Quiz 2 (lesson 7) Flashcards
What is learning at the sociological level?
The culture itself learns. Ex. Fijian Food Taboo. When pregnant you can’t eat certain types of foods to reduce food poisoning. The culture itself is learning: people don’t know why they do it they just know they do it. The people who followed this outlived the people who didn’t
Why do we need the sociological level?
Certain group behavior phenomena like going on strike are difficult to explain with individual psychology
What is learning at the psychological level?
Individual learning. Ex. If you eat french fries then throw up you don’t want to eat french fries anymore
Why do we need the psychological level?
individual behavior cannot be explained by using sociology. We need it in addition to sociological level because some behaviors are not heavily influenced by their social context (ex. Baby face recognition(when shown a pattern and a face babies look at the face)). We need it in addition to the cognitive level because we need a place for non-causal, statistical models
What is learning at the cognitive level?
The cognitive level is the information processing level. Cognitive science prefers descriptions of information and how it is represented and changed. Ex. cognitive scientists have theorized that individual memories have “activation levels” that determine how easily they can be retrieved from memory
Why do we need the cognitive level?
There are certain things that become very hard to explain with just psychology: Ex: multiplication (Mental multiplication vs abacus, the kinds of errors/length reflect the way the person was taught to do it). We also need it in addition to the biological level because mental states and processes are defined functionally and NOT anatomically (Ex: you and I are both happy to be here but our mental states are diff). Neurons can be differently built based on order you learned things (ex. Americans learn president first and associate related things to that)
What is learning at the biological level?
Synapses are the spaces between neurons where learning happens. Synapses get more efficient with repeated use(Hebb theory). Neurons that fire together wire together. This is how associations are learned(Hebb theory)
Why do we need the biological level?
We need it in addition to the cognitive level because sometimes the biological structure influences behavior in ways that the information processing perspective can’t explain. Ex. number/color synesthesia (the number 2 might be green, the number 1 might be red(connection that wasn’t supposed to be true)). We need it in addition to the chemical level because certain brain structures appear to be used for particular things(ex. The hippocampus and short term memory)
What is learning at the chemical level?
Synaptic changes in taste receptors to tolerate bitter foods(habituation). Children often vomit when eating bitter foods that adults enjoy(happens in part to synaptic changes)
Why do we need the chemical level?
We need it in addition to the biological level because chemicals can affect behavior(ex. Drug effects). We need it in addition to the physical level because the physical level doesn’t tell us much about human behavior
What is learning at the physical level?
Bottom of all fields. Smallest most detailed field there is. Bottom of science. Not a good level of description for learning. Some people believe that quantum effects are directly related to consciousness but most cognitive scientists don’t take the position seriously
How do we know a level is legitimate?
If we can successfully make casual predictions using the ontology of that level
Why are scholars often dismissive of the levels above them?
They believe the regularities found at high levels will be deductible from the low level regularities
What is the difference between proximate and ultimate explanations
Proximate explanations focus on things that occur during the life of an individual. Ultimate explanations focus on things that occur in populations over many generations
What is functionalism?
Holds that mental states and processes are determined by their functional properties(ex what they do) rather than physical anatomy properties
