Memory and Learning Flashcards
What is an instinct?
A genetically hard-wired behaviour
What is sensitisation?
A period of increased responsiveness and awareness following arousal by a novel stimulus.
Animals more likely to become sensitised when already negatively aroused.
The opposite of habituation.
The two types of non-associative learning:
Habituation
Sensitisation
The two types of associative learning:
Classical conditioning Operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning)
What is sensory adaptation?
Short term learning, for example no longer feeling clothes on skin. The learning is lost, and is therefore not habituation.
What is operant extinction?
When a response declines due to no longer being rewarded.
What are the 2 types of imprinting?
- Filial imprinting - becoming attached to a mother figure
2. sexual imprinting - a change behaviour which affects choice of future sexual partners
What is insight learning
Novel behavioural associations such as the sudden production of a new adaptive response.
Not the result of trial and error learning.
Explicit memory
Effortless recall
Implicit memory
Having to work to recall past events
What is operant conditioning?
An association between a behaviour and consequence
First designed and studied by BF Skinner
What is classical conditioning?
Learning that one event predicts another which causes an instinctive response
What is contingency (in training)?
The way in which two events co-vary, or the extent one event predicts another
What is contiguity (in training)?
The closeness of two events either in time (temporal contiguity) or space (spatial contiguity)
Ie time between an event and reward
(effectively communicating)
What is latent inhibition?
When a third event is introduced to an existing relationship of 2 events, the 3rd event is not learned or predicted as easily.
Example: A car ride is associated with going to the park for a dog, when on an occasion the car ride leads to a vet visit, the dog doesn’t associate the car ride with a vet visit suddenly, due to the existing relationship between the car and the park.
