Week 8 - Learning Flashcards
Process by which experiences change our nervous
system and hence our behaviour
Learning
also
most common
CONDITIONED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
Types of Conditioning
■ Classical Conditioning
■ Operant Conditioning
■ Statistical Learning
■ Perceptual Learning
■ Relational Learning
Who was the main founder of Early Conditioning
Ivan Pavlov
Main contributor/founder of Behaviourism (/ Classical Conditioning)
John B. Watson
(1849-1936)
- Nobel Prize in
Physiology
“Father of Behaviourism”
Can a conditioned behaviour be de-conditioned?
True !
Known as Extinction
After training, excitation in CS center
flows to UCS center, which elicits the
same response as UCS
Pavlov’s proposal
physical representation of what
has been learned
Engram
_____ conducted an experiment to see if there is Localization with Engrams, the experiments showed that ______…
Karl Lashley (1890-1958)
■ Reasoned that if memories were connections between
brain areas, they could be severed with a knife
■ Trained rats on mazes and tasks, then made cuts to the
cortex to try to disrupt performance
HOWEVER
Cuts did not impair performance
– Learning did not depend on
connections across the cortex
■ Learning did not depend on a single area of the cortex
– Taking out a chunk of cortex impaired performance, but it was
about the chunk taken, not the cortical area itself
What two key principles did Karl Lashley (1890-1958) propose about the nervous system in his study of localization of engrams in the brain
- Equipotentiality: all parts of the cortex contribute equally to
complex functioning behaviors (e.g., learning) and any part can
substitute for any other - Mass action: the cortex works as a whole and more cortex is better
Examples of Engram
■ Tone (CS)
■ Air-puff (UCS)
■ Eye-blink (UCR – CR)
Who was known as the “mother of behaviour therapy”, and make great contributions to “desensitization”
Mary Cover Jones
(1897-1987)
■ Mother of
Behaviour Therapy
Laboratory Study of Fear: The Case of Peter (1924)
– Rabbit = Fear
– Rabbit = tasty food = fear reduction
– Direct conditioning (a.k.a., desensitization)
Mary Cover Jones
(1897-1987)
■ Mother of
Behaviour Therapy
**Learning is instantiated in the _______
+
Extra Engram Brian Area Facts
lateral interpositus
nucleus (LIP)**
■ Red nucleus is required to demonstrate the
learning (i.e., execute the eye-blink)
Who was the founder of Operant (Instrumental)
Conditioning
BF Skinner (1904-
1990)
“Giving something bad”
Positive Punishment
“Taking away something bad”
Negative Reinforcement
“Giving something good”
Positive Reinforcement
“Taking away something good”
Negative Punishment
A series of positive / negative reinforcements and punishments are central to ________________ theory of ___________ conditioning
BF Skinner (1904-
1990)
Operant (Instrumental)
The desired behavior is reinforced every
single time it occurs.
Continuous Reinforcement
Once the response is established. The
response is reinforced only part of the time.
■ Fixed-ratio or Variable ratio (# responses)
■ Fixed interval or Variable interval (amount of time)
Intermittent Reinforcement
Difference between Classical and Operant Conditioning
Classical conditioning involves learning through associations between stimuli, while operant conditioning involves learning through the consequences of behavior.
Classical conditioning focuses on involuntary, reflexive responses, whereas operant conditioning focuses on voluntary, goal-directed behaviors
The ability to perceive and
learn regularities
■ E.g, in language, such as the
speech sounds that comprise
a word
Statistical Learning
learning to “recognize” things
Perceptual Learning
(Who is this? What is this? Who sing’s this song?)
Mechanisms: Attention weighting; Imprinting; Differentiation; Unitization
*Most learning is more complex than simple Stimulus-Response
associations
*Involves learning the temporal and spatial relationships among objects
and events
This multifaceted type of learning is known as
Relational Learning
The process of short term memory being formed into long term memory
Consolidation
Memory which is:
■ Limited capacity
■ Fades without rehearsal
■ Usually more contextual
detail than LTM
Short Term Memory (STM)
Memory which is:
■ Unlimited capacity
■ Indefinite storage time
■ Stimulated with cue/hint,
unlike STM
Long Term Memory (LTM)
