Week 3/4 - Learning Flashcards
What is learning about?
The ability to adapt in response to environmental changes.
This adaptation usually involves a change in response to specific conditions, signals or processes.
What are some of the costs of learning?
- significant parental time and investment
- often a delay in the outcomes produced from learning
- dangers from trial an error (ie development fallibility)
- requires complex CNS and significant metabolic energy usage from the brain
What is Noticing and Ignoring learning?
The act of noticing an important event but not changing your behaviour in response if it happens continually without impacting you
What is Learning What Events Signal learning?
Understanding the signs that events provide to indicate they are about to happen
What is Learning About the Consequences of Behaviour learning?
Registering the results/outcomes of certain behaviours to avoid making future mistakes and to reinforce behaviours that produce positive outcomes
What is Learning From Others learning?
Taking feedback from the outcomes/consequences of others’ behaviours
What is learning?
The enduring change in behaviour based on interaction with the environment (ie lived experiences).
IMPORTANT: It is not observable, instead it is an inferred process from developing associations between environmental stimuli and behavioural responses
Why are instincts and reflexes NOT learning?
Instincts are the result of an organism’s genotype and reflexes are an automatic reaction (not able to be controlled) to some environmental change or condition. Neither are able to be changed with environmental interaction.
What is non-associative learning?
When learning from a SINGLE stimulus
What is Habituation?
The decline in the tendency to respond to an event that becomes familiar or is repeatedly presented.
Caused by MILD stimuli
What is Sensitisation?
The increase in the tendency to respond to an event that becomes familiar or is repeatedly presented.
Caused by INTENSE stimuli
What is classical conditioning?
Learning a new associations between two previously unrelated stimuli and responding through reflexes or autonomic responses (involuntary).
Identify and describe the three different types of stimulus
NEUTRAL - an event/stimulus that doesn’t elicit any particular response
UNCONDITIONED - an event/stimulus that elicits an automatic (involuntary) response (ie unconditioned response)
CONDITIONED - a previously neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a conditioned response
What are the three phases of Classical Conditional?
- ACQUISITION -
Gradually learn or acquire the CR causing the CR to increase in strength
Note: the steepness of the acquisition curve is dependent on how close together the UCS and CS are presented (half a second is optimal) - EXTINCTION -
The elimination of a CR by removal of the UCS (ie the removal of the food in Pavlov’s experiment). The CR decreases in magnitude and eventually disappears when the CS is repeatedly presented alone. - SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY -
A phenomenon in which representing the UCS with the CS causes a revival of the CR (this is often in a weaker form though).
What is associative learning?
What is Stimulus Generalisation?
When CS’s that are similar, but not identical, to the original CS elicit the same CR.
What is required for a CS to elicit a CR?
The conditioned stimulus must be a predictor of the imminent arrival of the unconditioned stimulus.
What is required for a CS to elicit a CR?
The conditioned stimulus must be a predictor of the imminent arrival of the unconditioned stimulus.
What are the two types of contingency (ie predictions)?
- Excitatory conditioning - creating a predictor of something happening
- Inhibitory conditioning - creating a predictor of something NOT happening
What is Robert A. Rescorla’s Theory?
CONTINGENCY THEORY - Conditioned stimulus needs to be a useful predictor of the unconditioned stimulus for learning to take place
What is the Contiguity Theory?
The idea that when two stimuli are presented together in time, associations are formed between the two
What are the factors that influence the acquisition of a conditioned response?
- Sequence - the timing between the CS and the US
- Strength - the stronger the US is the greater the conditioning effect
- Number of pairings - the more times the US and CS are paired together, the more reliable the signal becomes and hence the greater the conditioning
What are the four types of sequences that influence the acquisition of a CR?
Delayed conditioning - when the CS comes first and the US succeeds it (MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD)
Trace conditioning - when the CS comes first followed by a gap (ie the trace interval) and then the US
Simultaneous conditioning - when the CS and US start and finish at the same time
Backward conditioning - when the US comes before the CS
What is the Opponent Process Theory and who developed it?
Solomon and Corbit (1974) developed this theory which concludes that:
An emotional stimulus creates an initial response that is followed by adaptation and then an opposite response.
It consists of the A-process and B-process:
- A-process is the initial reaction that occurs at the onset of a stimulus and drops off immediately once it ends
- B-process is the after reaction that causes an emotional reaction that is opposite to the initial reaction; its onset and delay are more sluggish
The observed response is the sum of the A and B processes (eg fear + relief = thrill)
What are the characteristics of emotional reactions?
They are BIPHASIC which means that the initial reaction is followed by an opposite after-reaction.
- primary reaction weakens with repeated stimulations (ie exposure)
- after reaction is strengthened
How is the Opposite Process Theory homeostatic?
It assumes that neurophysiological mechanisms involved in emotional behaviour serve to maintain emotional stability.
How does addiction relate to OPT?
Addiction is caused by the process of repeatedly eliciting Stage A to escape the negative experience of Stage B.
Note: the Stage A peak decreases in magnitude over time while Stage B increases in magnitude over time
Tip: Changing the context in which Stage A is elicited can enhance the Stage A experience
What is the difference between spontaneous recovery and reacquisition?
Both processes occur after extinction.
Spontaneous Recovery - you only reintroduce the CS (this is the weaker process)
Reacquisition - you reintroduce the CS and US pair to reintroduce the condition
