Psychology: Forms and Processes of Learning

Vocabulary flashcards covering the concepts, terminology, schedules, and theories of classical, operant, and observational learning.

Learning

The process by which an organism's experience produces enduring changes in both the brain and behaviour.

Behaviourism

An approach, associated with Skinner and J.B. Watson, that focuses on observable behaviour and explains it through stimulus-response relationships without treating mental life as directly relevant.

Classical Conditioning

A passive form of associative learning where an involuntary response becomes associated with a new stimulus.

Associative Learning

A form of learning that involves making connections between different events and our behavioural responses to them.

Nonassociative Learning

A form of learning characterized by changes in how much or how little an organism responds to a single event or stimulus with experience.

Habituation

A process in which an organism's reflexive response to a repeated stimulus becomes weaker as the brain learns to become less responsive.

Dishabituation

The restoration or heightening of a response to a habituated stimulus after a novel, different, or strong stimulus is introduced.

Sensitization

A process in which an organism's reflexive response to a repeated stimulus becomes stronger with experience.

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

A stimulus that initially elicits no response prior to conditioning (e.g., a bell).

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that produces an involuntary response or reflex automatically without prior learning (e.g., a bowl of food).

Unconditioned Response (UR)

The automatic reflex response generated by the unconditioned stimulus without prior learning (e.g., salivating at the sight of food).

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A previously neutral stimulus that, through repeated pairing with an unconditioned stimulus, eventually triggers a conditioned response.

Conditioned Response (CR)

An automatic response to a conditioned stimulus that has been learned through pairing.

Acquisition

The initial learning of the US-CS link; in humans, the neutral stimulus must appear at least $0.5\,\text{seconds}$ before the US to produce a conditioned response.

Generalization

The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus so that learning is not overly narrow.

Discrimination

The counterbalance to generalization that occurs when an organism learns to respond to a particular stimulus but not to others.

Extinction

An active learning process whereby the conditioned response is weakened when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response following a delay period.

Savings

Stored learning in the brain that allows an organism to relearn an association more rapidly than during the original conditioning process.

Residual Plasticity Hypothesis

The theory that neural networks of learning persist even after extinction, providing a residual memory trace of the original association.

Prediction Error

A mathematical and biological mismatch between what the brain expects to happen and what actually occurs, serving as a signal to revise predictive models.

Blocking

A phenomenon where learning an association between a new stimulus and an outcome is impaired because the stimulus is presented alongside an already established predictor.

Amygdala

A key brain region through which emotional CS-US associations are made, mediating conditioned aversive and escape responses as well as conditioned reward.

Operant Conditioning

A form of associative learning in which a learner associates voluntary behaviours with their consequences and changes behaviour as a result.

Law of Effect

The principle stating that behaviour is a function of its consequences: actions followed by satisfiers are strengthened, and actions followed by annoyers are weakened.

Antecedent

A stimulus that precedes a behaviour, setting the occasion and signalling the context in which certain actions lead to specific consequences.

Primary Reinforcers

Consequences that are innately satisfying because they satisfy biological needs (e.g., food, water, warmth, sex) regardless of prior experience.

Secondary Reinforcers

Stimuli that acquire reinforcing value through experience and association with primary reinforcers.

Positive Reinforcement

An operant procedure that increases the frequency of a behaviour by presenting a reinforcing stimulus following the behaviour.

Negative Reinforcement

An operant procedure that increases the probability of a behaviour by removing or avoiding an unpleasant outcome.

Positive Punishment

An operant procedure that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour by presenting an unpleasant stimulus after the behaviour occurs.

Negative Punishment

An operant procedure that decreases the frequency of a behaviour by removing a desirable stimulus.

Premack Principle

The principle that activities an individual frequently engages in can be used to reinforce activities that the individual is less inclined to do.

Shaping

A process that gradually molds random actions into a desired target behaviour through the reinforcement of successive approximations.

Instinctive Drift

The tendency of an animal to revert to evolutionarily derived behaviours instead of maintaining newly learned operant responses.

Continuous Reinforcement Schedule

A schedule in which a behaviour is rewarded every single time it is performed, resulting in rapid acquisition and rapid extinction.

Fixed-Ratio Schedule

A partial reinforcement schedule that requires a specific, set number of responses before a reward is delivered.

Variable-Ratio Schedule

A partial reinforcement schedule that delivers reinforcement after an unpredictable, average number of responses, yielding consistently high response rates.

Fixed-Interval Schedule

A partial reinforcement schedule where the first response made after a fixed amount of time is reinforced, producing a scallop-shaped response pattern.

Variable-Interval Schedule

A partial reinforcement schedule where a response is rewarded based on an average amount of elapsed time, leading to slow, consistent responding.

Superstitious Conditioning

The development of a behaviour following coincidental, noncontingent reinforcement delivered on an interval schedule irrespective of the organism's actions.

Latent Learning

Learning that occurs without reinforcement, incentive stimuli, or clear motivation, becoming apparent only when an incentive is provided.

Cognitive Maps

Mental representations of a complex spatial layout that organisms form naturally without behavioural reinforcement.

Insight Learning

A form of learning where an organism arrives at the solution to a problem rapidly or all at once by developing a mental concept of how things work.

Social Learning Theory

Albert Bandura's framework describing observational learning through four primary processes: attention, retention, motor reproduction, and reinforcement.