Task 8 Flashcards
What is social learning?
learning from others; often used as a synonym for observational learning
What is observational learning?
a process in which the learner actively monitors events and then chooses later actions based on those observations.
What is copying?
The act of doing what one observes another organism doing.
What is the social learning theory?
Theory ¬-A theory of human behavior prominent from the 1940s through the 1960s that proposed that the kinds of reinforcements an individual has experienced in past social contexts will determine how that individual will act in any given situation
What is the modern social learning theory?
Puts more emphasis on cognitive processes (e.g. thinking, evaluating possible future outcomes, and learning about how people interact);
o Any behavior can be learned without direct reinforcement or punishment → Expectations of reinforcer and punishment will influence the likelihood that learned action will be performed
What four basic processes did Bandura propose to explain people copying?
- Presence of a model - thought to increase an observer’s attention to the situation
- Accessible format – memories for observed situation must be stored accessibly, so that they can guide later actions
- Ability to reproduce action
- Motivation for reproducing – status or identity of the model can provide the motivation for an observer to imitate an action
What are the two types of copying?
True Imitation: Copying that involves reproducing motor acts
Emulation: Copying that involves replicating an outcome without replicating specific motor acts
What is the two-action test?
A technique developed to investigate imitation abilities that involves exposing naive animals to demonstrators trained to achieve the same goal using different actions.
What are the Alternatives to Imitation?
- Contagion
- Observational Conditioning
- Stimulus Enhancement
What is Contagion?
We react emotionally to others’ emotional reactions. • This might underly Classical conditioning: the matching reaction can be seen as a conditioned response (CR)
What is Observational Conditioning?
A conditioning process in which contagion
is used to learn a specific behavior in
response to a certain stimulus
What is Stimulus Enhancement?
Directing ones attention towards
something, because of someone else’s
actions (for the purpose of information
transfer between individuals)
What is Social Transmission and What is an example of it?
Learning through experience with others. Does not necessarily involve imitation. Example: Rats preferred food when they have smelled the sent of it on other “demonstrator rats”. (Humans can learn through experience with others or via channels e.g. books or television)
How does Social Transmission of information work?
• behaviors are most likely learned when they demonstrated several times, or by several demonstrator • Social Conformity: new members tend to adopt behavior of the majority
Why does social transmission of information exist?
• increases learning speed
• Can protect individual from harmful
experiences (poisoned food)
• Evolutionary benefit
What are the two theories on social learning?
Visual hypothesis: storage in visual cortex
direct-matching hypothesis: storage in cortical regions that map them onto motor representations
What are mirror neurons?
Neurons firing both while performance as well as observation of a certain action • Neural link between seeing and doing • May help to categorize observed events • Exist for different kinds of actions
What did lesions to the hippocampus and basal forebrain show?
Lesions reduce effects of socially
transmitted information, especially if lesion
occurred right after observation
• Forming of episodic memories crucial in
observational learning
• Cholinergic neurons of basal forebrain
also involved in the learning process
What are physiological symptoms of autism?
• Abnormal size of cerebellum, temporal
lobes, amygdala and corpus callosum
• Differences in circuits where mirror
neurons are suspected to reside
What effects do frontal lobe lesions have on social learning?
What hypothesis does it support?
Reduced activity or lesion of the frontal
lobes lead to:
• The inability to voluntarily reproduce
observed actions
• Tendency to involuntary imitation of
observed actions
-> support for direct-matching hypothesis
