Lecture 1: Intro to Learning and Cognition

Question 1

What is the definition of learning? Name four common features of definitions

Answer 1

An adaptive process where the tendency to perform a behaviour, emotion, and/or thought is changed by experience.
- A change & lasting change
- Experience and practice
- Learning situation is important

Question 2

Define habituation

Answer 2

Getting used to novel response; after prolonged exposure, stimulus no longer novel

Question 3

Name 3 key figures of Associative Learning

Answer 3

Ivan Pavlov (1849 - 1936)
John Watson (1878 - 1958)
B. F. Skinner (1904 - 1990)

Question 4

What does Watson’s Methodological Behaviourism propose?

Answer 4

Measure behaviour to infer learning > limit to obserable effects of learning and exclude internal processes from analysis

Question 5

What did Skinner’s Radical Behaviourism propose?

Answer 5

Including Watson’s Behaviourism proposal, but also complex behaviours follow same laws as small units of behaviour