Flashcards
Learning and Cognition Intro (incomplete)
Cards in this deck (14)
- 1Tarpy 1997 definition of learningLearning is inferred change in organism's mental state which results from experience and which influences, in a relatively permanent fashion, the organism's potential for subsequent behaviour
- 2Barnard 2004 definition of learningThe way animals acquire, integrate and store information in decided how to behave. Usually results in flexible, adaptive responses based on a conceptual appreciation of the world, rather than hard-wired experiences, responses or rules
- 3What types of questions can we ask when it comes to learning?-Mechanisms-causation: how does it work?What are the immediate causes?
-Ontogeny - How does it develop in the individual
-Function: what is its evolutionary function
-Phylegony - what is its phylogenic history, how did it evolve? - 4How can learning be seen as an alternative to adaptation?Both of them can help the organism survive better, it's just that evolution is over a long long time and caused by random mutations and variations in reproductive success whilst learning is within a lifetime and caused by spontaneous behavior and modified by reward/punishment
- 5Why may learning be preferable to adaptation?- the environment may be highly variable so adaptation may not be quick enough to keep up with the change
-generalist niche where flexible behaviour enables a wide range of solutions without needing a specialist physical or physiological adaption - 6What does learning involve?Time, risk that the behavior won't be learned, investment in supportive neural tissue
-If variation is too high, the cost of changing behaviour all the time will be too great - 7the 'black box' model of learning:
- 8What are the two parts to learning?1. Acquisition of knowledge, be it private, mental or cognitive
2. Change in behaviour that is public, observable and neurobiological - 9What do we mean here by performance:What the organism does or what the researcher observes or records
-Learning is inferred from performance but they're not identical, an animal may learn without showing behavioural changes - 10What are the types of knowledge?1. Procedural - learning a fixed series of actions to obtain reinforcement. Learning WHAT to do
2. Explicit - represent a goal and learn how to get there. Implies flexibility. Learning HOW to do something - 11What is habituation?If a stimulus is repeated without any consequences for the animal, the response generally decreases. Responses are stimulus specific. Example: ignoring ticking clock. Learning to ignore the stimulus is time and energy consuming. Animal doesn't lose response, just suppressed it
- 12What is sensitisation?repeated reinforcement of behaviour leads to increase in likelihood of responding to a neutral stimulus. Not specific, but causes an increase in arousal. Strong stimuli cause stronger sensitisation.
- 13What are the two schools of thought and what do they say?1. Behaviourists - argue that most mental abilities of an animal can be explained by hard-wired responses and conditioning
2. Cognitivists - argue that animals have more advanced abilities than we assume - 14How do we distinguish between procedural and explicit knowledge?We can observe whether animals can be flexible about their responses but it is actually a difficult thing to observe
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- - Animal Biology Flashcards on Learning and Cognition Intro (incomplete) , created by Emma Lloyd on 10/05/2019.
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