Week 7-10 - Module 3 Flashcards
What is the definition of learning? (4 key characteristics)
The process by which experience of the world produces relatively sustained change in behaviour of an organism
Four characteristics Experience Single organism Change in behaviour Changes are sustained, not a fluke or coincidence
Why is it important that we learn?
Capacity to learn produces an evolutionary advantage in survival and mating
Describe habituation
Provide examples
The process by which an innate response is diminished by repeated exposure to a stimulus.
E.g. Deer in Nara are habituated to humans
Describe the process of classical conditioning using the labels for stimuli and responses.
Provide an example
Pairing conditioned stimuli (e.g. food) with neutral stimuli (e.g. a bell) will eventually induce an innate response to the now conditioned stimulus (the bell) with conditioned response (drooling)
E.g. Hearing the same ringtone as ours makes us reach for our phones
What makes classical conditioning happen faster or slower?
Repetition
Intensity - E.g. Being bitten by a dog
Order of pairing (?)
What is one-trial learning?
When conditioning occurs after just one incidence of pairing of stimulus and repsonse
Define generalisation. Use examples.
Generalisation
Association of the conditioned response with stimuli that are similar but distinct from the conditioned stimulus.
E.g. Associating dogs with danger after being bitten
Define discrimination. Use examples.
Selective association of the conditioned response with a particular stimulus but not other similar stimuli
E.g. Being afraid of large dogs but not small dogs after being bitten
What is extinction?
Elimination of a conditioned response
Typically through repeated exposures to the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned response
Define exposure therapy
Exposure to conditioned stimuli without unconditioned stimuli E.g. Fear of birds Unc Stim - swooping Unc Res - Fear NS - Birds
Treat by exposing to Con Stim (birds) without Unc Stim (Swooping)
What is systemic desensitisation?
Expose client to increasingly challenging stimuli
E.g. Holding a feather > being in a room with a caged bird > being outside among uncontrolled birds
What is flooding?
Expose client to fear-evoking stimuli and keep them there until it stops
E.g. Putting them in a room full of birds
What is Thorndike’s Law of Effect?
Positive consequences for behaviour make that behaviour more likely in future, and negative consequences deter that behaviour
What is an Operant?
A behaviour that is “emitted” and not necessarily elicited by any particular stimulus.
An association is made betwen a behaviour and a consequence (either positive or negative)
Describe the process of operant conditioning. Provide an example.
The likelihood of non-reflexive behaviour changes depending on the consequence
E.g. Kids receiving rewards to doing chores are more likely to do them
Define Skinner’s theory
Behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again.
Explain the difference between positive and negative reinforcements and punishments
Reinforcement - giving a dog a treat for doing a trick
Punishment - spraying a cat for bad behaviour
Positive - when a consequence is added. E.g. Giving a treat
Negative - when a consequence is subtracted. E.g. Taking a toy away from a child
What can influence the rate of operant conditioning?
Magnitude
Bigger punishments / rewards
Consistent pairing
More reliable links between operant and conditioning
Proximity of pairing
Shorter interval between reinforcement / punishment and behaviour
Association
Consequence must be relevant to the participant
E.g. If the reward is food, the participant must be hungry
What do fixed, variable, interval, and ratio mean in the context of operant conditioning?
Continuous
Behaviour is reinforced / punished every time it occurs
Fixed
Consequences are consistent and predictable
E.g. Every 6th coffee is free
Variable
Consequences are unpredictable and inconsistent
E.g. Gambling behaviours - rewards occur sporadically.
Makes response more resistant to extinction - you never know when the reward is coming backs, so you continue to exhibit behaviour
Interval
Consequences are based on time intervals
Ratio
Consequences are proportionate to operant performances
What is acquisition in learning?
When a stimulus comes to evoke the conditioned response
What is extinction in learning?
Elimination of a conditioned response
What is spontaneous recovery?
Reappearance of a conditioned response after a rest period or period of lessened response
What is secondary conditioning?
High order conditioning
Development of a conditioned response, using a pre-existing conditioned stimulus instead of an unconditioned one.
E.g. Celebrity spokespeople - you have a positive response to a product because you like the celebrity
What is token economy?
E.g. Giving a sticker to a child that they can trade in for rewards
Describe how you might teach a dog to pla dead when you point at it and say “bang!”
Shaping
Conditioning complex behaviours by rewarding successive demonstrations of behaviour that are closer and closer to the desired behaviour - “successive approximations”.
Rewards are not given for simple or dissimilar behaviours after complex behaviours are unlocked.
Why is it important to allow for social learning in addition to classical and operant conditioning?
Give examples.
Learning from watching others.
Behaviours acquired are performed or independent of consequences of the observed subject
E.g. Being polite to others, riding a bike
What influences whether you will perform a behaviour that you learn through observation?
Whether the consequences are positive or negative?
What is attention?
Focus on and processing of a fraction of the information available.
Can be selectively tuned for content.
What is selective attention? What is it useful for?
Focus on one particular item of info to the exclusion of others.
E.g. Searching for one title on Netflix
Useful for:
Searching
Screening
What is the dichotic listening task that researchers use to study attention?
Playing different audio to each ear and asking participants to focus on one side only - attended and unattended channels
What is the cocktail party effect?
Selectively attending to one auditory stimulus among many
If people selectively attend to particular information, what happens to information that they are not attending to?
It gets tuned out and ignored
How does a visual search task show that we can use parallel or serial processing?
Parallel processing
Targets are defined by a single feature pop out of the info we are searching through.
We process several stimuli at the same time to find our target.
E.g. When looking at an object, we see many of its characteristics at once
Serial processing
Targets defined by multiple features have to be processed sequentially, so it takes longer to find them.
E.g. When reading a sentence, you can’t process all of the words at once. You must read each word individually in sequence.
What happens when we divide our attention and try to perform two tasks at once?
Depends how many resources we have available to complete the tasks
How does the similarity between tasks affect our ability to divide our attention?
If the tasks require similar resources, we may fail at the tasks.
The greater the difference between the tasks, the more likely we are to complete them successfully.
Sometimes tasks that seem different will interfere with each other.
E.g. Driving and talking on the phone both use executive control and is likely to cause missed traffic signals.
What happens to the need for attention when we practice tasks?
These tasks use less resources
What are inattentional blindness?
When ou can’t see something that’s right in front of you
What is change blindness?
Observers often fail to notice large changes to objects or scenes when the change coincides with a brief visual disruption.
Why do they occur when we are not paying attention?
Because the are focusing on something else.
It’s not processed an further and does not properly enter our memories.
Why is it good that our memories don’t work like video recorders?
It would make them very inefficient and too specific.
E.g. Al sabretooth tigers are dangerous, not just the one we have encountered
How does information get into our short-term / working memory?
How is it held there?
When it’s encoded - we pay attention to the environment.
Repeating info can help to retain it in STM
What is working memory?
Limited capacity sstem that temporarily stores and process info.
E.g. In the equation 5 x 7 + 100, we might process the first part while holding the second part in our WM.
What are the four components of working memory and what do they do?
Phonological loop
Stores sound info
Passive / slave system
Visuospatial sketchpad
Stores visual or spatial info
Passive / slave system
Episodic buffer
Temporary integration and processing space
Central executive
Sequencing and management
Doesn’t store info, but controls sequence of actions in the other systems
What are two key characteristics of long term memory?
Appears to be unlimited in:
Duration
Capacity
How do we know that working memory and long term memory are different memory systems?
Experiments using serial position effect?
What is the serial position effect?
People remember the words at the beginning and end of a list, but not the middle.
