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PSYC 403 > Lecture 8 > Flashcards

Lecture 8 Flashcards

1
Q

What is the difference between Operant and Respondent (classical) conditioning?

A
  • Operant: organism learns to actively manipulate/control their environments (can explain all types of behaviour)
  • Respondent: more passive; new connections formed btw stimuli/responses (more limited!)
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2
Q

Who coined the term “Respondent Conditioning”?

A

Skinner (his term for classical/Pavlovian conditioning)

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3
Q

How is Skinner’s Operant Chamber or “Skinner Box” different from Thorndike’s puzzle box?

A
  • generally similar concept
  • box is more complex than Thorndike’s
  • Thorndike’s work was comparative psychology, Skinner is focusing on behaviour
  • Skinner had way more research projects
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4
Q

What is Thorndike’s law of effect?

A
  • certain stimulus-response sequences are followed by pleasure and they tend to be strengthened (“stamped in”); those followed by pain tend to be weakened (“stamped out”)
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5
Q

An extinction curve, first used in _____’s research, is a mathematical curve that represents a reduction in ______ in the absence of _______

A

SKINNER
response rate; reinforcers

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6
Q

How did Skinner come up with the extinction curve?

A
  • discovered it bc the food delivery mechanism for his pigeons was broken!!
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7
Q

What is a fixed-interval reinforcement schedule?

A
  • operant conditioning schedule in which only first response after some specified period of time is reinforced
  • eg can only be reinforced for response once every 30 seconds
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8
Q

What is behaviour shaping?

A
  • can condition very complex behaviours by breaking them down into small components
  • eg clicker training with dogs (pair click with food so it becomes secondary reinforcer so you can reinforce complex sequences of behaviour without stopping to give food)
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9
Q

What is the difference between primary and secondary reinforcers?

A
  • Primary: unconditioned/natural reinforcer; do not require pairing with another stimulus to function as a reinforcer
  • Secondary: acquire power only after having been paired w primary reinforcers (eg clicker, money)
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10
Q

Skinner taught pigeons to play _____ using a technique called _____. The point of doing this was ______

A

ping pong!
behaviour shaping
point was to show that he could control behaviour and to introduce idea that this ability was pretty limitless…

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11
Q

What is programmed instruction?

A
  • educational technique devised by Skinner
  • complicated subjects like math broken down into simple stepwise components presented in order of increasing difficulty
  • positively reinforce students for each incremental response
  • very effective for learning simpler things! (eg multiplication)
  • Dr. Roy’s kids use a platform at school that uses this
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12
Q

What was Skinner’s proposal to the US military in WWII to create teleguided missiles?

A
  • he trained pigeons to peck buttons to keep missiles on course
  • wasn’t perfectly reliable but ended up working really well by using avg. of 3 pigeons’ pecking
  • military ended up picking a diff prototype :(
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13
Q

What did Skinner think about the idea of free will?

A
  • free will is an illusion; we just FEEL like we are acting freely when under the influence of positive reinforcement
  • by extension, punishing people for something they did out of their own “free will” is absurd
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14
Q

Skinner:
People are credited for good things they do of their own free will, but not if they have to do the thing. In reality, the only difference between the 2 is…..

A

in the latter we know the reinforcement contingencies involved

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15
Q

Skinner believes that the best and most ethical thing to do is to base society on ______

A

positive reinforcement

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16
Q

Define causal determinism and causal indeterminism

A
  • Determinism: philosophical concept that every event or state of affairs is the result of preceding events in accordance with the principle of cause and effect (idea is that if we had all the relevant data, we could predict everything you will do from the moment you’re born)
  • Indeterminism: philosophical concept that not all events/states of affairs are strictly determined by preceding events (making a decision is like tossing a coin)
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17
Q

What are the two positions one can have within incompatibilism?

A
  • Libertarianism: we are free (causal det. is false)
  • Skepticism: freedom is impossible (freedom is equally inconsistent w causal det. and causal indet.)
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18
Q

What is rational compatibilism?

A
  • causal determination by recognition of what I should do
  • once you understand the right thing to do, you kinda have to do it bc not doing it would be irrational and therefore not an example of free will
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19
Q

Hobbes is a naturalist in the sense that he believes that there is _______ between animal and human action

A

no stark distinction (both examples of free will)

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20
Q

What did Hobbes think about free will?

A
  • freedom of action is when there are no obstacles preventing the realization of our desires
  • actions that are freely willed are actions we take based on prior decisions (so reflexes for example are not freely willed)
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21
Q

What metaphor can be used to understand Hobbes’ position on free will?

A
  • freedom of a marionette
  • hand manipulating it is “desire”
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22
Q

What are 2 issues with Hobbes’ theory raised in class?

A
  • view that freely willed actions are based on prior desired conflicts w common sense notion that sometimes desires can conflict w capacity to act freely (eg addiction; desire to take drug interferes w will not to)
  • animals like sharks can act on prior desires but we can’t rly say they have free will
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23
Q

What did physicalists (18th/19th century physiology) believe about free will?

A
  • believe ppl are just like sophisticated machines (like Skinner)
  • no mind; no free will
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24
Q

What does Skinner think of Hobbes’ model of human/animal action?

A
  • the “decision” (to raise hand or wtv) comes from past reinforcement contingencies, not free will
  • Hobbes: passive desire/wanting to raise hand leads to raising one’s hand
  • Skinner: past reinforcement contingencies lead to raising one’s hand
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25
Q

Skinner is a(n) (in/compatibilist) and believes in _____

A

incompatibilist; believes in causal determinism

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26
Q

What did Freud believe about free will?

A
  • unconscious forces strongly influence our thoughts, emotions, and actions
  • can be understood as limitations to free will, BUT ego has a degree of control over actions
  • he is a compatibilist BUT idea of unconscious processes doesn’t rly leave room for freedom
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27
Q

What did Jung believe about free will?

A
  • “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”
  • more optimistic, says we can become freer if we choose to listen to our unconscious
  • metaphor of rabbit (unconscious) calling Alice (ego) to become conscious of it
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28
Q

What did William James believe about free will?

A
  • “my first act of free will shall be to believe in free will”
  • chose to believe in free will in personal life bc it was useful and believed in determinism in scientific work
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29
Q

According to Victor E. Frankl, what is the ultimate freedom?

A
  • the freedom to choose your attitude towards your circumstances (even in most extreme and dehumanizing circumstances – eg holocaust)
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30
Q

To make psychology more scientific, Watson wanted to get rid of _______

A

introspection! (and by extension if we have to get rid of mind/consciousness, so be it)

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31
Q

Why did Dr. Roy use the metaphor of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in relation to Watson’s thinking?

A
  • bc he was willing to throw out idea of mind/consciousness (the baby) to get rid of introspection (the bathwater)
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32
Q

In the 50s and 60s, behaviorism was directly challenged by ____ and ____

A

Linguistics (Chomsky) and Artificial Intelligence

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33
Q

What were the key points of Noam Chomsky’s 1957 “Syntactic Structures”? How did this go against behaviorism?

A
  • we can understand correctness of syntax (surface structure) even is sentence is semantically meaningless (deep structure)
  • the syntactic structure of language is too complex to be learned from associations or trials and error
  • children have to have an innate “universal grammar” (general constraints/rules; not language specific)
  • goes against behaviourism bc suggests that mind is not a blank slate!!
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34
Q

What were the key points of Skinner’s 1957 “Verbal Behaviour”?

A
  • contrarily to intuition:
  • we don’t generate internal copies of external objects to know them
  • we act as if we know them based on previous reinforcement
  • only way to demonstrate this knowledge is through behaviour, including verbal behaviour
  • thought is internal verbal behaviour

**published at same time as Chomsky’s book and kinda argues opposite

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35
Q

In 1959, Chomsky wrote a response to Skinner, which is considered one of the turning points in favor of _______. He argued that ______

A

in favour of cognitive psychology!

argued that knowledge of grammatical structures is knowledge of a set of rules which can’t be learned through associations

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36
Q

What was the Pascaline created by Blaise Pascal?

A
  • the first calculator (addition)
  • not flexible (could only do 1 thing they were programmed to do)
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37
Q

How did George Boole contribute to artificial intelligence?

A
  • any mathematical operation can be expressed by logical operations involving 0 and 1 (“Boolean operations”)
38
Q

How did Alan Turing contribute to artificial intelligence?

A
  • developed argument that a machine that can perform boolean logical operations would be able to solve any type of algorithm (eg Turing Machine)
  • created machine for British army in WWII to crack codes (could be easily reprogrammed bc it used Boolean programming)
  • prosecuted for homosexual act and was chemically castrated; died of cyanide poisoning 2y later (likely suicide)
39
Q

How did Claude Shannon contribute to artificial intelligence?

A
  • proposed that those Boolean operations could be implemented in electrical circuits (binary on/off switches)
  • initiated field of Information Theory
40
Q

In 1943, Warren McCulloch proposed that the brain could be thought of as a _____ device

A

Boolean! (neurons fire on/off)

41
Q

Information Theory, a field initiated by _____, was based on the idea that any communication of signal can be analyzed in terms of a _______

A

Claude Shannon; fundamental unit called the bit

42
Q

What is a “bit”? (information theory)

A
  • amount of info that can be conveyed by open or closed status of a single binary switch (1 or 0)
43
Q

What are the 3 main steps of information theory

A
  1. Encoding input into bits
  2. Transmission
  3. Decoding
44
Q

Hardware is to Software as the Brain is to _____

A

Operations performed by brain

45
Q

What were the 2 main positions of brain researchers in the 19th century?

A
  • localization of brain function vs. equipotentiality
46
Q

Who invented phrenology? What was an early example?

A
  • Gall!
  • one of women patients w strong erotic inclinations had bump over the cerebellum; examined others w strong sexual drives and confirmed observation that “amativeness” is located in the cerebellum
47
Q

Phrenology was originally called ____

A

cranioscopy

48
Q

Who was Spurzheim?

A
  • disciple of Gall (inventor of phrenology)
  • moved to Paris w Gall when they ran into problems w Roman Catholic Church in Vienna (1807)
  • eventually split w Gall (1812) and exported phrenology to UK and USA
49
Q

Who were the Fowler brothers?

A
  • promoted phrenology in the US (1840-1911)
50
Q

What did Pierre Flourens find in his systematic ablation studies in animals?

A
  • one of first systematic series of studies using ablation as experimental technique!
  • found that big structures of NS had divergent functions but that within each region there wasn’t any specialization (equipotentiality)
  • deficits following ablation of cortex are not localized, but rather proportionate to size of lesion!!
  • neuronal plasticity: sometimes deficits improve over time bc other parts of brain take over function of lost part
51
Q

What did Flourens find the cerebellum was involved in?

A
  • not sexual drive, but motor coordination
52
Q

Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud showed that language deficits were associated with lesions in the _____

A

frontal lobe

53
Q

Why wasn’t Bouillaud taken seriously? What did he do to try to change this?

A
  • was trained as a phrenologist so scientists didn’t take him seriously
  • so offered to pay 500 francs (lots of money) to anyone showing a case of frontal lobe damage w/o speech deficit
54
Q

How does Broca’s expressive/productive aphasia present?

A
  • patient unable to speak fluently but comprehension is preserved
55
Q

In 1861, Broca did autopsy on patient “Tan” which revealed a lesion on the _______ (Broca’s area). This was a big argument in favour of _____.

A

left frontal hemisphere
localization

56
Q

In 1870, Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig used electrical stimulation of the brain to study brain function and discovered the _____

A

motor strip! (region w specialized roles; hard for other areas to take over if damaged)

57
Q

David Ferrier followed up on the work by Fritsch and Hitzig and identified the ____, ____ cortex, and ____ cortex

A

sensory strip; visual cortex; auditory cortex
(regions w specialized roles; hard for other areas to take over if damaged)

58
Q

How does Wernicke’s sensory aphasia present?

A
  • unable to understand speech and with fluent but meaningless language
  • associated w damage to Wernicke’s area
59
Q

How does conduction aphasia present? What causes it?

A
  • patients can understand language and can speak fluently but w some paraphasias (also unable to repeat)
  • damage in connection btw Broca + Wernicke areas
60
Q

From 1915-1929, Karl Lashley conducted several studies on role of brain in learning and found that deficits depend on ______ and ______

A

the size of the ablation and the difficulty of the maze

61
Q

Equipotentiality is a form of neural _____, first identified by _____ and revisited by _____, in which healthy areas of the brain have the ability to ______

A

plasticity
Flourens
Lashley
take over the functions of damaged areas

62
Q

Who founded the MNI?

A

Wilder Penfield!

63
Q

What did Dr. Penfield find when he stimulated the brains of epileptic patients?

A
  • some of responses to stimulation resembled memories
  • these experiential responses were different from memories (more vivid, as if reliving experience)
64
Q

What are experiential responses? (Penfield)

A
  • hallucinatory “dreams” or “flashbacks” of real events from past, usually w unremarkable content
  • reported by Penfield’s patients during his cortical stimulation studies
65
Q

Who is McGill’s most famous psych prof?

A

Donald Hebb (in top 20 list of psychologists!)

66
Q

What event altered the course of Hebb’s life (and career)?

A
  • death of his wife in 1934
  • moved from mtl to Chicago to work with Lashley, got a PhD from Harvard in neuroscience
  • eventually came back to Montreal to study w Penfield
  • after a few years at Queens and in Florida, he got a prof job at McGill
67
Q

What mystery did Hebb want to solve in his book “The Organization of Behavior”?

A
  • the fact that our brains are able to perceive an infinity of things even though we have a finite number of neurons
  • solution: idea that diff neurons can combine and form new synaptic connections (these connections are how we can perceive the infinity of things in the external reality)
68
Q

Explain Hebb’s principle of synaptic plasticity (cells that fire together, wire together)

A
  • when cells are activated at the same time, they form connections
  • these new connections remain there even in the absence of a stimulus (learning process!)
  • now when a part of the same stimulus is presented (eg fragmented circle), the whole network will get activated by activating only a few neurons within it
69
Q

Brenda Milner taught psychology at U de M and worked at the ______; obtained her PhD w ____ and _____ on the topic of ______

A

MNI; Hebb and Penfield; temporal lobe damage

70
Q

Patient H.M. underwent an experimental operation, removing portions of his _____, including the ____, to relieve severe epileptic seizures.

A

temporal lobe; hippocampus

71
Q

What type of amnesia did patient H.M. have? What did this teach us?

A
  • anterograde amnesia (can’t learn anything new)
  • BUT performance on difficult visuo-motor tasks could improve (but had no awareness he had done it before)
  • shows that declarative memory is separate from procedural memory
72
Q

Neuropsychology is a branch of psych research/practice that looks at the relationship btw ___ and ____.
Research traditionally focuses on understanding ______.
Practice aimed at ______.

A

brain and behaviour

consequences of brain damage and localizing affected tissue

assessing behavioral/mental consequences of injury and administering the rehabilitation programme

73
Q

What does Physicalism posit about the relationship between mind and matter?

A
  • all mental phenomena and consciousness can be fully explained and accounted for by physical processes and properties
  • aims to reduce mind to just matter (contrast to cartesian dualism)
74
Q

What problem with Cartesian dualism does physicalism try to get rid of?

A
  • how to connect mind and body (if they are separate)
  • suggests instead that there is just body (matter)
75
Q

What two physicalist theories were presented in class?

A
  • Behaviorism
  • Mind-Brain Identity
76
Q

What does Logical Behaviorism (version 1.0) argue?

A
  • contents of the mind entirely correspond to the behavior associated with it
  • ex anger isn’t an inner and private mental state; it is the aggressive behaviour itself!
  • ex thought isn’t inner process behind words you speak; thought is the speaking and writing
  • this is a more radical version of behaviorism!
77
Q

What is the problem with logical behaviorism (1.0)?

A
  • you can feel an emotion (eg anger) without showing it!
78
Q

What does logical behaviorism (version 2.0) argue? What other idea does this fit well with?

A
  • mental states are dispositions to behave a certain way
  • ex even if someone doesn’t yell out or punch, they may be ready to yell out or punch, and this disposition is anger
  • fits well w Tollman’s purposive behaviorism (latent learning is similar to disposition to act a certain way)
79
Q

What was the counter-example to logical behaviorism presented in class?

A
  • The Super-Spartans (Hilary Putnam)
  • imagine Super-Spartans who can suppress all involuntary pain behavior (experience it but don’t express it)
  • might say it’s unpleasant but would say it neutrally
  • shows it is theoretically possible to have the mental state without the disposition
  • SO behaviorism, as a theory of mind, is WRONG
80
Q

The Mind-Brain Identity Theory argues that…

A
  • the conscious mind and the brain are the same thing (at least some parts of the brain)
  • ex. pain is brain process B (reductionist!)
  • should be taken as a scientific theory, not a definition
  • theory refuted by functionalism (among other arguments)
81
Q

What is the distinction between reductionism and emergentism?

A
  • reductionism: complex system is the sum of its parts
  • emergentism: whole is more than sum of its parts
82
Q

Which position do most psychologists endorse in the mind-brain problem?
Behaviorism, Mind-Brain Identity, or Functionalism?

A

Functionalism!

83
Q

What is a functional kind? What is a non-functional kind?

A
  • functional: kind of thing that is defined in terms of its function – it is MULTIPLY REALIZABLE (ex mouse trap, coffee table)
  • non-functional: ex water (if you’re not made of the right stuff, you’re not water)
84
Q

A kind is multiply realizable if ________

A

there are many different physical systems that can be of that kind (ie that can make it real)

85
Q

Multiple realizability relates to what idea discussed in the first part of the course?

A

Aristotle’s “final cause” (telos)

86
Q

(T/F) mental states are multiply realizable

A

TRUE!

87
Q

Because mental states are multiply realizable, any view which identifies mental states with some particular physical state must be (true/false)

A

false!

88
Q

What does functionalism (in the mind brain problem) argue?

A
  • what it is to be in a particular mental state is to be in a functional state
  • this functional state can be specified in terms of inputs and outputs (causes and effects)
  • mental states are functions that are performed by whatever type of machine that can perform that function
  • basically, what matters is the function, not the particular system that produces that function (think Aristotle saying the soul of an axe is cutting)
89
Q

What is strong AI?

A
  • the possibility that robots could have “minds” like humans
90
Q

What is the Turing test?

A
  • human judge engages in convo w person and machine without knowing which is which
  • if judge can’t distinguish between the two, then machine is said to have passes the Turing test
  • basically assesses the “intelligence” of a machine
  • ChatGPT is getting close to passing this test!
91
Q

What refutation of functionalism in the mind-brain problem was presented in class?

A
  • the Chinese Room (John Searle)
  • imagine person who doesn’t understand Chinese placed in a room w a set of rules, a large database of Chinese symbols, and a slot for receiving Chinese characters as input and producing Chinese characters as output
  • they follow the rules, producing responses (output) that appear meaningful to someone outside the room who understands Chinese
  • BUT person in the room doesn’t understand Chinese
  • using rules to manipulate symbols doesn’t mean you understand the meaning
  • SO computers can act like humans but they don’t necessarily understand what they’re doing

PSYC 403 (10 decks)

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