PSYA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Habituation, Salivary Gland, Orienting Response
Document Summary
In chapter 4 there may have been an impression that behaviour is controlled by neural circuits that are fixed and unchanging. Our behaviour is changeable in response to certain experiences. Learning: is an adaptive process in which the tendency to perform a particular behaviour is changed by experience. As conditions change, we learn new behaviours and eliminate old ones. Experience alters the structure and chemistry of the brain. These alterations affect how the nervous system responds to subsequent events. Performance: is the behavioural change produced by the internal changes brought about by learning. In other words, it is the evidence that learning has occurred: this is imperfect evidence because there are other factors such as fatigue and motivation. What are the three kinds of learning: habituation, classical conditioning, operant conditioning. All three kinds involve cause and effect relations between the environment and behaviour.