Week 9 Flashcards
(22 cards)
What is involved in information transfer?
Perceive (perception); process (learning); store (learning/memory); use (decision making)
What is the difference between an unconditioned and conditioned response?
Something not learned but innate ability, e.g. salivation
Something learned, e.g. learning to salivate at the sound of a bell
What are the two kinds of conditioning?
Appetitive (pleasant food, water, sexual mate)
Aversive (unpleasant shock, loud noise, bad odour) conditioning
How can we explain why people have a fear of something when they have had no bad experience with that thing?
Social conditioning - watching another be afraid of something can make you afraid yourself.
Learning to ignore the sound of dripping water is an example of what?
Habituation
When you opened the fridge one evening, the putrid smell of rotten eggs made you feel nauseous. In classical conditioning, the smell is a __ stimulus that now elicits a __ of nausea.
Unconditioned stimulus; unconditioned response
What is acquisition?
The process of developing and strengthening a conditioned response through repeated pairings of a NS and a US.
What is extinction?
Process in which a conditioned response gradually weakens when a CS is repeatedly presented in the absence of the US; e.g. presenting the bell without food after conditioning.
What is spontaneous recovery?
A recovered conditioned response, back to the norm.
What is extinction in respect to extinction-spontaneous recovery?
Learning another conditioned response; e.g. learning to not be afraid of the light again.
What is generalisation?
Tendency to give a conditioned response to a stimulus that is similar to the CS - generalisation; e.g. being afraid of only hairy dogs.
What are the features of the Rescorla-Wagner model?
Predictive learning
The fact that you learnt to fear wasps and hornets, as well as bees, after being stung by a bee is an example of what?
Generalisation.
You are hired for a job in which you have to catch bees. During the first day, you never get stung by a bee. You find your fear of bees what? This is an example of what?
Decreasing; extinction (Why is it not e.g. of habituation? Classical conditioned response decreasing)
On the morning of the second day of work, you find that your fears bees has slightly returned. This is an example of what?
Spontaneous recovery.
What is the difference between classical and operant conditioning?
Classical; association between stimuli and responses (relaxes). Operant; reinforcement (free will).
What is Thorndike’s law of effect?
Behaviours that lead to a satisfactory state of affairs are stamped in, while behaviours leading to an unsatisfactory or annoying state of affairs are stamped out.
Which other experimenter completed work similar to Thorndike?
Skinner in the skinner box with a pigeon.
What is operant conditioning?
Process in which the future probability of a behaviour is affected by its consequences. E.g. teaching a dog a trick with treats, endorphins from running, gambling.
Can punishment be positive in terms of operant conditioning?
Yes, something added, decreases a behaviour.
Give an example of negative punishment.
Putting a nose harness on a dog to stop it from pulling on its lead.
What is shaping and what it is used for? Give an example.
Process in which successive approximations of a behavior are reinforced; operant conditioning. E.g. changing the way children hold a knife and fork and praising this behaviour
