AP Psych | Unit 3 Part 2 | 3.7-3.9

learning (3.7)

process of acquiring through experience and enduring info or behaviours

habituation

• An individual decreases their response to a repeated stimulus over time.

• (A person working in a coffee shop stops noticing the background chatter after being there for a while.)

brain learns to ignore repeated stimuli

sensory adaption

• A biological process where sensory receptors become less responsive to a constant stimulus.

• After putting on perfume, you strongly smell it at first, but after a few minutes, you no longer notice it, even though others can still smell it.

ur senses adjust

classical conditioning

involuntary actions like salivation, blinking, sweating (stimuli are things we don’t control and we respond automatically.)

operant conditioning

voluntary actions (we operate on the environment to produce consequences)

associative learning

learning that certain events (positive and negative) occur together

can be two stimuli (classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (operant conditioning)

stimulus

any event or situation that provokes a response

For popcorn eaters, the movie theater stimulates.

response

behaviour following the stimulus

for the popcorn eater, the voluntary behaviour was purchasing and eating the popcorn

how does classical conditioning occur

UCS

unconditioned stimulus

naturally occuring event (attractive female legs exiting the car)

UCR

unconditioned response

naturally occurring response (male arousal)

NS

neutral stimulus

tone (car)

CS

conditioned stimulus

after conditioning/training (the car)

CR

conditioned response

after training, the response that is gained (wanting to buy the car)

higher/second-order conditioning

the CS in one conditioning experience is paired with a new NS, creating a second (often weaker) CS

if the dog already knows that bell = food, and you add light after the bell, the dog will also start salivating even though the light was never associated with food in the first place.

acquisition

When learning begins and the response becomes stronger with repetition. where a response is established and strengthened.

extinction

in classical conditioning, the diminishing of a CR when an UCS does not follow a CS.

(when food no longer follows the bell)

spontaneous recovery

the reappearance (after a pause) of an extinguished conditioned response

generalization

the tendency for stimuli similar to the CS to produce similar responses

discrimination

in classical conditioning

when an organism learns to respond only to a specific stimulus and not to similar ones.

behaviourism

studying observable behaviors rather than internal mental processes

counter-conditioning

It’s when you change a bad reaction into a good one by pairing the bad thing with something nice.

preparedness

a biological predisposition to learn associations, like between taste and nausea (survival values)

one-trial conditioning

when a person or animal learns something after just one experience—usually because it was very strong or emotional.

operational conditioning (3.8)

learning type where a behaviour becomes more likely to reoccur if followed by reinforcer or less likely to reoccur if followed by punisher

we learn to associate a response (our behaviour) and its consequence, which causes operant behaviour

Classical Conditioning vs Operant Conditioning

CC: involuntary (respondent) behaviour

OC: voluntary (operant) behaviour

law of effect

behaviours followed by favourable consequences become more likely, behaviours followed by bad consequences less likely

reinforcement

any event that strengthens a response

shaping

an operant conditioning procedure

reinforcement guides behaviour toward closer approximations of desired behaviour (this is also called reward by successive approximations)

breaking down behaviours into smaller steps and giving + reinforcements help shape complex behaviours

discriminative stimulus

a signal that tells an organism that a particular behavior will get a reward.

dog sees its owner holding a treat → knows that sitting will earn the treat

instinctive drift

the tendency of learned behaviour to gradually revert to biologically predisposed patterns

positive reinforcement

INCREASING behaviours by presenting positive reinforcers.

studying hard on a test to receive a high grade

ADD GOOD

negative reinforcement

INCREASING behaviours by stopping or reducing annoying behaviour

hitting the snooze alarm to stop the annoying alarm

REMOVE BAD

primary reinforcer

innately reinforcing stimuli like satisfying a biological need

food, pain relief

conditioned (secondary) reinforcers

something that becomes rewarding because it is associated with a primary reinforcer (food, water, warmth)

money, good grade, pleasant voice tone

continuous reinforcement schedule

reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs

partial (intermittent) reinforcement schedule

reinforcing a response only part of the time

fixed ratio schedule

a partial reinforcement schedules

reinforcement occurs after a set number of responses

one free coffee after every 10 purchased

fixed interval schedules

a partial reinforcement schedules

reinforcement occurs after a set length of time

mail arriving at 2 pm everyday

variable ratio schedules

partial reinforcement schedules

reinforcement occurs after an unpredictable number of responses

payoff on slot machine after a varying number of plays

variable interval schedules

a partial reinforcement schedules

reinforcement occurs after an unpredictable length of time

checking our phone for a text from our friend

learned helplessness

the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal/person acquires when unable to avoid repeated bad events

punishment

an event that tends to decrease the behaviour it follows.

positive punishment

ADD BAD

Giving a traffic ticket for speeding

negative punishment

REMOVE GOOD

Removing misbehaving teen’s driving privileges

cognitive map

a mental representation of the layout of one’s environment

latent learning

learning that happens without any immediate visible sign of it and only becomes apparent when there is a reason to use it. This means someone (or an animal) can learn something but not show it until they need to.

insight learning

a sudden realization of a problem’s solution. learning that occurs with no environmental interaction

vicarious reinforcement/punishment

we learn to anticipate a behavior’s consequences in situations like those we are observing

mirror neurons

frontal lobe neurons

brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy

prosocial modeling

positive, constructive helpful behavior

antisocial modeling

negative, destructive behaviour