HPS111 Lecture 7: WEEK 7-Learning
WEEK 7: Learning
Defining Learning
- Individual adaption to a changing world- how do organisms deal with challenges of our
environment
- Learning is a key process to adaption
- Happens separately for each individual
- Psychological and social
- Learning is: the process by which experience of the world produces relatively sustained changes
in behaviour of an organism
- Experiences are important
- Only one, individual
- Needs changes in behaviour
- Not perfect or universal definition
Why do we learn?
- Survival
- If you cant learn you can just be random all the time
- The capacity for you to learn from your experiences or personally adapt provides an astonishing
selective advantage
- Habituation is the suppression of a reflexive response. The process by which an innate response
is diminished by repeated exposure to a stimulus
- Reflexes can lead to unfortunate outcomes
- False positive is better than false negative
- Animals learning humans are safe
- Is habituation learning? Yes based of the definition
- Is it a result of experience?, is it individual?, does it involve behaviour change?, is it a fluke?
- Supress reflex, shows the power of learning about our capacity to transcend the limits of our
primitive reflexive selves
- Process which potentially allows us to master our environment rather than be mastered
Classical conditioning
- Described by Pavlov in 20th century
- Dogs as research, dogs would salivate when you gave them food
- But in his study realised they would do it even before they got the food
- Response to the bell before the food
Definition
- There are innate stimulus response pairing
oUnconditioned stimulus (US)-food
oUnconditioned response (UR)- salivate
- There are stimuli that don’t evoke a response
oNeutral stimulus (NS) - bell
- By presenting the NS and unconditioned stimulus together leads to conditioning (learning)
oConditioned stimulus (CS)- bell
oConditioned response (CR)- salivating to bell
- They have experience that changes the behaviours
Rate of learning
- Acquisition is the development of a learned response
- If the US is presented with the neutral stimulus is really intense you can learn once
- Factors influencing
oExtremity: a highly salient US can result in single-trial learning (based on one experience
alone you change your behaviour)
oOrder of paring: you’ll learn fastest if the NS appears just before the US
oDelay of pairing: the smaller the interval between the NS and the S presentation, the
faster the conditioning
Generalisation and discrimination
- Generalisation- the association of the conditioned response with stimuli that are similar but
distinct form the conditioned stimulus
- Discrimination- the selective association of the conditioned response with a particular stimulus
and not with other stimuli
Extinction
- Can you unlearn
- Extinction is the elimination of a conditioned response
- Typically through repeated exposures to the conditioned stimulus without the US
- But can experience:
- Spontaneous recovery which is the stronger demonstration of a CR as it was undergoing the
process of extinction
- Need to keep on the association, keep pairing
- Can be used to treat phobias
Document Summary
Individual adaption to a changing world- how do organisms deal with challenges of our environment. Learning is: the process by which experience of the world produces relatively sustained changes in behaviour of an organism. If you cant learn you can just be random all the time. The capacity for you to learn from your experiences or personally adapt provides an astonishing selective advantage. Habituation is the suppression of a reflexive response. The process by which an innate response is diminished by repeated exposure to a stimulus. Supress reflex, shows the power of learning about our capacity to transcend the limits of our primitive reflexive selves. Process which potentially allows us to master our environment rather than be mastered. Dogs as research, dogs would salivate when you gave them food. But in his study realised they would do it even before they got the food. There are innate stimulus response pairing: unconditioned stimulus (us)-food, unconditioned response (ur)- salivate.
