PSY 1101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Sea Snail, Aplysia, Operant Conditioning

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Najwa Haddad

Document Summary

Adaptability: our capacity to learn new behaviours that enable us to cope with changing circumstances. Learning: a relatively permanent change in an organism"s behaviour due to experience; shapes our thought and language, motivation and emotions, and personalities and attitudes. Associative learning: learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning) When disturbed by a squirt of water, the sea snail will protectively withdraw its gill. If squirts continue, as it happens naturally in choppy water, withdrawal response diminishes (the response habituates) If the sea snail repeatedly receives an electric shock just after being squirted, withdrawal response, instead of habituating, becomes stronger. Successful adaptation of animals requires both nature, the needed genetic predisposition, as well as nurture, the history of appropriate learning. Classical conditioning: process by which we learn to associate two stimuli and thus to anticipate events.