PSYC1101 Lecture 4: Learning
Document Summary
Why we learn. predictable ways to patterns of reward or punishment: behaviourism laws of learning that apply to all organisms. All respond in: blank slate learning, fixed action pattern (instinctive behaviour): an unlearned response, automatically triggered by a particular stimulus. (some are modified by experience). Can see results of learning on basis of performance and acquiring attitudes eg. a new appreciation of modern art can infer that they have learnt by a new way of understanding. Performance can be observed and measured not a perfect correspondence but the best way to measure learning. Not necessarily permanent changes may stop practising a skill and then performance will decline. But the skill is more easily learnt the second time (reacquisition is faster) so change in the brain may be permanent. Experience is taking in info and making responses that affect the environ.
