Task 8 learning by example

Question 1

Social learning

Answer 1

Learning from others

Question 2

Observational learning

Answer 2

A process in which the learner actively monitors events and then chooses later actions based on those observations

Question 3

Social learning

Answer 3

A theory of human behaviour prominent from the 1940s through the 1960s that proposed that the kinds reinforcement an individual has experienced in past social contexts will determine how that individual will act in any given situation

Question 4

Social learning nowadays

Answer 4

any behaviour can be learned without direct reinforcement or punishment

Question 5

Four basic principles of social learning

Answer 5

 Presence of a model (same gender is important for imitation in kids)
 Memories must be stored in an accessible format so that they can guide later actions (sequence shouldn’t be to complex)
 The observe must have the ability to reproduce the action
 Motivation for reproducing

Question 6

True imitation

Answer 6

Copying that involves reproducing motor acts (humans are more likely to do it)

Question 7

Emulation

Answer 7

Copying that involves replicating an outcome without replicating specific motor acts

Question 8

Perspective taking

Answer 8

seeing yourself in the position of another person

Question 9

Emotional contagion

Answer 9

An inborn tendency to react emotionally to visual or acoustic stimuli that indicate an emotional response by other members of one’s species, typically in ways that replicate the observed response

Question 10

Observational conditioning

Answer 10

A process in which an individual learns an emotional response after observing similar response in others (no direct reinforcement is needed)

Question 11

Vocal imitation

Answer 11

is learned by animals through trail-and-error (more efficient by humans and dolphins because of the ability to control the vocal cords

Question 12

Social transmission

Answer 12

A process seen in all human in which an observer learns something new through experiences with others (rat food preference experiment)

Question 13

Social conformity

Answer 13

The tendency to adopt the behaviour of the group, even if another way would be more efficient
o Proved by fish experiment where a demonstrator showed a hole in a net which was then used by all fishes even if the demonstrator disappeared

Question 14

Mirror neurons

Answer 14

Neurons that respond during performance of an action and during observations of that same action (also important for meaning in observed action)
o No direct evidence that mirror neurons are necessary for imitative behaviour
o Also works only for outcomes so, mirror neurons provide the kinds of neural links necessary for emulation (copying a goal) as well as imitation (copying an action)

Question 15

Technique to measure mirror neurons with brain imaging

Answer 15

o researchers might ask participants to (1) observe an image of someone moving a certain finger, (2) imitate someone moving a certain finger, and (3) move a certain finger in response to a specific command

Question 16

Critics on mirror neurons

Answer 16

We can understand movements we can’t perform

o They might only serve for deeper understanding

Question 17

Echolalia

Answer 17

The automatic repetition of words or phrases immediately after hearing them spoken

Question 18

copying deficit in autism might arise through

Answer 18

o Impaired visual motor coordination
o Or less perceived enforcement
o Takes longer because of less cortical activity

Question 19

Mind blindness theory

Answer 19

children with autism disorder have problems with perspective taking that prevent them from imagining themselves in someone else’s shoes

Question 20

Role of mirror neurons in autism

Answer 20

their deficit could be related to abnormal function in a subset of mirror neurons rather than to a general dysfunction of cortical neural circuits involved in imitation

Question 21

Direct matching hypothesis

Answer 21

The proposal that memories for actions are stored in specialized cortical regions that map observed actions onto the motor representations of the acts, seeing an cat activates the appropriate motor regions and the motor response is stored too

Question 22

Hippocampal region and food preference

Answer 22

The hippocampus is know for memory formation and retrieval so when it is damaged memories of rats which smelled a certain food out of the mouth of another rat don’t show a preference for this food
o Same with basal forebrain damage because it mediates the activity of the hippocampus

Question 23

Lesion in hippocampus

Answer 23

ability to form new memories so you can’t learn from social transmission

Question 24

Copying in animals

Answer 24

• Mirror neurons might be in cortical areas so animals with small cortices are bad in copying behaviour

Question 25

Bobo doll experiment

Answer 25

Children observed adults beating a puppet, when they had the opportunity to play with it by themselves, they showed similar behaviour as the prior observed adults if they were provoked beforehand, if not they were less aggressive than the control group

Question 26

Violent media and violent behaviour

Answer 26

• Researchers have collected strong evidence of a general association between violent behaviour and increased exposure to violent media

Question 27

Copying

Answer 27

The act of doing what one observes another organism doing

Question 28

Modelling

Answer 28

Demonstration of actions

Question 29

Two action test

Answer 29

A technique developed to investigate imitation abilities that involves exposing naive animals to demonstrators trained to achieve the same goal using different actions.

Question 30

Frontal lobe lesions

Answer 30

• patients with frontal-lobe lesions tend to imitate observed actions automatically, but have difficulty imitating actions when instructed to do so, like children with autism spectrum disorder.

Question 31

F5 neurons

Answer 31

• Almost all F5 neurons studied became active during different types of distal movements (ex. grasping, holding, tearing)

Question 32

mirror neuron discharge

Answer 32

• Neurons of the rostral inferior premotor cortex (observing) of the monkeys discharge during goal-directed hand movements, as performed by the experimenters

Question 33

Premotor neurons

Answer 33

can retrieve movements not only on the basis of stimulus characteristics, as previously described, but also on the basis of the meaning (goal) of the observed actions.