PS261 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Observational Techniques, George Romanes, Drug Development
Chapter One – Introduction
Chapter 1.1 − Introduction
- Learning: biological process that facilitates adaptation to one’s environment
- Integrity of life depends on successfully accomplishing a number of biological functions
such as respiration, digestion, and resisting disease
o Reproduction is significantly improved by learning
- Learning involves acquisition of new behaviour as well as the decrease or loss of a reaction
o Withholding responses is as important as making them
- Two Types of Learning:
1. Procedural Learning
▪ Does not require awareness
▪ Many aspects of human behaviour occur without awareness
• People are typically inaccurate with reporting their own behaviour
2. Declarative/Episodic Learning
▪ More accessible to conscious report
Chapter 1.2 − Historical Antecedents to the Study of Animal Learning
..a: Philosophical Roots
- Roots from Descartes
o Before Descartes:
▪ Human behaviour determined by free will
▪ Not considered to be controlled by external stimuli or mechanistic natural laws
▪ Our actions were a result of our intent
o Recognized that many things people do are automatic reactions to external stimuli
▪ Developed dualistic view of human behaviour – dualism
o Dualism: two classes of human behaviour
1. Voluntary
▪ Does not have to be triggered by external stimuli and occurs because of
person’s conscious intent to act in that particular manner
2. Involuntary
▪ Consists of automatic reactions to external stimuli and mediated by reflexes
• Reflexive Behaviour
- Reflexive Behaviour
o Stimuli in environment are detected by sense organs
▪ Relayed to brain through nerves
▪ From brain, impetus for action sent through nerves to muscles that create
involuntary response
▪ Sensory input is reflected in response output
• Involuntary → Reflexive
o Free will and voluntary behaviour are said to be uniquely human attributes
▪ Only humans thought to have a mind/soul
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- Mind-Body Dualism: stimulated two intellectual traditions
1. Mentalism
▪ Concerned with contents and workings of mind
2. Reflexology
▪ Concerned with mechanisms of reflexive behaviour
- Historical Developments in the Study of the Mind
o Nativism:
▪ Assumption that people are born with innate ideas about certain things
o John Locke:
▪ All ideas that people had were acquired directly or indirectly through
experiences after birth
▪ Mind starts as a clean slate – tabula resa – gradually being filled
• Contents of the mind due to empiricism
o Concept accepted by a group of philosophers known as the
British Empiricists
o Descartes believed that the mind did not function in a predictable and orderly manner
o Thomas Hobbes:
▪ Accepted that there were voluntary and involuntary behaviours, but
proposed that voluntary behaviour was governed by hedonism
• People do things to increase pleasure and decrease pain
▪ Hedonism was simply a fact of life
o Association:
▪ Empiricism assumed all ideas originate from sense experiences
• Words will activate memories/aspects of the concept to explain how
the mind works
- Rules of Associations
o Two sets of rules
1. Primary: set by Aristotle
• Contiguity:
o If two events repeatedly occur together, they will become
associated
• Similarity:
o Two things will become associated with one another if they
are similar
• Contrast:
o Two things will be associated if they have some contrasting
characteristic
2. Secondary: set by Thomas Brown
• Many things influence formation of associations
o Intensity of the sensations
o Frequency/how recent sensations occurred together
o Also depends on how many previous associations there are
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o Ebbinghaus: invented nonsense syllables to see how someone may react to them
..b: Biological Roots
- Historical Development in the Study of Reflexes
o Descartes:
▪ Believed that the sensory messages from sense organ to brain/the motor
messages from brain to muscles travelled along the same nerves
▪ Thought nerves were hollow tubes and transmission involved gases (animal spirits)
• Animal Spirits: released by pineal gland, flowed through neural tubes,
and entered muscles causing them to swell, creating movement
▪ Considered all reflexive movement to be innate and fixed by the anatomy of
the nervous system
▪ All were proven to be incorrect
o Charles Bell/Francois Magendie:
▪ Separate nerves are involved in the transmissions of:
1. Sensory Information from sense organs to CNS
• Sensory Nerve Cut: can still move muscles
2. Motor Information from CNS to muscles
• Motor Nerve Cut: can still register sensory information
o Involvement of a gas was disproved after the death of Descartes
o Descartes assumed that reflexes were responsible for simple reactions to stimuli
▪ Energy of the stimulus was thought to be translated directly into energy of
the elicited response by neural connections
• The more intense the stimulus, the more vigorous the response
- Ivan Sechenov
o Proposed that stimuli did not always elicit reflex responses directly
▪ Some could release response from inhibition
o Suggested that complex forms of behaviour that occurred in absence of eliciting
stimulus were reflexive responses
▪ Voluntary behaviour and thoughts are actually elicited by inconspicuous,
faint stimuli
- Reflexes
o Thought to depend on a prewired neural circuit connecting the sense organs to
relevant muscles
- Ivan Pavlov
o Showed that not all reflexes are innate
▪ New reflexes can be established through mechanisms of association
o Pavlov and Ebbinghaus were both concerned with establishing laws of associations
through empirical research
- Modern Behaviour Theory: built on the reflex concept of stimulus-response unit (S-R Unit)
and concept associations − plays prominent role in Contemporary Behaviour Theory
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Document Summary
Learning: biological process that facilitates adaptation to one"s environment. Integrity of life depends on successfully accomplishing a number of biological functions such as respiration, digestion, and resisting disease: reproduction is significantly improved by learning. Learning involves acquisition of new behaviour as well as the decrease or loss of a reaction: withholding responses is as important as making them. Two types of learning: procedural learning, does not require awareness, many aspects of human behaviour occur without awareness, people are typically inaccurate with reporting their own behaviour, declarative/episodic learning, more accessible to conscious report. Chapter 1. 2 (cid:498)historical antecedents to the study of animal learning(cid:499) (cid:883). (cid:884). a: (cid:498)philosophical roots(cid:499) Reflexive behaviour: stimuli in environment are detected by sense organs, relayed to brain through nerves, from brain, impetus for action sent through nerves to muscles that create involuntary response, sensory input is reflected in response output.
