Human Learning

• Learning 


  A relatively permanent change in behavior that results from some type of experience
• Classical Conditioning

  • Reflex
  • Elicit
  • What happens before
  • 10 million bits/second
  • Pavlov and Watson
• Operant Conditioning

  • Consequences
  • Emitted
  • What happens after
  • 50 bits/second
  • Thorndike and Skinner
• Law of Similarity

  Two stimulus that are similar in nature will be associated
• Law of Contrast

  Two stimulus that are opposite in nature will be associated
• Law of Contiguity

  Two stimulus that appear together in space and time are associated
• Law of Frequency

  The more frequently two items occur together, the more strongly they are associated
• Wilhelm Wundt proposed using the scientific method to investigate issues

  • This would evolve to structuralism
  • Structuralists would make great use of introspection
• John Watson


  Believed that to make psychology an "objective science" , researchers would have to solely look at observable behaviors and environmental events that surround it
• Behaviorism 


  a natural science approach to psychology that focuses on the study of environmental influences on observable behavior.
• Methodological Behaviorism


  Asserts that, for methodological reasons, psychologists should study only those behaviors that can be directly observed
• Cognitive Maps 


  Mental representations of our spatial surroundings
• Independent Variable 


  Systematically varies across different conditions in an experiment

  • Manipulated by the experimenter
• Dependent Variable


  the aspect of an experiment that is allowed to vary freely to see if it is affected by changes in the independent variable.

  • They are measured by the experimenter
• Confounding Variable 


  An unmeasured third variable that influences both variables
• Stimulus


  Any event that can potentially influence behavior
• Response


  behavior that is manifested by a living organism which is the result of an external or internal stimulus
• Overt Behavior 


  Behavior that has the potential for being directly observed by an individual other than the one performing the behavior
• Covert Behavior 


  Behavior that can be perceived only by the person performing the behavior
• Appetitive Stimulus 


  An event that an organism will seek out
• Aversive Stimulus 


  An event that an organism will avoid
• Establishing Operation 


  A procedure that affects the appetitiveness or aversiveness of a stimulus
• Deprivation 


  The prolonged absence of an event that tends to increase the appetitiveness of that event
• Satiation 


  The prolonged exposure of an event, which tends to decrease the appetitiveness of that event
• Temporal Contiguity 


  the extent to which events occur close together in time.
• Spatial Contiguity 


  the extent to which events are situated close to each other in space.
• Intensity 


  The force or magnitude of the behavior
• Duration 


  the length of time that an individual repeatedly or continuously performs a certain behavior.
• Speed 


  a measure of how quickly or slowly a behavior occurs, or the rapidity with which one progresses through some type of distance.
• Experimental Research 


  experiments to discover cause-and-effect relationships between environmental events and behavior.
• Descriptive Research 


  involves simply describing the behavior and thesituation within which it occurs.

  • This research does not involve the manipulationof any variables.
• Simple-Comparison Design 


  Behavior in a baseline condition is compared to behavior in a treatment condition.
• Advantages of Animal Research

  • Can control genetic makeup
  • Can control their learning history
  • Can control their experimental environment
  • Can be used for experiments where testing on humans would be unethical
• Arguments against Animal Research

  • Findings aren't entirely applicable to humans
  • It is morally wrong
  • Animals should have rights similar to humans
• Elicited Behaviors 


  a behavior that is “drawn out” of an organism by the presentation of a stimulus
• Reflex


  a relatively simple, automatic response to a stimulus

  • Basic form of elicited behavior
• Habituation 


  a decrease in the strength of an elicited behavior following repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus
• Dishabituation 


  the reappearance of a habituated response following the presentation of a seemingly irrelevant novel stimulus
• Sensitization 


  an increase in the strength of an elicited behavior following repeated presentations of the eliciting stimulus
• Opponent-Process Theory


  An emotional event that elicits two competing processes

  • an a-process (or primary process) that is directly elicited by the event
  • a b-process (or opponent process) that is elicited by the a-process and serves to counteract the a-process.