Learning

Learning

1. A relatively pernamnet change in behaviour

   • Notion of change
     • Something must be different about an organism after learning has taken place
       • Change can be immediate or can be delayed (sometime after learning has taken place)

2. Intentionally (taking piano lessons)

3. Unintentionally (watching/hearing someone else playing the piano)

4. Active (reciting x tables)

5. Passive (hearing about Australia's performance at the olympics)

6. Refers to.....The potential to behave in a particular way as well as behaviour that is observed to take place

7. Behaviour not dependant on learning

   • Reflex actions
     • Occur automatically in response to a particular stimulation
       • Automatic involuntary behaviour: does not require prior experience
         • Occurs in the same way each time
     • Allow people and animals to deal with specific stimuli that are important for their protection or survival through rigid, automatic responses.
   • Fixed action patterns (FAP)
     • A fixed action pattern of behaviour
       • Occurs when all members of a species produced an identical response to the same specific environmental stimuli.
         • Complex, follows a pattern/sequence/ appears without organism having the opportunity to learn it
     • Species-specific
     • Mechanisms that control the behaviour: fixed
   • Maturation
     • Developmental process leading towards maturity, based on the orderly sequence of changes that occurs in the nervous system and other bodily structures controlled by genetic inheritance
     • Responses that depend on this; appear at predictable times during development
       • Will occur automatically and the time at which it emerges and the way in which it emerges; appears to be programmed in genes

8. Conditioning ; HOW learning occurs

   • A form of learning that emphasises the relationship between stimuli and responses
   • Classical (respondent)
     • Operant (instrumental)

9. Observational learning

   • Learning by watching someone else perform that behaviour
   • Learning Set
     • The improvement in learning a new task that results from the prior learning of another, similar task

10. Habituation

    • Learning not to respond to a stimulus or event that occurs repeatedly
    • Imprinting
      • A form of learning rather than an inborn tendency (instinct) to follow a moving object. (Lorenz, 1937)