response has been conditioned, similar stimuli can elicit the same response
• can be adaptive

Question 11

What is stimulus discrimination?

Answer 11

• ability to distinguish between stimuli
  
  • some are predictive
  • discrimination = ability to tell which is which

Question 12

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 12

Behavior is strengthened when followed by reinforcement and diminished by punishment

Question 13

What is the law of effect?

Answer 13

behaviors followed by favorable consequences are more likely than behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences are less likely

Question 14

What is positive reinforcement?

Answer 14

add something pleasant to increase behavior

Question 15

What is negative reinforcement?

Answer 15

take away something aversive to increase behavior against it

Question 16

What is positive punishment?

Answer 16

Add unfavorable consequence to decrease a behavior

Question 17

What are the types of reinforcers?

Answer 17

• primary = unlearned, innately reinforcing stimuli (food, attention)
• conditioned/ secondary = gains power through association with primary reinforcer (money, grades)
• immediate = occurs immediately after a behavior
• delayed = involves time delay between desired response and delivery of reward

Question 18

What are punishments in relation to operant conditioning and the drawbacks?

Answer 18

• ≠ erase undesirable habit
• produce unwanted side effects
• can become aggression
• ineffective unless
  
  • given after undesirable behavior
  • each time behavior occurs
  • identofy and positively reinforce appropriate responses

Question 19

What are the biological constraints of operant conditioning?

Answer 19

• nature limits capacity for operant conditioning
• predispose animals to learn associations that ≠ naturally adaptive
• instinctive drift = animals revert to biologically predisposed patterns