PS261 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Predation, Evolution, Edward Thorndike
PS261
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
INTRODUCTION TO LEARNING LECTURE 1
What is learning?
o Whe… eperiee results i a… hage i the reatio to a situatio Doja, 6
o Not always:
• Experience: eating a lot
• Change: getting fat (react to situations more slowly)
o Really interested in cognitive changes
• Cognition: the acquisition, processing, and use of information carried out by the
brain
• the totalit of the ehaior of a aial ad operatios it perfors to reate
those ehaiors
Representation
o Cognition happens inside the brain
o Cognition is often assumed to require representation
• We perceive some stimulus in the world
▪ i.e. the stiulus gets ito our rai
• We remember that stimulus
▪ i.e. we create a representation of the stimulus in our brains
• We use that memory to drive behavior
▪ i.e. the representation affects how we react to situation
Evolution
o Charles Darwin
o Theory of evolution by natural selection
• More offspring exist than can survive
• Heritable variations between individuals
• Variations lead to differences in fitness
• If humans evolved along with other species, then there is mental (psychological)
as well as physical continuity
• We can learn about human cognition (and learning) by studying other species
Anthropomorphism
o Can result from assuming mental continuity
o Assuming that animals are just like us
o Assuming that animals use the same processes as us to solve tasks
▪ i.e. are animals conscious?
o i.e. fear conditioning – do animals FEEL fear?
o 1960s: US Navy tried to communicate with dolphins
o Dolphins gave response that were based on (unconscious?) cues from the
experimenter
o No real communication
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Ethics
o Is it ethical to use non-human animals in research?
• Animals cannot give (informed) consent
o In Canada (and most other places) there are rules
General Methodology
o How do we study animal cognition?
• Animals cannot tell us how they feel, remember, know, want etc.
o We use an indirect method:
1. Create an operational definition of the question
2. Teach the animal something
3. Test the animal in such a way that its behavior reports on the relevant mental state
o i.e. We want to study long-term memory in rats
1. A rat will navigate a maze faster if it remembers the way than a rat that does not
remember it
• Operational definition of memory: speed of solving
2. Expose some rats to a maze until they can navigate it
• Learning
3. Test the rats on the maze
o This is an INDIRECT measure
The Experimental Method
o Experimental Group
• Full experiment
• i.e. the rats that got to explore the maze
o Control group
• Identical in all but feature under study
• i.e. no experience of the maze
o Both groups:
• Same age
• Same lifestyle
• Same intelligence
More Methodology
o What sort of questions can we ask?
o Tinbergen (1951) suggests that there are 4 basic questions:
• Mechanism: how does it work?
• Ontogeny: how does it develop?
• Adaptive function: why did it evolve?
• Phylogeny: how did it evolve?
o This course focuses almost entirely on mechanism
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Evolution: charles darwin, theory of evolution by natural selection, more offspring exist than can survive, heritable variations between individuals, variations lead to differences in fitness. If humans evolved along with other species, then there is mental (psychological) as well as physical continuity: we can learn about human cognition (and learning) by studying other species. Is it ethical to use non-human animals in research: animals cannot give (informed) consent. In canada (and most other places) there are rules. The experimental method: experimental group, full experiment i. e. the rats that got to explore the maze, control group. Identical in all but feature under study i. e. no experience of the maze: both groups, same age, same lifestyle, same intelligence. Lloyd-morga(cid:374)(cid:859)s ca(cid:374)o(cid:374: challe(cid:374)ged dar(cid:449)i(cid:374) a(cid:374)d o(cid:373)a(cid:374)es(cid:859) approa(cid:272)h. Behaviorism and cognition: behaviorism: we cannot infer anything about the mental states of animals, co(cid:374)sider a(cid:374)i(cid:373)als as (cid:862)(cid:373)a(cid:272)hi(cid:374)es(cid:863) that respo(cid:374)d to i(cid:374)puts (cid:894)e(cid:374)(cid:448)iro(cid:374)ment) with some behavior, cognitive psychology: we can infer some mental skills/states from behavior.
