learning
change in thought or behavior due to experience, study or practice
brain plasticity
- brain changes while learning
- neurons change how they connect and how they interact with each other
habituation
responses to the same stimulus decreases over time
aplysia example
a sea slug that has gills that are sensitive to stimuli retracts every time it sees a certain stimuli. scientist repeatedly show this stimulus and over time the slug does not retract its gill because it becomes used to that stimulus
- shows how brain plasticity is important (neurons changes to become habituated to certain stimuli)
classical conditioning
learning process where two stimuli are repeatedly paired: an automatic conditioned response is paired with a specific stimulus
- form of unconscious learning
pavlov’s experiment
every-time he gave a dog food, he played a sound. the dogs salivated when he got food. so over time when he played sound but didn’t give food, the dog still salivated
unconditioned stimulus (US)
produces a reflexive/automatic response
- ex: dog food
unconditioned response
natural/automatic reaction
- ex: saliva
conditioned stimulus
originally neutral stimulus (CS)
- ex: sound or metronome
conditioned response (CR)
a natural reaction that occurs due to the CS
- ex: saliva
little albert example
john watson would give a baby a white rat to play with and play a loud sound at the same time. The baby became scared of this rat along with other small animals.
- originally he was not scared of the rat but because he then associated it with a loud noise he was scared.
stages of classical conditioning
- Acquisition
- extinction
- spontaneous recovery
Acquisition
- initial learning phase
- depends on frequency and timing
effect of frequency in conditioning
- frequency refers to how often the CS is paired with the US
- pairing more often, increases strength of condition
effect of timing on conditioning
- timing refers to the of time between the CS and the US
- longer duration between the two stiumulus is less effective
- ringing a bell ten minutes after feeding the dog will not be as effective
extinction
- elimination of CR
- when the CS is unpaired with the US, it is possible that this condition response can be reversed
- can unlearn conditions
spontaneous recovery
- after a condition is unlearned it can randomly be remembered
- sudden emergence of CR after extinction
stimulus generalization
a stimuli that is similar to the conditioned stimuli can elicit the same conditioned response
- ex: dog will salivate to both doorbell and bell
stimulus discrimination
- conditioned response is only specific to one stimulus, but not others
- this is effective learning
- dog will only salivate to the ringing of a bell, not other noises
- generalized and discrimination can occur at the same time (dog can salivate to a doorbell but not clock chimes)
operant conditioning
associate a voluntary behavior and a consequence
- learning controlled by consequences and rewards
- El thorndike
- behavior results in good consequences –> more likely to increase that behavior
reinforcement
way of increasing behavior that we want
- reinforce positive behavior by taking a way something like chore (negative) or giving something like a present (positive)
punishment
- opposite of reinforcement
- want to decrease a behavior
- can be done b giving a stimulus like yelling (positive) or taking something away like video games (negative)
difference between punishemnt and reinforcement
- depends on the respones: whether or not we want a certain behavior to increase or decrease
- reinforcement: want to increase a behaviour
- punishment: want to decrease a behaviour
negative reinforcement
taking something away in order to increase a behaviour
- ex: taking away chores to reward a child
