Conditions of Learning

What does the associative learning theory deal with?

ability of living organisms to perceive contingency relations between events in their environment

What does the associative learning theory account for?

complex phenomena on the basis of a few simple principles

What are the central assumptions of associative learning theories?

conceptual nervous system consists of nodes

links bt nodes can form as a result of the conditioning

link allows activity in 1 node to modify activity occurring in another node

What do ALT study?

principles that govern establishment of these links/ascs

What did Hebb say about neurons?

neurons that fire together, wire together

What is the contiguity principle?

continguity bt events are enough to guarantee learning

What is associative learning like?

more flexible

What are 3 cases where contiguity between events is not sufficient to establish associations?

contingency

blocking

stimulus specificity

What drives learning?

contingency not contiguity

positive contingency = good learning

What shows positive contingency?

p (US- CS) > p (US - noCS)

What shows no learning?

no correlation

p (US - CS) = p (US - noCS)

What is CS informative value?

relative probability of US in presence vs absence of CS

What does CS informative value depend on?

relative probability of occurrence of US in presence and absence of CS

What is an example of inhibitory conditioning?

where animal would learn that the CS is a good signal for the absence of the US

How can we be so sure learning has occured when there’s no overt behaviour response?

through a summation or retardation test

What is Kamin blocking?

a phenomenon in learning theory that demonstrates impaired learning despite the contiguity of stimuli, challenging the assumption that mere pairing of stimuli is enough for learning

When does learning occur?

when theres a prediction error, the conditioned stimulus needs to be unexpected for new ascs to form

What does biological significance do?

affects the associability of stimuli

What is the cue to consequence effect?

where certain types of causes are more likely to produce certain types of effects

What did the bright noisy water experiment find?

that rats associated a taste but not a light or sound with illness in the irradiation condition

in the electric shock condition, pain cld be asc with only a visual/auditory cue, not a taste

What are some conditions for learning? (3)

rescorla - a stimulus will acquire the properties of a CS only if it is informative abt the occurrence of the US

Garcia - ascs bt a CS and a US will establish if they are similar/biologically relevant

Kamin - a stimulus CS will asc only with surprising USs

any learning theory shld aim to account for these factors

What are the 3 questions to be asked abt any learning phenomena?

what are the conditions that bring about learning?

what is learned?

how does learning affect bv?

What is operant conditioning?

learning where bv is strengthened/weakened depending on the consequences that follow

What is Thorndike’s Law of Effect?

behaviours followed by satisfying outcomes are more likely to be repeated - this is called stamping in, where the connections bt stimulus and response is reinforced by the outcome

What is the Law of Effect about?

learning is not just about doing something and seeing what happens, its about remembering what action led to a positive consequence and doing it again

How do animals learn during operant conditioning?

react automatically to changes in their env and behave without purpose

What challenges S-R theory?

stimulus-stimulus ascs bc S-R theory would predict no reaction to the tone but here organisms react to the tone bc of a learned link bt stimuli, not just stimulus and response

What does the S-R theory say?

responses are learned directly (e.g. tone - response)

What does Rizley & Rescorla’s experiment suggest?

we can learn indirect ascs bt stimuli even when no response is inv at first

What does S-R learning appear to be?

an oversimplified account for how animals learn but there may be conditions which bias animals towards habitual bv, akin to S-R learning

What is Outcome-Response?

goal directed learning where the response is initiated by internal anticipation of an outcome (no cue)

stimulus-response-outcome

What helps to tell apart between goal directed bv and habitual bv?

devaluation - where the value of the reward is reduced

What is the difference bt goal directed bv and habitual bv?

GDB - rats learn stimulus-outcome-response asc, inv planning and outcome evaluation

HB - rats learn a s-r link only, ignoring the outcome, inv automatic routine response

What does extensive training do?

make behaviour more habitual than thoughtful