Lecture 6: Psychology of Learning Flashcards
What is learning?
A process by which knowledge of behaviour change ass a result of experience. Relatively permanent change. Can’t be attributed to illness, injury or malnutrition
Physical and chemical changes in the brain
- Changes to chemical aspects of neurotransmission (e.g., long-
term potentiation) - Changes to structural aspects of neurons (e.g., more receptor
sites or thicker structure increases the sensitivity of post-
synaptic dendrites)
What are the three ways we learn?
Association, cognition, and observation
What is the association way of learning?
(certain events happening tgth) Classical conditioning and operant conditioning
What is cognition way of learning?
Mental representations of events
What is the obervation method of learning?
watching others
What is classical conditioning?
pavlov’s dog. two stimuli occur tgth; involuntary response (can opening=food=drooling)
What is operant conditioning?
Relationship b/w voluntary behaviour and consequence (doing chores = allowance -reward)
What was pavlov’s dog
Trained dog to salivate @ whistle. type of classical conditioning
What are the 4 elements to classical conditioning?
Unconditional stimulus, unconditional response, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response
What is US
stimulus that naturally elicits a response (eg. food)
What is UR
the natural response to a stimulus (salivation)
What is CS
aka neural stimulus. originally neural stimulus that thru repeated pairing will eventually elicit a response (whistle + food)
What is CR?
learned response to a previously neutral stimulus (salivation to the whistle)
What is the connection between CR and UR
usually same behaviour
What are the key principles to classical conditioning?
- Intensity (depends of vividness of stimuli ->very vivid=multiple pairings not necessary)
- Generalization (stimuli similar to the CS can elicit the CR)
- Discrimination (learn to not respond to similar stimuli
- Extinction and spontaneous recovery (CS no longer elicts CR if presented alone; can than reappear)
What is an emotional responses?
little albert (john b watson) - kid made to fear little white rat, b/c of scary noise, preparedness for fear conditioning (evolution)
What are taste aversions?
aquired dislike of a food/drink after it is paired w an illness
What is drug tolerance?
decreased reaction that occurs w the repeated use of a drug. compensatory response.
What is classical conditioning often used for in the real world
advertising
What was the first step in the evolution of operant conditioning theory?
In 1898; thorndike measured time taken for cats to escape boxes.
Law of effect: behaviours is function of concequences (satesfiers and annoyers)
ABCs (antecedent, behaviour and concequences)
What happened 1930s operant conditioning
BF skinner and skinner boxes, reward only when light is lit, reinforcement and punishment for rats
