PSY 435 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Classical Conditioning, Animal Cognition, Learning
Document Summary
Animal cognition: evolution, behavior and cognition (2nd ed). Associative learning: an animals sensitivity to the meaning of signals that predict when and where significant events will occur (associate x with y occurring); aka conditioning. Detection of causation of animals is well established (widely supported) 2 classes of associative learning: pavlovian conditioning how does an animal learn which signals cause the appearance of things important to them (food, sex partner, danger, instrumental conditioning (operant?) How does an animal learn which of its actions cause important things to happen (get food/sex/avoid danger) Spiders or cars: predispositions can influence how readily they learn new associations through personal or social experiences, ex. monkeys seeing other monkeys respond w fear of snakes versus flowers; they readily feared snakes but not flowers (cook & Instinctive drift: an animals tendency to drift away from what is currently being learned back towards its initial/predisposed response to a stimulus.
