Learning (AP Psychology)

1. What is learning?

A relatively enduring change in behavior resulting from an experience.

2. What is nonassociative learning?

The simplest form of learning that occurs after repeated exposure to a single stimulus or event.

3. What is associative learning? What is conditioning?

Coming to understand, through personal experience, how stimuli or events are related, linking 2 events that generally take place one right after the other.

The process in which environmental stimuli & behavioral responses are connected.

4. What is social learning?

Understanding how stimuli or events are associated, but the learning occurs through social means (observation & instruction).

5. What is classical conditioning?

A neutral stimulus elicits a response because it has become associated with a stimulus that already produces that response.

6. What is a neutral stimulus? What is a conditioning trial? What is a test trial?

Any stimulus that does not trigger a specific reaction. The process of conditioning a subject to associate a stimulus with a response. Testing the conditioned stimulus’s efficiency in causing the desired response.

7. What is an unconditioned response? What is an unconditioned stimulus?

An automatic or unlearned response. A stimulus that naturally elicits an unconditioned response.

8. What is a conditioned stimulus? What is a conditioned response?

A previously neutral stimulus (NS) that eventually triggers a conditioned response. 

A learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

9. How is the response from a CS different from a US?

The CS causes a conditioned response, while the US causes an unconditioned response.

10. What is delayed conditioning? Trace conditioning? Simultaneous conditioning? Backwards conditioning?

There is a very brief delay between the onset of the NS & the US, and the two overlap slightly (leads to strongest conditioning). 

NS precedes US and there is no overlap between the two (the longer the time delay between NS and US, the less likely for learning to occur).

NS & US occur at the same time (poor learning, NS does not predict US).

11. What is acquisition? What is extinction? What is spontaneous recovery?

Formation of an association between NS & US.

Gradual diminishing of a CR until it disappears.

Reappearance of a CR after extinction (this is temporary and will fade quickly unless CS is again paired with US).

12. What does the Rescorla-Wagner/Contingency Model/Cognitive Model of Classical Conditioning say?

An animal learns that some predictors (potential CS) are better than others. Whether a CR is acquired, strengthened, maintained or extinguished depends on the extent to which the US or its absence is unexpected/surprising.

13. What is the difference between a positive and negative prediction error?

When input exceeds prediction. When input falls short of prediction. 

14. Why will an animal more easily associate a novel stimulus with a US than a familiar stimulus?

Because a new stimulus stands out more in the environment than a familiar stimulus. 

15. What is stimulus generalization? What is stimulus discrimination?

When stimuli similar but not identical to the CS produce the CR.

When an animal learns to differentiate between two similar stimuli if one is consistently associated with the CS & the other is not. 

16. What is second order conditioning?

Second-order conditioning is when a previously learned stimulus (CS) is used to help condition a new stimulus.

17. What is operant conditioning? Why was it once called instrumental conditioning?

Conditioning that depends on an animal performing an action that leads to a consequence. 

Because “instrumental” implies that the actions are done on purpose.

18. Who was Edward Thorndike and what was the Law of Effect?

A psychologist. Any behavior leading to a “satisfied” state of affairs is likely to occur again & vice versa. 

19. What does Skinner mean by reinforcement? What is a reinforcer?

Consequences that increase the likelihood of an organism's future behavior.

A stimulus that occurs after a response & increases the likelihood that that response will be repeated. 

20. What is a Skinner Box?

The operant chamber.

21. What is reinforcement discrimination? What is a discriminative stimulus?

An animal learns that only one action leads to a reward.

A stimulus that signals that an action will be reinforced.

22. What happens in positive reinforcement? What happens in negative reinforcement?

Something is being added, and the probability that a behavior will be repeated increases.

An unpleasant stimulus is removed, and the probability that a behavior will be repeated increases.

23. What happens in positive punishment? What happens in negative punishment?

An unpleasant stimulus is administered, and the probability that a behavior will be repeated decreases.

A pleasant stimulus is removed, and the probability that a behavior will be repeated decreases.

24. What is required for punishment to be effective?

The punishment must be reasonable, unpleasant and applied immediately.

25. What is shaping?

Reinforcing behaviors that are increasingly similar to the desired behavior.

26. What is the difference between primary and secondary reinforcers?

Primary reinforcers satisfy biological needs (food/water), whereas secondary reinforcers don’t (grades, praise…). Money is a generalized reinforcer.

27. How did David Premack say the value of a reinforcer could be determined? What is the Premack Principle?

By the amount of time that the person, when free to do anything, willingly engages in a specific behavior associated with the reinforcer. 

A more valued activity can be used to reinforce the performance of a less valued activity. 

28. What is temporal discounting?

When the value of a reward diminishes over time.

29. What is continuous reinforcement? What is partial reinforcement?

Reinforcing behavior every time that it occurs.

The intermittent reinforcement of a behavior.

30. How does a fixed interval schedule work? What rate of responding does it produce?

Reinforcement is provided after a certain amount of time has passed. 

Lowest rate of responding.

An increase in behavior just before the opportunity for reinforcement & then behavior drops off.

31. How does a variable interval schedule work and what rate of responding does it produce?

Reinforcement is provided after the passage of time but the time is not regular. 

Medium rate of responding.

32. How does a fixed ratio schedule work and what rate of responding does it produce?

Reinforcement is provided after a certain number of responses is made. 

Higher rate of responding.

33. How does a variable ratio schedule work and what rate of responding does it produce?

Reinforcement is provided after an unpredictable number of responses.

Highest rate of responding.

34. What is the partial reinforcement extinction effect?

Greater persistence of behavior under partial reinforcement than under continuous reinforcement.

35. What did both Pavlov and Skinner believe were the two important variables in conditioning?

Timing & intensity.

36. What is the principle of equipotentiality?

Any object/phenomenon could become a conditioned stimulus (wrong). Any behavior can be learned as long as it is reinforced (wrong).

37. Describe three ways that John Garcia’s taste aversion studies contradicted Pavlov.

Single-trial learning, long delay between stimuli and response but learning still occurs, biological preparedness.

38. What is instinctive drift?

The tendency for animals to forgo rewards to pursue their normal patterns of behavior.

39. What did Robert Bolles say about animals’ built in reactions?

Animals have built-in defensive reactions to threatening stimuli. 

40. What does Martin Seligman mean by biological preparedness?

Animals are genetically programmed to fear certain objects.

41. How does insight learning contradict Skinner?

There is no reinforcement, yet learning occurs.

42. How does latent learning contradict Skinner?

There is no reinforcement, yet learning occurs.

43. Describe the brain structures involved in the pleasure circuit and the main neurotransmitter involved.

Ventral tegmentum (midbrain) increases dopamine release when you do something you deem rewarding. Synapses connect with the medial forebrain bundle & nucleus accumbens.

44. What is the difference between wanting and liking and what neurotransmitters are involved?

The desire or craving that one has for a substance.

The subjective experience of pleasure.

45. How did John B. Watson show that phobias have learned components?

Through Little Albert and how he “taught” him phobias.

46. What is counterconditioning?

Conditioning in order to replace an undesirable response to a stimulus by a favorable one. “Removing” a phobia.

47. What is social learning?

How people learn many behaviors not by doing them but by being told how to do them and/or watching others do them.

48. Who was Albert Bandura and what was the Bobo doll experiment?

A psychologist interested in social learning. The Bobo doll experiment showed that children imitate aggressive behavior toward the doll after observing an adult model act violently, highlighting the role of observational learning.

49. What is modeling? What are models?

The imitation of observed behavior.

Those being observed.

50. Which models are we more likely to imitate?

Models who are attractive, have high status, and are somewhat similar to ourselves.

51. What is vicarious learning?

People learn about an action’s consequences by watching others being rewarded or punished for performing the action.

52. What is instructed in learning?

A type of learning specific to humans in which one is verbally instructed about the associations between stimuli or between actions and consequences.

53. Describe Susan Mineka’s experiment.

She used wild-raised, lab-raised monkeys and snakes to determine whether phobias could be learned by watching others react fearfully. Mineka had lab-raised monkey watch wild-raised monkeys react fearfully to snakes, and found that the lab monkeys did acquire the fear.

54. Understand the components of long term potentiation: glutamate, NMDA receptor, magnesium ion, AMPA receptor, coincident input, changes in the synapse as a result of LTP

Long-term potentiation (LTP) strengthens synapses through repeated activation. Glutamate binds to AMPA and NMDA receptors, but the NMDA receptor is blocked by a magnesium ion. When AMPA activation depolarizes the neuron, the magnesium ion is repelled, allowing calcium influx through NMDA receptors. This coincidence of inputs strengthens synapses, leading to structural changes like increased synapse size and dendritic growth, reinforcing learning and memory.