Learning Flashcards
(44 cards)
What is learning?
Learning refers to any enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience.
What are the three things that learning is?
- Change / Adaptation
- Enduring
- Necessary for survival.
What cannot learning do? What must it do?
Learning cannot be observed directly. It is inferred from behavior that is observed.
What is a reflex?
A behavior that is elicited automatically by an environmental stimulus.
What is a stimulus?
Something in the environment that elicits a response.
What is habituation?
The reduction in response strength of a reflex over repeated presentations of the stimulus.
What is dishabituation?
The reappearance of the response to the initial stimuli.
What are three assumptions shared by theorists of learning?
- Experience shapes behavior
- Learning is adaptive
- Careful experimentation can uncover laws of learning, many of which apply to humans and non humans alike.
What is classical conditioning?
The learning of a new association between two previously unrelated stimuli.
What do we learn in classical conditioning?
That a stimulus predicts a certain event and we respond accordingly.
What is a unconditioned reflex
A reflex that occurs naturally without prior learning.
What is a UCR?
A response that does not have to be learned.
What is a CR?
A response that has to be learned.
What is a CS?
A stimulus that through learning has come to evoke a conditioned response.
What is conditioned taste aversion?
A learned aversion to a taste associated with an unpleasant feeling, usually nausea.
How can the functioning of the immune system be affected by classical conditioning?
Conditioned immune response can occur when a conditioned stimulus is paired with a stimulus that evokes a change in the functioning of the immune system.
What are the principles of classical conditioning?
- Acquisition
- Extinction
- Spontaneous recovery
- Stimulus generalization
- Stimulus discrimination.
What is stimulus generalization?
Once an organism has learned to associate a CS with a UCS, it may respond to stimuli that resemble the CS with a similar response.
What is stimulus discrimination?
The learned tendency to respond to restricted range of stimuli or only to the stimulus used in training.
What is extinction?
The process by which a CR is weakened by presentation of the CS without the UCS (dog and the bell).
What is spontaneous recovery?
The re-emergence of a previously extinguished CR.
What is paradoxical conditioning?
The CR is actually the bodies attempt to counteract the effects of a stimulus that is about to occur.
Explain how research suggests that learning occurs through changes in the strength of connections between neurons.
Classical conditioning alters the action of neurons that ultimately link stimuli with responses.
What is long-term potentiation?
The tendency of a group of neurons to fire more readily after consistent stimulation from other neurons which is what presumably occurs in classical conditioning.
