biology and cognition

• an animal's capacity for conditioning is contrained by its biology
• Garcia and Robert Koelling: researched the effects of radiation on laboratory animals; taste aversion
• taste aversion: if you get sick after eating a food, you tend to avoid it afterwards
• we are biologically predisposed to learn things that affect our survival
• instinctive drift: naturally occuring behaviors that interfere with operant responses
• Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner: showed that an animal can learn the predictability of an event; tone + light - shock (they learn to fear the tone)
• Edward Chase Tolman and C.H. Honzik: experimented with rats and mazes; rats that explored a maze developed a cognitive map
• cognitive map: mental representation of the maze
• latent learning: learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it (hidden learning)
• insight: a sudden realization of a problem's solution
• intrinsic motivation: a desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake
• extrinsic motivation: a desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment
• coping: alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods
• problem- focus coping: alleviate stress directly by changing the stressor of the way we interact with it
• emotion-focused coping: alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring stressor and attending to emotional needs
• learned helplessness: the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated adverse events (uncontrollable event --> perceived lack of control --> generalized helpless behavior )
• Martin Seligman: experimented with dogs and shocked them; discovered learned helplessness
• Julian Rotter: external locus of control ( the perception that chance or outside forces determine their fate) and internal locus of control ( belief that people control their own destiny)
• self- control: the ability to control impulses and delay short- term gratification for longer-term reward