Lecture 19/20- Learning Flashcards
(14 cards)
What are reflexes?
Fast and automatic but don’t necessarily need the brain
Why are reflexes needed?
-Many organisms live in environments that have predictive relationships between events, but these can change. -To survive animals must modify their behaviour as a consequence of their experience with the environment.
What is habituation?
Persistent waning of a response as a result of repeated stimulation which is not followed by any kind of reinforcement.
What is one example of habituation involving neonatal rats?
Experiment in which two groups of neonatal rats split into Mozart and Schoenberg group for 52 days. Found avoidance of some aversive aspect of the music habituated with exposure.
What is one example of habituation involving water deprived rats?
Experiment in which water deprived rats were split into 2 groups of either sweetened and normal water or just normal water for 30mins. Shows how learning and innate behaviour can work together to be adaptive as rats are cautious about novel flavours.
What is acquisition?
Initial increase in responding to a CS when paired with US
What is extinction?
Weakening of CR if CS is subsequently presented w/o US.
What is spontaneous recovery?
Increase in extinguished conditioned response due to passage of time.
What is one way instrumental/operant conditioning is useful?
Widespread as all species can be trained
What is one way instrumental/operant conditioning is less useful?
Sometimes difficult if animal doesn’t respond then wont encounter reward.
What is continuous reinforcement?
Reward is delivered every time animal makes a response.
What is ratio schedule?
reward delivered after certain number of responses made
What is interval schedule?
reward is delivered after first response and after a certain interval/time.
Why is it considered a conservative approach?
-Physiology= brains are mostly made up of connection between neurons
-Occam’s razor= other things being equal the simplest explanation is best
