Task 8 - Social Learnign

Question 1

Social learning

Answer 1

• learning form others
• often used as a synonym for observational learning

Observational learning -> learner actively monitors events and then chooses later actions based on those observations

Question 2

Copying

Answer 2

The act of doing what one observers another organism doing

Question 3

True imitation

Answer 3

• reproducing Motor acts

- simplest form of copying (not behavior only motor act is copied)

Question 4

Emulation

Answer 4

-copying outcomes/goal without specific motor acts

Question 5

Two action test

Answer 5

-animals are more likely to learn a behavior that they have seen before than behaviors that they hadn’t seen

Question 6

Perspective taking

Answer 6

• imagining oneself in place of another
• > some researchers suggest it as a prerequisite for voluntary imitation of actions

->

Question 7

Bandura 4 basic processes of copying

Answer 7

1) a model increases observers attention
2) memories of the scene must be stored in an accessible format
3) observer must be able to reproduce the action
4) observer must have motivation for reproducing

Question 8

Phenomena that closely resemble imitation (3)

Answer 8

1) emotional contagion
2) observational conditioning
3) stimulus enhancement

Question 9

Emotional contagion

Answer 9

• inborn tendency to react emotionally to visual/acoustic stimuli that indicated an emotional response by other members of ones species
• > typically in ways that replicate observed response
• > the matching reaction is often an unconditioned response

Question 10

Observational conditioning

Answer 10

• an individual learns an emotional response after observing similar responses in others
• contagion is used to learn a specific behavior in response to a certain stimulus

Question 11

Observational conditioning in blackbirds

Answer 11

-blackbirds can learn to attack harmless objects such as bottles if they observe other blackbirds doing so

Question 12

Stimulus enhancement

Answer 12

• observation of other individuals causes an organism attention to be directed toward specific object or events within an environment
• > can powerfully affect what an individual learns

Question 13

Social transmission of information

Answer 13

• learning through experience with others
• does not necessarily involve imitation

-> involves to learn more rapidly than all other animals in almost unlimited range of contexts

Question 14

Why does social transmission exists

Answer 14

• increase learning speed
• can protect individuals form harmful experiences
• evolutionary benefit

-> but it can be hard for a group to establish new behavior

Question 15

Social conformity

Answer 15

-tendency to adopt the behavior of the group

Question 16

Social transmission of foods preferences in rats

Answer 16

• given choice of 2 novel foods -> observer rats were more likely to eat the food they smelled on demonstrator rats breath

Question 17

2 theories of social transmission and brain

Answer 17

1) visual hypothesis: storage in visual cortex

2) direct matching hypothesis: storage on cortical regions that map them onto motor representations ->focus on this one

Question 18

Mirror neurons

Answer 18

• neurons firing both while performance as well as observation of certain actions
• neural link between seeing and doing
• may help to categorize observed events
• exist for different kind of actions
• have not directly observers in humans (only in moneys PFC) but are suspected to exist in humans as well

Question 19

Hippocampus and basal forebrain lesions

Answer 19

• reduce effects of socially transmitted information (especially if lesion occurred right after observation)
• forming of episodic memories crucial in observational learning
• cholinergic neurons of basal forebrain also involved in the learning process

Question 20

Echolalia

Answer 20

-repeating words/phrases immediately after hearing them

Question 21

Frontal lobe lesions

Answer 21

• inability to voluntary reproduce observed actions

- tendency to involuntary imitate observed actions

Question 22

Stimulus masking task

Stimulus onset asynchrone (SOA)

Answer 22

SOA= delay between target and mask
-> measure of how quick and accurate one can detect a target in a very noisy environment (that’s the skill that is trained)

• if the onset is 500 -> picture is on there for 500msc -> easier to detect
• if onset is 60msc -> very difficult

Question 23

How does the training work?

SOA , masking etc

Answer 23

• visual training is done in periphery of visual quadrant
• > stimulus appears in same part of quadrant or not at all
• > people acquired improved skill for stimulus detection in ONE quadrant of the field
• > then start training other visual field quadrant

Question 24

Results of SOA task

Answer 24

• people learn do to the task with shorter and shorter SOA
• > they get better
• SOA decreases as learning session increases , after a while they don’t improve anymore
• large improvement at beginning , then amount of improvement levels off
• > reaches asymptotic level of learning

-> learning visual skill in one visual field quadrant does NOT transfer to other quadrants -> they have to start acquiring the skill again from beginning

• does not transfer to different target-background gradient
• does not transfer between eyes
• question is how well people perform when the

Question 25

Primary visual cortex

Answer 25

- primary visual cortex has bad plasticity - sensitive to where things were presented - if skill ist best learned in one are and has problem transferring to another area -> we are most likely looking at primary visual cortex

Question 26

Monkey digest training task

Answer 26

- monkeys trained for >11 days - pick out flavored food pellet from small hole, which requires finger nimbleness (Gewandtheit) - becomes easier to pick up food with fewer movements -larger part of cortex has become sensitive when touching fingers that has been used for training

Question 27

Effects of digit training task

Answer 27

- finger flexion and extension representations enhanced (cortical expansion) - wrist representation decreased - > cortical representation has changed after digit specific training at the expanse of other representations

Question 28

Asymptotic learning

Answer 28

-

Question 29

Learning Hand movement task

Answer 29

- no transfer to dominant (untrained) Hand - no advantage to learn another sequence or transfer it to other hand - > learning is laterality specific

Question 30

Latent consolidation in skill learning

Answer 30

- off line learning - process of brain plasticity continue after active training - > unconscious - improved from one day to another even if there was no active training

Question 31

Patient HM and skill learning

Answer 31

- impaired episodic memory formation | - intact skill learning -> mirror star

Question 32

Rat research -radial maze

Answer 32

-hippocampus lesion -> rat cannot remember which arm it had already visited

Question 33

Rat research - radial maze task with light

Answer 33

- its NOT about spatial navigation | - basal ganglia lesion: rat cannot learn light-arm associations

Question 34

Basal ganglia

Answer 34

- codes for learned Perceptual motor associations - early in learning: BG activated at cross section - late in learning: BG activates at start and end points

Question 35

Role of neocortex - skill learning

Answer 35

-contain sensory-motor representations form which hippocampus and basal ganglia derive content information of experience

Question 36

The role of reward in learning - skill learning with operant conditioning

Answer 36

-reinforcement increases learning

Question 37

Role orbitofrontal cortex and VTA

Answer 37

- OFC: WHAT TO EXPECT - > codes for reward identity - learning = activity for reward carried over to Sd - increased activity when expected reward is omitted (ausgelassen) - VTA Dopamine: EXPECTED (ofc) VS ACTUAL OUTCOME (sensory input) -> (error) - > informs dorsal striatum to update Sd - response association - cods for reward value - learning = activity for reward carried over to Sd + lower activity for reward itself - decreased activity when expected reward is omitted