Lecture 1 Flashcards
What are the two major ways of learning?
Non-associative
Associative
What type of learning is habituation?
Non-associative
What is habituation
It is when an organism gets used to a novel stimulus. (When you are trying to study but construction is going on around you)
What is sensitization?
It is the opposite of habituation. An example is how school students wait to hear the school bell to leave school at the end of the day because they are used to hearing it and they know it is going to happen as they are sensitized to it.
Who are 3 key figures in associative learning?
Ivan Pavlov
John Watson
B.F. Skinner
What is a definition of learning?
Change in a subject’s behaviour or behaviour potential to a given situation brought about by the subject’s repeated experience in that situation
What was Watson’s theory for behaviorism?
- We measure behavior to infer learning
- Limited observable effects of learning
- Excludes internal processes from analysis
What was the difference between Watson and Skinner’s theory?
Skinner thought that complex behaviors follow the same laws as small units of behavior
What is cognition?
The study of mental processes such as perceiving, attending, remembering, and reasoning
Cognito- means to know or to think
Who were significant figures for research in cognition?
Wilhelm Wundt
- Method of introspection
Herman Ebbinghaus
- The empirical study of memory
William James
- Principles of psychology
What is the computer metaphor?
Information processing in the ‘black box’ became a legitimate topic of discussion as such processes are, after all, instantiated in a machine. (When computers were invented, it was thought our brains might work in a similar way.)
What are different approaches to studying the mind?
Experiments
- combining objective measures with introspection
Neuroscientific investigations
- Brain imaging
Modeling
- Computer simulations of human performance
Comparative
- Performance comparison across different groups of people
What are some domains in cognitive psychology?
Attention
Memory
Imagery
Language
Thinking
Intelligence
Comparative psychology
Evolutionary psychology
What do modern learning theorists believe?
- Acknowledge the utility of cognitive constructs in theory and practice (e.g. CBT)
- Appreciate biological constraints and preparedness
What do modern cognitivists believe?
- Appreciate the utility and power of learning principles
- Apply associationism in theories of the mind
- Research relation between the brain and cognition
