The blend of ethology and learning theory Flashcards
Why is it important that we understand unwelcome and abnormal behavours?
- Work, health and safety risks for people working with animals
- Safety risks for pet owners and the general public
- Animal welfare risks
What is meant by learning?
A relatively permanent change in response that occurs as a result of experience
What is meant by training?
Drawing out desirable and suppressing undesirable innate behaviours to institute novel responses
What is imprinting?
- Mostly promotes survival, newborn innate behaviour
What are some characteristics of imprinting?
o Occurs at a critical sensitive period
o Irreversible
o Establishes an individual’s preference for certain species
o Affects some behaviours more than others
o Is fortified by stressful stimuli
What are the two main learning categories?
- Non associative learning
- associative learning
What is meant by non-associative learning?
An animal is exposed to a single stimulus to which it can become habituated or sensitised. There are two categories:
- Habituation: Repeated representations of the stimulus by itself cause a decrease in the response (eg. zoo animals not fearful of people)
- Sensitisation: Repeated representations of the stumulus by itself cause an increase in the response (eg. fireworks and thunder)
What is associative learning? What are the two conditioning responses associated with this learning?
- A relationship between at least two stimuli becomes established
- Classical conditioning
- Operant conditioning
What is classical conditioning?
- Pavlovs experiment
- Rewards are associated with stimuli
- Acquisition of a response to a new stimulus by association with an old stimulus
- Involves coupling a stimulus with an innate behaviour or physiological response
What is operant conditioning?
- A voluntary activity that brings about a reward
- Rewards associated with responses
- Enables an animal to associate events over which it has control
What type of learning do you think most animal training exercises rely on for learning?
Operant conditioning - rewards based
What are the two types of reinforcers?
Primary (eg. treat) and secondary (eg. clicker)
Is timing important for reinforcement in training?
- Yes, very important
- Animals need to associate the reinforcer directly with the behaviour
Why would extinction occur in training?
- Happens as a result of reinforcement no longer following the learnt response (or when a conditioned stimulus is continuously presented without the unconditioned stimulus)
- Resulting effect is an eventual reduction in response strength
- Frustration effect can occur early in extinction
- applies to BOTH welcome and unwelcome behaviour
Why would extinction occur in training?
- Happens as a result of reinforcement no longer following the learnt response (or when a conditioned stimulus is continuously presented without the unconditioned stimulus)
- Resulting effect is an eventual reduction in response strength
- Frustration effect can occur early in extinction
- applies to BOTH welcome and unwelcome behaviour
What are the schedules of reinforcement?
- Constant
- intermittent (invariable or variable)
- differential reinforcement
What are some examples of positive punishment?
Hitting a dog to stop it jumping
What are some examples of negative punishment?
Not giving a dog attention when it jumps up on you
What is negative reinforcement?
- Occurs when an animal learns to behave a certain way to avoid a negative stimulus or reduce its unpleasantness
- Again, timing is important
- Commonly confused with punishment
What is punishment?
- Stimuli applied at the time, or after, a response
- As with reinforcement, can be both positive and negative (positive = adds something, negative = takes something away)
What aspects of training make a response more likely in the future?
Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement
What aspects of training make a response less likely in the future?
Positive and negative punishment
Explain generalisation
Responses to not only conditioned stimuli, but stimuli similar to the conditioned ones
Explain discrimination
Responses to very specific stimuli (opposite of generalisation)
Explain counterconditioning
A process in which an animal that is reactive, fearful, or aggressive to a specific stimulus learns to become accepting of the stimulus by pairing the stimulus with something that the animal likes or wants
Explain flooding
Prolonged exposure to a stimulus that an animal is reactive towards or fearful of, at a level that triggers the response continuously until it stops. Generally not recommended
Explain avoidance
The act of preventing an individual from engaging in unwelcome behaviours
Explain distraction and redirection
A process in which a reward is used to lure the animal’s attention away from one stimulus to another
Why would you train an alternate behaviour?
- To get an alternate response
- Process in which an appropriate behaviour that is incompatible with the problem behaviour is taught as an alternate response using positive reinforcement
Explain learned helplessness
Animal ceases offering any behaviours because they learn they have no control over outcomes.
- Welfare issue
