Lecture 7 - classical conditioning

Question 1

What is learning?

Answer 1

To acquire skill or knowledge

Question 2

Thorndike (1974-1949)

Answer 2

Against anthropomorphising and anecdotes

Believed that animals learn through stimulus-response associations

Question 3

Thorndike experiments

Answer 3

Cats in puzzle boxes, food reward on escaping

• -> through process of trial and error, cats became much faster
• -> food reward reinforces connection between stimulus and response

LAW OF EFFECT

Question 4

Pavlov (1849-1936)

Answer 4

Stimulus-stimulus learning

Question 5

Tolman (1886-1959)

Answer 5

Cognitive approach

-behaviour is goal directed and purposive

Question 6

What is ethology?

Answer 6

A branch of zoology

Question 7

Tinbergen and Perdeck (1950)

Answer 7

Releasing stimulus for pecking is the red spot on the beak of the parent’s bill - only pecks for red spot, not anything else

Question 8

Lorenz

Answer 8

Imprinting, learning of instinctive behaviours

Question 9

What is habituation?

Answer 9

A decrease in responding following repeated exposure

-occurs in the S-R system

Question 10

What is sensitisation?

Answer 10

An increase in responding following repeated exposure

-Occurs in state systems, eg, pain and arousal

Question 11

When is sensitisation most likely?

Answer 11

Tends to occur towards intense, potentially harmful stimuli

Question 12

Extinction

Answer 12

When conditioned response no longer follows conditioned stimulus

Question 13

Watson and Reyner (1920)

Answer 13

Little Albert, white rat associations