Learning and behavior/Learning, remembering, forgetting summary

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR


Lecture 1
Objective: understanding the introduction to learning of single events.

Learning: the process by which long-lasting changes occur in behavioral potential because of
experience.

Memory: the record of the experience that underlies learning. Learning and memory are
intertwined.

Single-stimulus learning: repeated exposure to one stimulus.

Three different types of learning:
 Simple learning: experience with single events.
 Classical conditioning: experience with a relationship between stimuli.
 Operant conditioning: experience with a relationship between behavior and stimuli.


Four types of simple learning:
 Habituation: decreasing response to stimuli we frequently encounter in our lives.
 Sensitization: increasing response to a arousing stimulus.
 Perceptual learning: becoming better at processing/recognizing a frequent stimuli.
 Spatial learning: acquisition of information about the layout of the environment and its
contents and properties by exploring it.


Behavior vs. behavioral potential: learning does not mean that the behavior permanently changes.
Learned behavior can express itself later on, when for example at that moment the motivation lays
higher than before.

Indirect experiences:
 Through observations.
 Information that passed oral.
 Information that you’ve read.
 Unintentionally gaining experience.
 explicit vs. implicit: with explicit experience you can use your words to describe it, with
implicit experience you can’t. Both always influence behavior.


Parametric properties: habituation
 Intensity/complexity.
 Frequency of exposure.
 Interval between stimuli.
 Stimulus specificity.
 Spontaneous recovery after interval between stimuli.
 Dishabituation.

,  Enhanced rehabituation: when rehabituation happens faster than the first time habituation
occurred.
 Short-term vs. long-term habituation: the brain remembers habituation and can pick up
where it left off when the stimulus wasn’t present for a while. So even if you don’t present a
stimulus for a while, your brain can stay habituated to the stimulus.

Parametric properties: sensitization
 Intensity
 Frequency of exposure.
 Non-specific stimulus.
 Short-term.

Dual-process theory:
 Habituation and sensitization reflect differential activation of two different systems:
o Low-threshold reflex pathway: weakens with repeated use.
o High-threshold ‘state system’: when activated, it increases responses globally.




Opponent-process theory:
 The body wants a balance in sensations and emotions.
 When experiencing a ‘high’, body counteracts with a ‘low’.
 Especially designed to explain habituation of responses to drugs and motivations/emotions.

, Cognitive explanation/comparator model:
 Repeated exposure to a stimulus allows a construction of a mental representation of the
stimulus.
 It is stored in the memory.
 Responses are based on the mismatch between external stimuli and internal
representations.
 According to this view, habituation is a form of perceptual learning.
 It changes the ability to detect and perceive the stimuli.




Perceptual learning: mere exposure makes it increasingly easier to tell it apart from other stimuli.
These skills are highly specific to the trained stimuli.

Theories of perceptual learning:
 Differential habituation to different stimulus components: faster habituation to common,
non-distinctive elements than to distinctive features.
 Comparator model: new stimulus compared with a memory for a stimulus.
o Strong match  no attention.
o Not a strong match  attention and responding.
o Attention and responding builds a better memory.
o This explains habituation and perceptual learning.
 Novel object recognition/familiarity.

Spatial learning: two different coding systems.
 Allocentric: object to object, you encode information about the one object with respect to
other objects.
 Egocentric: self to objects, you encode the location of object in space relative to the body axe
of the self.

Brain structures involved: perceptual learning.
 Sensory cortex gives input for perceptual learning.
 Neurons in sensory cortex have a receptive field and form an orderly map.
 Cortical plasticity: the maps are noy fixed, they change with development and experience.
o Shrinking of receptive fields.
o Changes in cortical spatial organization.
o Strengthening of connection between neurons.