Midterm Review Guide Flashcards
Clever Hans Effect
where the animal will pick up on subtle clues that the trainer is unknowingly giving.
What does the Clever Hans Effect tell us about animal perception?
It shows us that animals are closely memorizing subtle cues given by and learning what they should respond
Ways to mitigate the Clever Hans Effect
take owner/trainer away, avoid outside distractions, not allowing animal to be in contact with experimenters or spectators
Lloyd Morgan’s Canon
In no case should we intemperate an action as the outcome of the exercise of higher mental ability. Explain animal behavior in the simplest way possible.
How does Lloyd Morgan’s Canon relate to evolution
Often times related species will share cognitive abilities that go back to a common ancestor.
How does Lloyd Morgan’s Canon relate to the phylogenetic tree?
The more widespread a behavior, the more likely it is older and originated in a more distant common ancestor.
Domain-general processes
things like perception( visual, auditory, etc.) , memory, and learning. Global knowledge, interdependent, senses work together.
Habituation
Responses to prolonged unchanging stimuli decline
Examples of Habituation:
Baby and toy: baby would look at the toy, but after a while would look away.
Dishabituation
when new stimulus comes along, you get some of the amount of response back,
Example of dishabituation
When they shook the babies toy and it rattled, the baby looked at the toy again.
Why study habituation?
it gives an indication of an animal’s natural response to changes in its environment an how it gauges threats
Generalization
when an animal applies a response from one stimulus to another similar stimuli.
Example of generalization?
a bird trained to peck a purple key also pecking blue and violet keys, or a rat pressing a lever when it hears tones of a similar pitch
Learning (definition)
Change in an subjects behavior to a given situation brought by repeated experiences in that situation provided that the change cannot be explained on the basis of native responses, maturation, or temporary states(drugs).
Types of Associative learning
Classical conditioning, Operant Learning (instrumental)
Associative learning
forming relational connections between certain stimuli in an environment.
Latent learning
such as navigation, is done naturally as a result of perception and without reward
Changes in behavior not due to learning are from:
maturation, or changes in internal states (hormones, intoxication)
Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
learning about relationships between stimuli, goal is to prepare for an event
US
a natural salient
CS
neutral stimuli
UR
natural response to US
CR
the learned response to the CS
Example of classical conditioning
Balloon experiment US: popping balloons UR:startled CS: facial expression, counting prof. CR:tense muscles
Do the CR and the UR always have to be the same?
No.
CR depends on CS not UR
The CR is the preparing for the US
Eye blink experiment for Classical conditioning
US: puff of air
UR: blink
CS: tone or light
CR: close eyes
Taste Aversion
lace food and make animals sick
What conditions are necessary for classical conditioning to occur?
At least 2 perceivable stimuli, Contiguity, contingency, surprise, attention
Blocking
Pretraining with one stimuli, and then training with 2, including the pertained. Test if animal will respond to the 2nd stimuli (they won’t)
Overshadowing
Train with two stimuli, test with just one, and see if they respond. (nope)
How does blocking challenge contiguity?
Even though the CSs are both contiguous in time, one CS is still blocked from learning. This defies the idea that closeness in time always impacts response
S-R model of Pavlovian conditioning (classical)
An animal will form an association between the conditioned stimulus and the response (skipping the US to create the behavior)
CS-US Model of Pavlovian conditioning (classical)
the animal forms an association betters the CS and the US, which leads to the observed response
US devaluation
like taste aversion, Supports CS-US model better
Instrumental conditioning
the animal is learning an association between its behavior and a certain outcome
Conditions necessary for Instrumental Learning
Contiguity, Contingency(reliable), motivation
Vi
The predictive value
Sum of DeltaVi
the sum of associative strengths for all stimuli in trial
DeltaV
the change in predictive values of stimulus
Lambda (Y)
the asymptote of learning; strength of the US
Alpha i
CS salience
Beta i
US salience
Lambda minus sum of Vi
amount of surprise
Resocorla-Wagner model formula
DeltaVi=AlphaiXBetai(Lambda minus sum of Vi)
How can you make learning faster through Rescorla-Wagner Model?
by increasing or decreasing the importance or noticeability of the CS or US to the animal, ex. louder noises
Alpha and Beta determine…
how quickly the animal learn
DeltaV increases when
Surprise increases
Surprise decreases when…
the stimuli are not important to the animal and also with more and more pairings of the stimuli (habituation)
S+
Increase responses, response-> reinforcement
S-
Decrease responses, response-> no reinforcement or a punishment
Peak shift
maximum responses is not to S+, Ex. Pigeons trained to peck to 550 nm, not not 590nm. max rate of response was at 540nm
Perceptual category
a group of stimuli that share physical features. human language labels perceptual category with names. (frog, tree, chair)
Feature theory
animals learn features specific to a category
Exemplar Theory
perceptual categories are learned by memorizing exemplars, and novel exemplars are categorized by their similarity to learned exemplars
Prototype Theory
is the perfect exemplar of a category and is accessed when assessing novels stimuli
Circadian Rhythms:
behavior that occurs at specific times of day
endogenous time givers:
food light, lack of light
Circadian Rhythms: The good & bad
good for daily rhythms bad for longer or shorter intervals
Interval timing system
Allows animals to respond on the basis of specific durations
Weber’s Law
the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus
Scalar property
errors in timing increase as duration increases
temporal bisection
psychological middle is at the geometric mean
Analogue Magnitude (relative) system
is when you train one number then cary the numbers and other features of the test, to make sure you are not measuring absolute numbers, good for any quantity and obeys Weber’s law
Object tracking system
tests whether an animal choses a box with more desired items than lesser (test small numbers
Serial ordering
is when an animal learns a list and then is asked to recall the items in the list
Transitive inference
when animals learn items in a sequence, and can translate the order/value from the sequence to non-consecutive items
Primacy effect
remembering the very beginning of a list you’re trying to remember
Recency Effect
remembering the very last items on the list you’re trying to remember
Dead reckoning
system that uses heading and distance to navigate, without any context clues from the environment, other than the sun compass/magnetic perception of direction. Distance is measured in steps or optic flow
Routes
a system of navigation that uses a set path frequently traveled by an animal, and the animal will memorize that exact path and will not deviate from it
landmarks
global cues that animals use to orient their positions, and it requires that the animal associate the landmark with home and make note of the relative direction and stance of home from the landmark
Beacon
a local cue that signals the end destination
Retention interval
the space of time that occurs between initial learning(T1) and the memory recall stage(T2)
Intertrial interval
amount of time between separate trials in learning studies. if there is a longer intertribal interval the animal uses less proactive inference
Encoding
the intake of perceptual information into an animals brain
Retention
depends on interference, and is how long an animal can keep a memory stored without it degrading
performance
is the degree to which the animal correctly recalls information or behaves a certain way in response to a stimulus
Inference
is a reduction in memory retention due to extraneous events
Proactive inference
is when information is already stored in the memory can interfere with the storage of new information
retroactive inference
is when new information my interfere with what is already in memory
in a visual search task, animals must locate a.
target against a field of distractors
