LO8 - Learning

Question 1

Definition of Learning

Answer 1

A relatively permanent change in the organism (both in the brain and behaviour) brought about by experience.

Question 2

Thorndike’s Associative Laws (to show analogy with neurons)

Answer 2

Law of Readiness - if a conduction unit is ready to conduct, conduction is satisfying and no conduction is annoying.

The Early Law of Exercise - connections may be strengthened by practice.

Question 3

Hebb’s rule

Answer 3

When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.

Question 4

The distinction between learning and performance

Answer 4

An organism might know something but knowledge will only be shown in performance. In order to see what an organism knows we have to get it to do something.

An animal can ‘know something’ but not perform a response. This can be a refutation of Behaviourism.

Nonetheless, traditionally it was only possible to identify learning indirectly by performance of some response.

Question 5

Nonassociative learning

Answer 5

An increased or decreased response to a repeated stimulus.

Question 6

Habituation

Answer 6

One kind of nonassociative learning in which an organism’s reflexive response to a repeated stimulus becomes weaker

Question 7

Sensitisation

Answer 7

The other pole of nonassociative learning in which an organism’s reflexive response to a repeated stimulus becomes stronger.

Question 8

Dishabituation

Answer 8

The recovery of a response that was weakened through habituation. It typically occurs when a novel stimulus is presented.

Question 9

Behaviourism

Answer 9

This was a reaction to introspection and folk psychology and believed that only publicly accessible data was appropriate to study psychology.

Question 10

Reinforcement vs punishment

Answer 10

Our behaviour has consequences. Reinforcement refers to the increased likelihood that our behaviour will be repeated while punishment refers to the decreased likelihood of our behaviour being repeated.

Question 11

Positive reinforcement

Answer 11

A reward following a response strengthens the response tendency.

Reinforcement is circular because we know something is a response as it strengths the response.

Is reward part of the learning or is it necessary for the learning?

Question 12

Negative reinforcement

Answer 12

This is increasing the probability of a behaviour by removing or avoiding an outcome.

Question 13

Punishment

Answer 13

Following a response with an aversive stimulus weakens that response.

Positive punishment is introducing a stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behaviour.

Negative punishment is removing a stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behaviour.

Question 14

Avoidance

Answer 14

Responding with a behaviour that eliminates a potential bad event/unpleasant situation.

Question 15

Omission

Answer 15

Responses that eliminate a positive event are weakened. Things that the organisms enjoys are taken away as punishment for a behaviour/action.

Question 16

Classical conditioning

Answer 16

A passive form of associative learning where an involuntary response to a stimulus—that is, a reflex—becomes associated with a new stimulus.

A stimulus causes the appearance of a behaviour.

Question 17

Unconditioned stimulus

Answer 17

A stimulus that produces a reflexive response without prior learning.

Question 18

Unconditioned response

Answer 18

A response that is automatically generated by the unconditioned stimulus.

Question 19

Conditioned stimulus

Answer 19

A stimulus that has no prior positive or negative association but comes to elicit a response after being associated with the unconditioned stimulus.

Question 20

Conditioned response

Answer 20

A response that occurs in the presence of the conditioned stimulus after an associated between the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus is learned.

Question 21

Acquisition

Answer 21

The initial learning of the association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli during classical conditioning.

Question 22

Generalisation

Answer 22

The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimuli so that learning is not too narrowly tied to specific stimuli.

Question 23

Discrimination (classical conditioning)

Answer 23

Leaning to respond to a particular stimulus but not to similar stimuli, thus preventing overgeneralisations.

Question 24

Extinction

Answer 24

An active learning process in which there is a weakening of the conditioned response to the conditioned stimulus in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus.

Extinction is not forgetting, it is the brain learning not to respond.

Question 25

Spontaneous recovery

Answer 25

This is observed when an extinct behaviour reappears after a delay.

Relearning an association after extinction will be faster than the initial conditioning.

Question 26

Inhibition

Answer 26

The original association is not lost through extinction as we see spontaneous recovery.

Extinction occurs, at least in part, because of a competing association or type of learning called inhibition.

It has the opposite motivational properties to excitation. It involves learning about something that does not happen.

Question 27

Residual plasticity hypothesis

Answer 27

Rapid relearning after extinction is possible because of savings. This is some residual trace of the association stored in memory.

The residual plasticity model proposes that even after extinction, neural networks of learning persist which leads to savings if conditioning is reintroduced.

Question 28

Conditioned inhibition

Answer 28

An attempt to make a neutral stimulus a conditioned inhibitor. This means it is a stimulus that will signal that something son’t happen.

If the inhibitor isn’t there, this implies that the event would happen.

Question 29

Stimulus Dimension

Answer 29

Some graded scale or continuum along which stimuli may be organised.

Question 30

Summation test for conditioned inhibition

Answer 30

The negative inhibition of one stimulus (metronome) is said to sum with the excitation of another stimulus (buzzer) to produce less response.

Two stimuli presented together are called a compound or configuras stimulus.

Question 31

Siegel’s morphine conditioning experiments

Answer 31

People becomes more tolerant to opioids as they use them meaning the dosage they can accept increases. They also show withdrawal symptoms and grow dependent.

Sometimes addicts who are very tolerant of opiates surprisingly die when they take a dose at the level they are usually tolerant of.

Siegel tested this on rats to see why. He found that it was to do with context.

Question 32

Siegel’s findings (contextual conditioning)

Answer 32

Siegel found that chronic drug users’ brains learn to anticipate the receipt of drugs based off environmental cues and adjust neurotransmitter levels to reduce the impact of these drugs. This is classical conditioning.

Because of this conditioned response to the situation, more of the same drug is required to get the same high.

If the user takes this dose of an opioid in an unfamiliar setting, the conditioned response in response to the context does not occur and the brain does not preemptively adjust neurotransmitter levels in anticipation of the drug.

The learned tolerance is no longer present and overdoses are far more likely. Seen in rats.

Question 33

Primary reinforcer

Answer 33

A consequence that is innately pleasurable and/or satisfies some biological need. These are effective regardless of prior experience.

They are linked to behaviours necessary to survive and pass on genes.

Question 34

Secondary reinforcer

Answer 34

These are learned pleasures that acquire value through experience because of its association with primary reinforcers.

They take on properties that are distinct from and even more potent than the primary reinforcers from which they are derived.

Question 35

Operant conditioning

Answer 35

A mechanism by which our behaviour acts as an instrument or tool to change the environment and, as a result, voluntary behaviours are modified.

it involves voluntary actions which serve as levers to control the environment to produce desired outcomes.

Question 36

ABCs of Operant Conditioning

Answer 36

Antecedent - stimuli that precede the behaviour and signal the consequence.
Behaviour - learning cannot influence behaviour unless behaviour occurs. The consequences after will either increase the likelihood of behaviour being repeated or decrease the likelihood.
Consequences - These are the stimuli after the behaviour

Question 37

Associationism

Answer 37

Two events in the brain that occur together tend to get linked. This is temporal contiguity.

Question 38

How do we tell S-S (stimulus-stimulus) from S-R (stimulus-response) psychology. Either way the two are associated.

Answer 38

In classical conditioning, two things are learnt. Monist theory is incorrect.

SS association is made: CS leads to food. This has no response and no mechanism for response.

Or SR association is made as the CS leads to a response (CR). This is automatic and the stimulus generates a response. Also called Habit Learning because an animal learns to do what it had been doing before.

Temporal contiguity allows both the CS to be paired with both the US and the UR.

Question 39

Contingent reinforcement vs no contingent reinforcement

Answer 39

Operant conditioning typically reflects contingent reinforcement in which a response is reinforced because it brings about a desired change to the environment.

Skinner introduced non contingent reinforcement by delivering rewards to pigeons on a fixed interval schedule, no matter what behaviour they were doing.

Question 40

Superstitious conditioning

Answer 40

A type of non contingent reinforcement in which individuals learn a behaviour that has no actual relationship with reinforcement.

We try to establish meaningful relationships in our brains even when none exist in reality.

Question 41

Latent learning

Answer 41

Learning that occurs without outside reinforcement or any clear motivation to learn.

Tolman argued that learning could occur without outward behavioural evidence of it. He looked at cognitive maps and rats

His 3rd group of rats were rewarded only in the last third of maze runs. They showed the highest performance which shows that they could utilise the information they had incidentally learnt to their advantage.

Question 42

Cognitive maps

Answer 42

Developed by Tolman, these are internal mental representations of the world.

Rats could easily reorient themselves when a block is put in place, even without reward or motivation.

Question 43

Operant chamber/Skinner’s box

Answer 43

This was developed as a small world to house an animal so that Skinner could have ultimate control over everything that the animal experiences.

Question 44

Free operant responses

Answer 44

These were allowed by Skinner’s box. Animals can respond at any time, as many times as needed, without intervention because there is no clear end point or goal.

The amount of time taken for a response as well as the number of responses over time can be measured.

Question 45

Shaping

Answer 45

The process by which random behaviours are gradually changed into a desired target behaviour.

This is done through the reinforcement of successive approximations.

Shaping starts simply with a behaviour similar to the target behaviour and then builds in complexity until the target behaviour is reached.

Question 46

Instinctive drift

Answer 46

An animal’s reversion to evolutionary derived instinctive behaviours instead of demonstrating newly learnt responses.

In operant conditioning, we more readily learn some associations than others due to our evolutionary history.

Question 47

Continuous reinforcement schedule

Answer 47

The simplest schedule of reinforcement in which a behaviour is rewarded each time it is performed.

It leads to the rapid acquisition of a behaviour but also the rapid extinction.

Question 48

A fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement

Answer 48

A specific number of behaviours are required before a reward is given.

Behaviour tends to decrease briefly immediately after a reward is received and then accelerate as repetitions get closer to the threshold for receiving the reward.

Question 49

A variable ratio reinforcement schedule

Answer 49

A schedule in which an average number of behaviours are required before a reward is given.

It is less predictable than the fixed ratio schedule.

It is a very successful schedule for eliciting consistently high levels of behaviour.

Question 50

Fixed interval reinforcement schedule

Answer 50

Reinforcement is given after a fixed amount of time.

There is a steep drop off in responding immediately after the reward has been given and then, very close to the reward point, responding increases.

Question 51

Variable interval reinforcement schedule

Answer 51

This is based on an average amount of time between rewards. It varies around a consistent average.

This leads to slow and consistent responses because the time until the next reinforcer is relatively unpredictable.

Question 52

Skinner’s beliefs about language development

Answer 52

He believed language could develop through laws of reinforcement.

He very much help the nativist view and emphasised the instrumental aspects of language - it has a function.

Question 53

Chomsky’s beliefs about language development

Answer 53

Reinforcement is a circular concept so explains nothing.

He emphasised the nativist position by saying people are biologically prepared to learn language. This refuted Skinner’s beliefs.

He focused on the abstract communication function of language. He denied the instrumental role of language.