Learning Types

7 types of learning (according to Matthias)

• Psychomotor learning

• Habituation

• Imprinting

• Imitation

• Classical conditioning

• Operant conditioning

• Cognitive learning

Psychomotor learning

= learning of motor patterns to automatization

•   e.g. walking, tying shoelaces, riding a bike

• Has the most typical learning curve with 3 phases

  • Phase 1: Slow

  • Phase 2: Gradual incline depending on learning speed

  • Phase 3: Plateau

    • Fast and slow learners can reach the same plateau level

Habituation

= behavioural adaptation to a situation that is constant or regular

• e.g. learn to ignore the sensation of clothing

• filtering out information that the brain has learned to be repetitive

• NOT the same as sensory adaptation

• Habituate with all senses except pain

  • we can use mental process to lower/ignore the pain, but that is not habituation

Habituation vs Sensory adaptation

• Habituation

  • A learning process

• Sensory adaptation

  • Sensory fatigue

  • Sensory neurons no longer send the signals due to the neurons being exhausted

Imprinting

= association between behavioural response and a specific situation/stimulus that occurs only once/few times during a specific developmental phase

• e.g. geese

  • Filial imprinting

    • Filial= takes place in the offspring

  • Does not appear in all birds

• Very fast form of learning, almost irreversible

Nidifugous birds

• Have the ability to leave the nest as young

  • e.g. geese

  • (e.g. birds of prey cannot leave the nest immediately, so they are not nidifugous)

Types of imprinting

• Filial imprinting

• (Bird songs)

  • Certain species learn from hearing other birds nearby sing (not an innate knowledge to sing)

• Sexual imprinting

  • Certain animals don’t know what a sexual partner looks like

    • May try to mate with the first thing they see when reaching maturity

  • E.g. birds of prey, may sexually imprint on the humans who raised them

    • Humans use special hats to collect semen and then inseminate the females with it

Imitation

= copying the behaviour of role models (usually conspecifics).

• Not a hierarchal thing

• Primates generally suck at observational learning

  • e.g. cracking open nuts with rocks is not an imitated response    

    • apes figure it out as fast as those who have observed the behaviour before

Classical conditioning

= association between a reflex-controlled behaviour and a repeated stimulus

• Is reversible

• Process:

  • unconditioned stimulus —> unconditioned response

  • unconditioned stimulus + conditioned stimulus —> unconditioned response

  • conditioned stimulus —> conditioned response

Operant conditioning

= association between any spontaneously occurring behaviour and a repeated stimulus

Learning steps:

• Associate a motor pattern performed immediately followed by a consequence

  • consequence can be positive or negative

• The association between a motor pattern and a consequence may depend on the presence of a certain sensory stimulus

  • e.g. light, sound, smell

  • rats learn much faster when associated with smell as opposed to sound or light

  • Primates are faster with visual stimuli than olfactory

  • Rats outperform primates in smell, elephants outperform rats in smell

Rules of operant conditioning

Found by B. F. Skinner

• Continuous Reinforcement

  • Leads to fast acquisition of a behaviour

• Intermittent Reinforcement

  • Leads to a long-lasting acquisition of a behaviour

  • (Rewarded on occasion but still the majority of the time, e.g. 80% of the time.

    • Animals remember for longer because they keep their focus for longer when a reward is not guaranteed (this makes them bored))

• Continuous Lack of Reinforcement

  • Leads to extinction of a conditioned behaviour

Factors that alter effectiveness of consequences

• Motivational status

  • e.g. hunger, thirst levels

  • No effect on learning outcome

• Immediacy

  • = time delay between motor pattern and consequence

  • Very important

• Contingency

  • = reliability of the consequence

• Size

  • = “costs vs benefit”, investment needed to perform the motor pattern, and amount of quality of the consequence

  • No difference in learning speed (learning curve- wise)

Cognitive learning

= does not require actual execution or training of motor patterns but is characterized by solving problems exclusively mentally

• think through a problem and come to a solution

• e.g. those monkeys that reached a reward by moving boxes and attaching sticks to make them longer