Unit 4- Learning (7-9%) Flashcards
Operant conditioning
Type of learning that strengthens with reinforcement or weakens with punishment
Law of effect
Thorndike’s principle that rewarded behavior is likely to continue with favorable consequences
Negative punishment
Removing something you like
Positive punishment
Adding something you don’t like
Learned helplessness
The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
Primary reinforcer
An innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need.
Skinner box (operant chamber)
A chamber containing a bar an animal can manipulate in order to get food or water
B.F. Skinner
Pioneer of operant conditioning: everything we do is determined by rewards and punishment. He also created the Skinner box
Edward Thorndike
Proposed Law of Effect. Experiment when he placed cat in a puzzle box; keep putting cat in same box, the quicker cat will be able to escape
Higher-order conditioning
Procedure where conditioned stimulus is paired with neutral stimulus, creating a second (weaker) conditioned stimulus
Shaping
a procedure in which reinforcers, such as food, gradually guide an animal’s actions toward a desired behavior.
Secondary or Conditioned Reinforcers
These get their power through learned association with primary reinforcers. (Ex. Skinner’s rat wants food. It work to turn on the light because it is associated with food.)
Mirror neurons
Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy
Little Albert
He was conditioned. When he was presented at a white rat he would reach to touch and then a hammer would strike a steel bar just behind his head. He then associated then loud noise with the rat. So every time time he saw a rat he would burst into tears.
Extinction
Diminishing of conditioned response. Occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus
Spontaneous recovery
Reappearance after a pause of extinguished conditioned response.
Generalization
The tendency once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses
Discrimination
In classical conditioning, learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus
Watson and Rayner
Pioneer in behaviorism and showed how you could condition fear into Little Albert
Classical Conditioning
A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.
Associative Learning
Learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning)
Unconditioned Response (UR)
In classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as salivation when food is in the mouth.