Exposure Learning Flashcards
Who pioneered research on bird song learning?
Peter Marler
What did Peter Marler find?
The male white crown sparrow is a good example. They learn their song over a critical period early in life. If they miss this period - an impoverished song is produced
What is aplysia
marine sea snail
What is habituation
response to a stimulus that is repeatedly presented will often decline over a number of presentations
example of habituation
An initial response to weak stimulation that is not in itself rewarding or aversive gradually declines over repeated presentations.
Aplysia initially responds to a gentle touch on the siphon by withdrawing both gill and siphon, but after many trials this response all but disappears.
Siphon sensory neuron synapses on motor neurons for siphon and gill. The connection strength weakens during course of habituation
Example of sensitisation
Aplysia initially responds weakly to a gentle touch on the siphon by withdrawing both gill and siphon, but after an aversive shock to the tail (that’s not paired with the sensory stimulation) this response becomes more vigorous.
What is the suppression ratio?
responses during CS/ responses during CS + responses during preCS
What did McLaren 1990 find about latent inhibition
- In LI group, put in a box and were hearing eight tones over 30 mins
- Controls go in same box but with no tones
- After, go back in boxes after four days, tones go on for them all
- They get dry food but no drink
- Theres a magazine with water and it is detected when they are there
- When the tone goes off, they get five seconds access for the water
- See how much they are at water before, after, during CS
- LI have preexposure
- LI is retardation in acquisition
- Whether you pare LI with food , water.. makes it slower to learn
Lantent inhibition shown in kids. Kaniel and Lubow 1986
- Youngsters looked at a screen like this. Had to press a key (e.g. the plant) in the middle, they see a fixation.
- After this preexposure, they are given a discrimination between the two
- If its one way you press a certain key, learn this through trial and error
- If you have not been preexposed it they learn it fine. Those who were prexposed struggled to get it
What did Gibson and Walk 1958 find
After preexposure to the shapes in the home cage, the rats were better able to discriminate between them when trained in the jumping stand, compared to non-preexposed controls.
• Preexposure to shapes
• Taught discrimination between the shapes
• If right one is the second, it is hinged at the top and food on the otherside
• When first started doing this, the animal thuds into it
• Rats were not originally good at this
what is face inversion effect
The inverted stimuli are much harder to tell apart. This makes recognition for upright faces superior to that for inverted ones
what is sensitisation
An initial response to weak stimulation is this time strengthened, but this is not conditioning per se.
• The fact that sensitisation exists also poses problems for the unequivocal demonstration of conditioning itself….
If sensitisation occurs - then the increase in responding after pairing a CS and US may not be due to conditioning at all - but simply another example of sensitisation.
what did diamond and carey 1986 find
The inversion effect in an old / new recognition experiment can be obtained with categories other than faces as long as they are extremely familiar to the subjects: e.g. experts (dog show judges!) with gundogs
• Latent Inhibition is a retardation in ….
• Latent Inhibition is a retardation in learning to a stimulus brought about by simple pre-exposure to that stimulus.
