Quiz 2; 9, 3, 17, 10, 6, 7

• Learning


  Any enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience
• Learning theories


  • Assume that experience shapes behaviour
  • Assume that learning is adaptive
  • Require systematic experimentation to uncover laws of learning
• Classical conditioning


  A type of learning studied by behaviourists where an environmental stimulus produces a response in an organism
• Unconditioned reflex


  An innate reflex
• Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)


  The stimulus that produces the response in an unconditioned reflex
• Unconditioned response (UCR)


  A response that does not have to be learned
• Conditioned response (CR)


  A response that has been learned
• Conditioned stimulus (CS)


  A stimulus that, through learning, has come to evoke a CR
• Stimulus generalisation


  • An organism responds to stimuli that resemble the CS with a similar response
• Stimulus discrimination


  • The learned tendency to respond to a very restricted range of stimuli or to only the one used during training
• Extinction in classical conditioning


  The process by which a CR is weakened by presentation of the CS without the UCS
• Factors that influence classical conditioning


  • Interstimulus interval
  • Individual's learning history
  • Prepared learning
• Neuroscientists have begun to track down the neural processes involved in classical conditioning
• Research on the marine snail Aplysia and on long-term potentiation (LTP) in more complex animals suggests that learning involves an increase in the strength of synaptic connections through changes in the presynaptic neuron, changes in the postsynaptic neuron and probably an increase in dendritic connections between the two
• Operant conditioning


  Learning to operate on the environment to produce a consequence
• Operant


  A behaviour that is emitted rather than elicited by the environment
• Consequence


  Said to lead to reinforcement if it increases the probability that a response will recur
• Reinforcer


  An environmental consequence that occurs after an organism has produced a response, which makes the response more likely to recur
• Positive reinforcement


  The process whereby presentation of a stimulus (a reward or pay-off) after a behaviour makes the behaviour more likely to occur again
• Positive reinforcer


  An environmental consequence that, when presented, strengthens the probability that a response will recur
• Negative reinforcement


  The process whereby termination of an aversive stimulus (a negative reinforcer) makes a behaviour more likely to recur
• Negative reinforcers


  Aversive or unpleasant stimuli that strengthen a behaviour by their removal
• Punishment


  Decreases the probability of a response, through either exposure to an aversive event following a behaviour (positive punishment) or losing or failing to obtain reinforcement previously associated with behaviour (negative punishment)
• Punishment is commonplace in human affairs but is frequently applied in ways that render it ineffective
• Extinction in operant conditioning


  Occurs if enough conditioning trials pass in which the operant is not followed by its previously learned environmental consequence
• Phenomena that help explain the power of operant conditioning


  • Schedules of reinforcement
  • Discriminative stimuli
  • Behavioural context
  • Characteristics of the learner
• Schedules of reinforcement


  • Continuous reinforcement
  • Fixed-ratio
  • Variable-ratio
  • Fixed-interval
  • Variable-interval
• Operant and classical conditioning share many common features, such as extinction, prepared learning, discrimination, generalisation and the possibility of maladaptive associations
• Although operant conditioning usually applies to voluntary behaviour, it can also be used in techniques such as biofeedback to alter autonomic responses, which are usually the domain of classical conditioning
• In everyday life, operant and classical conditioning are often difficult to disentangle because most learned behaviour involves both
• Cognitive-social theory


  Incorporates concepts of conditioning from behaviourism but adds a focus on cognition and on social learning
• Latent learning


  Learning that has occurred but is not currently manifest in behaviour
• Locus of control


  The generalised expectancies people hold about whether or not their own behaviour will bring about the outcomes they prefer
• Learned helplessness


  The expectancy that one cannot escape aversive events and the motivational and learning deficits that accrue from it
• Explanatory style


  The way people make sense of bad events
• Individuals with a depressive or pessimistic explanatory style see the causes of bad events as internal, stable and global
• Expectancies such as locus of control and explanatory style differ across cultures, since cultural belief systems offer people ready-made ways of interpreting events, and people who live in a society share common experiences (such as work and schooling) that lead to shared beliefs and expectancies
• Observational learning


  Learning by observing the behaviour of others
• Tutelage


  Direct instruction
• Modelling


  Observational learning in which a human (or other animal) learns to reproduce behaviour exhibited by a model