respondent conditioning Flashcards
(31 cards)
What is learning in psychology?
A relatively permanent change in behaviour resulting from experience.
What is learning in neuroscience?
Adaptive changes in synaptic connectivity in response to environmental events that alter behaviour.
What is NOT considered learning?
Changes due to drugs, injury, illness, or innate behaviours like reflexes, taxes, or instincts.
What are reflexes?
Simple innate responses involving a single set of muscles (e.g. patellar reflex).
What are taxes?
Innate movements of the whole body toward or away from a stimulus (e.g. phototaxis in moths).
What are instincts or fixed action patterns?
Complex, innate behaviours (e.g. food begging in herring gulls).
Why are innate responses limited?
Fixed triggers and responses; little opportunity for individual learning or modification.
What is the purpose of learning?
To adapt behaviour within an individual’s lifetime (ontogenetic adaptation).
What are the two main types of learning?
- Non-associative – Learning that stimuli exist (e.g. habituation)
- Associative – Learning relationships between stimuli or between actions and consequences
What is habituation?
A learned decrease in response to a repeated, non-threatening stimulus
What is classical/respondent conditioning?
Learning an association between two stimuli (CS and US).
Who demonstrated early associative learning in humans?
Edwin B. Twitmeyer – paired sound with the patellar reflex.
What is an unconditioned stimulus (US)?
A biologically relevant stimulus (e.g. food, loud noise).
What is an unconditioned response (UR)?
An innate response triggered by the US (e.g. salivation, startle).
What is a conditioned stimulus (CS)?
A neutral stimulus that elicits a response after being paired with a US.
What is a conditioned response (CR)?
A learned response triggered by the CS.
What is acquisition in classical conditioning?
Learning phase where CS is paired with US, leading to CR.
What is contiguity?
CS and US must occur close together in time for learning to occur.
What is extinction?
The decline of the CR when the CS is no longer paired with the US.
What is spontaneous recovery?
The reappearance of the CR after time has passed since extinction.
What is reacquisition?
Faster re-learning of the CR when CS-US pairings are resumed.
What is stimulus generalisation?
Similar stimuli to the CS also elicit the CR.
What is stimulus discrimination?
Learning to distinguish between a reinforced CS+ and a non-reinforced CS−.
What does classical conditioning help us do?
Adapt to our environment by making associations between events.
