PSYC 2410 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Habituation
Document Summary
From the moment we"re born we encounter changing environments & learning makes it possible to adapt to it. Behaviorists focused on how organisms learn, examining how experience effects behaviour. Assumed there are laws of learning that apply to virtually all organisms. Behaviorists treated organisms as a blank tablet upon which experiences were inscribed & explained learning solely in terms of directly observable events. Ethology focused on animal behaviour within the natural environment. Ethologists view organism as anything but a blank tablet, arguing that evolution caused every species to act a certain way biologically. Fixed action pattern: an unlearned response automatically triggered by a particular stimulant. Some fixed action patterns can be modified by experience. Ethology & behaviorism can combined more recently. Personal adaptation occurs through the laws of learning that the behaviorists examined and it results from our interactions w/ immediate and past environments. Eg. when you drive your behaviour is influenced by environment (traffic)