WEEK 3- Learning Part 2 Flashcards
Latent learning
Is a type of learning which is not apparent in the learner’s behavior at the time of learning, but which manifests later when a suitable motivation and circumstances appear. . Example, after years of experience in your neighbourhood, you could probably tell a visitor that the corner shop is closed on Sunday, even if you had never tried to go there on a Sunday yourself.
Cognitive Maps
: is a mental representation of the environment. Cognitive maps develop naturally, and without the need for reinforcement, as people and animals gain experience with the world. Example, the rats on the Tolman experiments knew how the maze was arranged. Another example would be that we develop mental maps of shopping malls and city streets, even when we receive no direct reward for doing so.
Learned optimism
When you have repeated success at controlling a particular event, it is likely that you will develop a sense of mastery and perhaps a positive view of the world.
Learned helplessness
Is a tendency to give up any effort to control the environment. When your attempts at controlling an event over time consistently fails to succeed. That is, if an individual (animal or human) has learned that they typically cannot accomplish a certain task they may develop a sense of powerlessness as a result. And it was discovered when dogs who experienced repeated noxious stimuli (e.g., an electric shock) when they tried to escape a box they had been placed into, gradually came to accept that they could not escape the box even in the absence of the noxious stimuli. Ex, technology in adults.
Insight learning
The sudden realisation of the solution to a problem
There are four stages to insight learning which are:
- Preparation - the problem is too difficult to be solved. Gathering data.
- Incubation - the problem is ‘put on hold’ but worked on unconsciously.
- Insight - suddenly a mental representation of a solution to the problem.
- Verification - the solution to the problem is checked to see if it does indeed work.
Learning to learn
Is the type of learning in which previous experiences in problem solving are applied to new ones in a way that makes their solution seem to be instantaneous. Example, after all, chimpanzees have lots of experience at jumping on things and playing with sticks and other objects that can be used to solve the problems that Köhler posed for them.
Observational learning
Occurs when one sees the behaviour of another and models that behavior themselves. This type of learning is one of the most powerful sources of the socialisation process through which children learn about which behaviours are and are not appropriate in their cultures.
Social Cognitive Learning
Was developed by Albert Bandura, and proposed that learning occurs in a social environment and that much learning occurs by observing other people and then modelling that behaviour.
Bandura determined that there are four factors of observational learning:
- Attention: the learner needs to pay attention or focus on the other person’s behavior.
- Retention: remembering or retaining the information in one’s memory about the other person’s behavior.
- Production: producing or performing the observed behavior.
- Motivation: desire to reproduce the observed behavior.
Mirror cells
Are brain cells in the premotor cortex that unconsciously prepare the body to imitate others.
Vicarious Experience
Are the conditions that allow us to learn by watching what happens to others. Another definition would be in which a person is influenced by seeing or hearing about the consequences of other people’s behaviour, especially people whom they perceive as being similar to themselves in some way.
Instinctive Drift
Once a conditioned stimulus elicits a conditioned response, the organism has developed a learned association.
Is the tendency of an animal, of any species, to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour that interferes with operant conditioning and the learned responses that come with it
Learning can be influenced by:
Cognition, social environment and biology.
Skills learning
The complex action sequences, or skills, that people learn to perform in everyday life. Example: tying shoelaces, opening a door, operating a computer, kicking a football, driving a car.
It is developed through direct and vicarious learning processes involving imitation, instruction, reinforcement and, of course, lots of practice.
Food Phobia or Conditioned Taste Aversion
Is an avoidance reaction to certain taste or type of food.
In the classical experiment you have a:
- CS: taste (something sweet)
- US: drug (lithium chloride that causes nausea), radiation
- CR: nausea (animals will choose other flavours in a choice test).
After a while the taste will evolutionate into nausea.
Special features of Conditioned taste aversions (CTA):
- One trial learning
- Long-delay learning (hours)
- Highly specific
The biological basis for observational learning may lie partly in the operation of ___________.
Mirror neurons
Mirror neurons
Are cells in the brain that become activated by specific motions when an animal both performs and observes an action. Mirror neurons fire not only when we do something or experience something, but also when we see someone do or experience the same thing.
Cognitive psychologists have found that a classically conditioned response (such as fear) is more likely to develop if an unconditioned stimulus (such as electric shock) comes as a ________ than if it is _________.
Surprise; expected
Learning is affected not only by the _______ of the stimuli we experience, but also by our ______ about them.
Nature; expectations.
(Expectations also allow us to calculate the likely consequences of various courses of action).
