What does learning allow for?
Beneficial changes in behaviour
Cognitive learning
Reading, listening, and taking tests to acquire new knowledge
Associative learning
Learning via the pairing of stimuli
Classical conditioning
Learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus elicits a response that was originally caused by another stimulus
What does association depend on?
Repeated, temporally contiguous pairings
Acquisition
Conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus
Extinction
Conditioned stimulus alone
Spontaneous recovery
Amount of conditioned stimulus alone after a 24 hour rest period
Generalization
Response that originally occurs to a specific stimulus also occurs to similar stimuli; wide range
Discrimination
Learning to respond to one original stimulus but not to a new, but similar stimulus; small range
What do generalization and discrimination allow for?
Allows organisms to make adaptive changes, thereby enhancing survival and fitness; provides evolutionary benefit
Preparedness
The biological predisposition to rapidly learn a response to a particular class of stimuli
Conditioned taste aversions
The acquired dislike of a food or drink because it was paired with illness; often learned in one trial (breaks normal conditioning rules); occurs even though illness is often delayed from when food was ingested; new foods are more prone
Higher-order classical conditioning
When a conditioned stimulus functions as though it were an unconditioned stimulus
Conditioned emotional responses
Emotional responses that are associated with a specific object or situation; Little Albert and phobias
Evaluative conditioning
When one stimulus takes on the emotional ‘valence’ of another stimuli; conditioning a feeling onto something you’re trying to sell; Watson’s Pebeco toothpaste campaign; celebrity advertisements
Attack ads
Use evaluative conditioning to elicit unpleasant emotional responses in the viewers while presenting images of political opponents; third-person effect (asking people whether something would have an effect on you vs. on someone else)
Operant conditioning
Learning in which behaviour is determined by consequences; result changes frequency of behaviours; discovered by B.F. Skinner using operant boxes (Skinner boxes)
Law of effect
Discovered by Edward Thorndike; responses followed by satisfaction will occur again, those not followed by satisfaction will become less likely
Reinforcement
When a situation (ie. reinforcer) causes a behaviour to become more likely
Punishment
When a situation (ie. punisher) causes a behaviour to become less likely
Primary reinforcer
Stimuli that satisfy basic motivational needs
Secondary reinforcer
Stimuli that acquire their value through learning; no value without context
Positive reinforcement
Adding a stimulus to increase/maintain behaviour
