Reading...
Play button
Play button
Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
39 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
Describe how physical characteristics limit learning.
|
Sometimes a subject does not have the necessary physical characteristics to learn something, or to learn something as fast as another subject or species.
|
|
|
Provide and recognize original examples of this type of limitation.
|
Chimpanzees don't have the physical apparatus to learn to speak. Pigeons can't play normal ping pong.
|
|
|
Describe Gardner's (1969) work in teaching chimpanzees verbal behavior (pp. 426-427)
|
Taught Washoe, young female chimp, sigh language. In less than 2 years, she had 30 signs, 7 years, 200 signs.
|
|
|
Comment on physical charateristics and learning
|
Comment: As discussed in this section, the ability of nonhuman animals to speak may be limited by their vocal musculature. Many other physical limitations prevent the learning of particular skills and abilities.
|
|
|
Describe how the nonheritability of learned behavior limits learning.
|
Every new generation must start from scratch.
|
|
|
Describe Lamarck's theory (1800s) of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
|
Suggested that if a giraffe stretched to reach the highest branches, its neck would likely get longer, and this would be passed on. Over many generations, it would get much longer.
|
|
|
Describe McDougall's work (1927, 1938) in testing the theory that learned behaviors are inherited to some extent.
|
Trained rats to avoid electric shock. Trained offspring to perform same task, and so on. He became more convinced of his theory. Others doubted his data, and ran the same experiments with better controls, and found no evidence for his conclusions.
|
|
|
If acquired behaviors were passed on through inheritance, what disadvantages would this create? Explain. (pp. 428-430)
|
Would mean that our behaviours are adaptations to our ancestors environments. Reflexes and FAPs provide this, but learning deals with changing environments.
|
|
|
Describe inherited learning abilities as a limitation on learning.
|
Inherited learning abilities would program us to respond to what our ancestors had to deal with.
|
|
|
Provide and recognize original examples of such inheritance of learning abilities.
|
If our ancestors were born expert hunters, may not have develop agriculture. Changes in social roles of men and women would be unlikely if these roles were inherited. Science would have slowed (Copernicus would have known the sun revolved around the earth).
|
|
|
Describe the research showing that learning abilities can be inherited in animals and in humans. (pp. 430-432)
|
Tryon: ran rats through maze and recorded number of errors. Some made over 20 times as many errors as others. Tryon bred these with each other, and bred those with fewest errors with each other. Repeated for 18 generations. Average number of errors got farther apart with each generation. Harry and Martha Frank: placed wolf pups on one side of a barrier from which they could see but not reach food. Compared number of errors wolf pups made with similar data about dog pups. One three different tests, wolves did far better than dogs. Suggests wolves are selected for intelligence (which helps in survival). Identical twins often have same IQs, in spite of different environments, and adopted children are more likely to resemble biological parents' intelligence.
|
|
|
Describe how neurological damage can limit learning ability. Identify common conditions that can cause such neurological damage. (pp. 432-434)
|
Prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs interfers with neurological development, may only be apparent when the child goes to school Neurotoxins after birth: particularly in infancy and early childhood. (lead is among the worst). Head inury, malnutrition, can also have an impact.
|
|
|
Recipe for Genius
|
John Stuart Mill: father tutored him in the cradle. Reading by age 3, answered questions from his father about what he read. By age of 9, had read most of Greek classics in Greek. Other children didn't get the same attention, and could not match their elder brother. Aaron Stern (1971) devoted time to educating his daughter. Infant: classical music and cards with numbers, read to her, spoke slowly and in complete sentences. 18 months: taught math with abacus, showed her words on cards, taught her to read street signs. Age 2: reading books for children of 6-8, age 4, reaing New York Times and playing chess, age 5, read most of Encyclopaudia Britannica, age 6, reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, 15: graduated from college and bgun graduate work at Michigan State University.
|
|
|
What are critical periods with respect to susceptibility to learning?
|
Times when organisms are especially likely to learn a particular kind of behavior.
|
|
|
Describe the phenomenon of imprinting and explain how it involves a critical period in learning.
|
Konrad Lorenz studied it first: remove newly hatched goose chick from incubator, person inadvertently becomes a parent. Goose follows person, not its mother. Ignores its own species. Works if you use a moving mechanical object.
|
|
|
Explain how social behavior in dogs is influenced by critical learning periods
|
John Paul Scott shows puppu must have contact with people between 3-12 weeks of age to become a good house pet. Otherwise, will live like wild animals.
|
|
|
Explain how maternal behavior in sheep is influenced by critical learning periods
|
Scottt bottle fed a lamb for first 10 days of its life then returned it to the flock. The lamb preferred to be with people. Was a poor mother: allowed offspring to nurse, but took no interest in other motherly activities.
|
|
|
Explain how social skills in monkeys are influenced by critical learning periods. (pp. 434-436)
|
Harlows: rhesus monkeys in isolation.terry cloth covered objects as mothers. Infants clung to these for hours. Ran to "mom" for protection. Terrified when placed with normally reared monkeys: ran to corner, rolled into a ball, scuked a finger. As adults, did not play or mate or rear young the way normal monkeys did. Acquired some social skils as adults, always seemed socially retarded.
|
|
|
Paraphilias and imprinting
|
Feierman and Feierman note that paraphilias resemble imprinted behavior because difficult to change. "It is conceivable that secual orientation is result of imprinting the occurs early in life." Thus, gays say they were "born that way," and can't change. "BUT THIS IS PURE SPECULATION."
|
|
|
Describe the Brelands' work in training raccoons and pigs.
|
Priscilla the pig learned to turn on a radio, run vacuum cleaner, etc. However, Brelands wanted to train a raccoon to pick up some coins and put them in a metal box. Would approach the box, put the coin in the slot, but would not let go. With two coins, would rub them together, and do other things that had never been reinforced.
|
|
|
Why did these animals “misbehave”?
|
The Brelands theorized that innate tendencies interfered with learning.
|
|
|
What is instinctive drift? (pp. 436-437)
|
tendency of an animal to revert to a fixed action pattern
|
|
|
Describe Garcia and Koelling's (1966) classical conditioning experiments that show differences in preparedness to learn.
|
Water was flavoured, and light and clicking noise came one whenever the rat trank. In one experiment, drinking was followed by X-radiation and nausea. In another, drinking followed by electric shock. Group A later avoided tasty water, group B avoided bright-noisy water. Innate bias to learn one thing instead of another.
|
|
|
Describe Epstein and Skinner's (1980) study that shows differences in preparedness to learn.
|
Shone a spot of light on a screen and made it move. When it reached the edge of the screen, pigeon received food. Bird did not have to do anything to get food, but it began pecking the moving spot of light, as if driving it across the screen.
|
|
|
What is sign tracking?
|
Animal sees an indicator, such as a light, of future reinforcement, and pecks that indicator.
|
|
|
What is another name for sign tracking?
|
Autoshaping
|
|
|
What explanations have been advanced to explain sign tracking? (pp. 438-439)
|
1. Coincidental reinforcement. Resemble's Skinner's superstition experiment, but this theory has been criticized. 2. Pavlovian conditioning: pecking is a UR to grain, so if light is paired with food, the bird will peck the light or disk just as it pecks the grain.
|
|
|
What is Seligman's continuum of preparedness?
|
organism comes to a learning situation genetically prepared to learn (and learns quickly), unprepared (and learns slowly but steadily), or contraprepared (where learning is slow and irregular).
|
|
|
Describe the evidence for Seligman's theory (the continuum of preparedness).
|
Racoon that won't drop coins: prepared to pick up and carry food/coins, but contraprepared to drop the food. Garcia and Koelling's rats: genetically prepared to avoid different tasting water if it makes them sick. No such apparatus for lighted water. Mineka and Cook: Monkeys watched videotapes of monkeys reacting fearfully to either snakes of flowers. Observers acquired a fear of snakes but not of flowers. People shown an array of pictures and asked to find the spider or snake, they find these faster than less hazardous items.
|
|
|
Describe Lenneberg's views regarding the acquisition of language.
|
Language development follows a regular, predictable pattern around the world. Language skills of retarded children freeze at a primitive stage of development.
|
|
|
What did K.S. Kendler find regarding the incidence of social phobias among identical twins?
|
Studied female twins and found various social phobias (such as fear of meeting people, or agoraphobia (fear of open places) have a genetic basis.
|
|
|
What conclusions have been drawn from this work? (Kendler’s about incidence of social phobias among identical twins) (pp. 438-442)
|
These girls were not born with the phobias, but may have been genetically prepared to acquire them.
|
|
|
Is learning a form of progress?
|
Not necessarily.
|
|
|
Evolution and progress
|
Evolution is said not to have an objective. It simply happens. That may be true of the mechanism itself, but it is not true of history. Some philosophers (Bertrand Russell, I believe) say no one asked the protozoan if it thinks a human is a better life form that it. Yet that is a strictly metaphysical question. More compicated, yes. That is an objective fact. Higher? Better? Superior? That qualitative, not quantitative (though we can establish quantitative means of measuring these things, those decisions are qualitative). And while a protozoan is protozoanly, (and man may be the same), man may also be truly Godly.
|
|
|
Explain and provide an original example to illustrate your position. (p. 441)
|
Bad behavior, such as the skinning of dead concentration camp prisoners, was learned behavior. So too are student reactions to that account.
|
|
|
What type of problems are most serious for the human species?
|
Behaviour problems.
|
|
|
Can a science of learning contribute toward a solution to these problems? Explain.
|
YES! If we can use better understanding of learning to alter our behaviours in positive ways, we can help erase some of these problems.
|
|
|
Provide original examples of large-scale human problems that can be understood in terms of behavioral problems. (pp. 442-444)
|
Teen pregnancy: the poor often have teen pregnancies, perhaps because producing children wins them admiration, escapes an unpleasant home envinronment, grants access to government assistance (WHAT??? Are these real reasons teens get pregnant? I think their hormones are going crazy, and they have learned they should let loose and have sex).
|
|
|
a priori
|
knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction instead of experience.
|
