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variable

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a characteristic of a person place or thing that can change or vary over time or from one situation to another

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Independent variable

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the aspect of an experiment that systematically varies across the different conditions in the experiment, what is manipulated in a experiment

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Dependent variable

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the aspect of an experiment that is allowed to vary freely to see if ti is affected by changes in the independent variable, what is measured in an experiment, it depends upon changes in the independent variable

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Functional relationship

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relationship between changes in an independent variable and changes in a dependent variable

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stimulus

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any event that can potentially influence behavior

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response

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a particular instance of a behavior

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Overt behavior

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behavior that has the potential for being directly observed by an individual other than the one performing the behavior

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covert behavior

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behavior that can be perceived only by the person performing the behavior, subjectively perceived and is not publicly observable (i.e. thoughts and feelings) (private events/private behavior)

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Appetitive stimulus

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an event that an organism will seek out

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aversive stimulus

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an event that an organism will avoid

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Establishing operation

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a procedure that affects the appetitiveness or aversiveness of a stimulus

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Deprivation

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the prolonged absence of an event which often increases the appetitiveness of that event

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Satiation

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the prolonged exposure to (or consumption of) an event which often decreases the appetitiveness fo that event

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Contiguity

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closeness or nearness

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temporal contiguity

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the extent to which events occur close together in time

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spatial contiguity

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the extent to which events are situated close to each other in space, affects learning

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Contingency

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a predictive or functional relationship between two events such that the occurrence of one event predicts the probable occurrence of another

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Baseline

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the normal frequency of a behavior before some intervention

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case study approach

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a descriptive research approach that involves intensive examination of one or a few individuals

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changing-criterion design

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a type of single-subject design in which the effect of the treatment is demonstrated by how closely the behavior matches a criterion that is systematically altered

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comparative design

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a type of control group design in which different species constitute one of the independent variables

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Control group design

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a type of experiment in which subjects are randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group; subjects assigned to the experimental group are exposed to a certain manipulation or treatment while those assigned to the control group are not

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cumulative recorder

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a device that measures total number of responses over time and provides a graphic depiction of the rate of behavior

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descriptive research

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research that focuses on describing the behavior and the situation within which it occurs, don't involve the manipulation of any variables, i.e. naturalistic observation and case studies

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duration

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length of time that an individual repeatedly or continuously performs a certain behavior

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intensity

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the force or magnitude of a behavior

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interval recording

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the measurement of whether or not a behavior occurs within a series of continuous intervals (number of times that the behavior occurs within each interval is irrelevant)

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latency

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the length of time required for a behavior to begin

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multiple baseline design

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a type of single subject design in which a treatment is instituted at successive points in time for two or more persons settings or behaviors

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naturalistic observation

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a descriptive research approach that involves the systematic observation and recording of behavior in its natural environment

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rate of response

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the frequency with which a response occurs in a certain period of time

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reversal design

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a type of single-subject design that involves repeated alternations between a baseline period and a treatment period

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simple comparison design

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a type of single subject design in which behavior in a baseline condition is compared to behavior in a treatment condition

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single subject design

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a research design that requires only one or a few subjects in order to conduct an entire experiment also known as single case or small n designs

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speed

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amount of time required to perform a complete episode of a behavior from start to finish

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time sample recording

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the measurement of whether or not a behavior occurs within a series of discontinuous intervals (the number of times it occurs within each interval is irrelevant)

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topography

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physical form of a behavior

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Plato and Socrates (nativists) what do we start with?

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you are born with something, you're stuck with that, and it determines your behavior

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Nativist view of base desires

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Base desires occur, but a good life is in our own self-interest (desires conflict with given soul, which is rational)

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nativist view of humans versus non humans

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Our ability to reason is what distinguishes humans from non-humans

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nativist view of impulses

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Given that I'm born with a perfect, rational impulse, all other influences are either bad habits which are learned or ignorance, learning to be rational is unlearning

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Aristotle (empiricism) what do we start with?

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We don't start with anything rational

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Empiricist view of intellect

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Sensation precedes our awareness and action, therefore nothing is in the intellect that wasn't in senses Learning involves linking sensations with actions and forming associations

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Law of association (empiricist view)

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i.e. contiguity in space and time, similarity, contrast

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Galileo

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Believed in lawfulness- we can predict things, follow rules, the behavior of the external world is lawful (predictable) but the soul isn't. Behavior of physical entities is lawful. This notion, which is at the very heart of the scientific method, is crystalized by Newton's mechanics, but also leads to such scientific triumphs as the discovery of chemical elements, the description of magnetism and its connection to electricity

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Descartes (1596-1650) Nativist (soul, mind) and Empiricist

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Some human behaviors are also lawful "I can choose my behavior based on my soul" mentality is wrong, humans are capable of willed action. All animals are machines, whereas we humans are part machine, part soul (reason). Everything is mechanical and lawful except for a piece of the human psyche

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Descartes theory of reflexes

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Reflex: fluid-filled tubes sending water up to the brain, input and output interact through the pineal gland

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Descartes theory of communication between body and soul

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There must be something in the object that's communicating between body and soul (input and output), there's only 1 pineal gland, so he was convinced this is the place of communication

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Luigi Galvani (1737-1798)

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Every muscle in your body is controlled by mechanical rules, muscles contract due to electrochemical inputs

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John Locke, Hume, Mill: British Empiricists

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the mind is the soul and is created through experience and mediates behavior. Natural selection produces "solutions" to environmental problems. Reduces the mind-body problem to a nature - nurture problem.

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Darwin

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materialist nativism. behavior is another feature that natural selection acts upon, Adaptive Trait as "Rational", You're rational because of natural selection, something in animal detects environmental changes to alter behavior, rationality doesn't have to come from a soul

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Patella reflex illustrates

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Patella reflex- as you're walking you may stumble and your knee buckles if you have a quick stretch of the tendon you press down to catch yourself Reflex→ natural selection is trying to solve a problem

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David M. Buss' jealousy experiment

answer

When males imagine sexual infidelity over 50% get jealous, when females imagine emotional infidelity, over 80% get jealous. Natural selection may have selected for jealousy to satisfy the needs of males and females

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Modal Action Pattern

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orderly sequence of reflexive behaviors that rattle off after presentation of

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Reflex

answer

The simplest type of behavioral adaptation is the reflex. Simple stimulus input hooked up to a simple muscle contraction.

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Homeostasis as a Reflex

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The idea is that an organism's body is designed to "defend" certain set points.

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A-process and b-process

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A stimulus event pushes your body off of a set point. This is referred to as the a-process. Your body responds with a b-process that tries to get the body back to the set point. What we typically find is that over time, the b-process gets more and more efficient. That is, the body LEARNS to connect the stimulus with the b-process.

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Cognitive/Social Reflexes

answer

Reflexes are not merely physical. We can also speak of "cognitive" or social reflexes. For example, we tend to respond in a predictable way to "cheating" scenarios as opposed to logically identical non-cheating scenarios.

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Learning as an adaptation

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Learning is an adaptive process just like evolution, and in fact, it IS an adaptation. Learning exists in certain animals in certain specific contexts because natural selection has put it there. What this means is that "reason" is probably something that a lot of animals do, just maybe not in the same situations as humans.

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Reflex Chain in sphex

answer

search for nest, find nest, forage, check nest, bring prey into nest, fill with eggs. If you change the positioning of the prey as the wasp checks the nest, it will reset the MAP back to forage

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Methodological behaviorism

answer

study direct relationship between changes in the environment and observable behavior, excludes internal events like motivations, conscious processes,etc.

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Hull's neobehaviorism

answer

Use hypothesized physiological processes to explain the relationship between the environment and behavior (i.e. hunger, fatigue)

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Tolman's cognitive behaviorism

answer

Use hypothesized cognitive processes to explain the relationship between the environment and behavior i.e. expectations, hypotheses

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Skinner's relationship between internal events, the environment and behavior

answer

The environment is the ultimate cause of both internal events and behavior, although all three influence one another

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Behavioral systems

answer

natural selection has acted upon animal behavior for billions of years which has provided animals with networks of behavioral adaptations. These networks are called "behavioral systems". Behavioral systems are designed to solve species-specific problems i.e. reproduction

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Preparedness

answer

Based on previous associations, an animal comes into an environment biased towards certain types of learning

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Example of preparedness (Garcia and Koeling Experiment)

answer

rats are not so good at learning the association between light--> nausea because they have not had a need to connect these two types of stimuli in the past, they learn the connection between food and nausea much quicker because they are biased towards that type of useful learning. They also learn the association between light and shock more quickly.

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Example of preparedness (Shettleworth Experiment)

answer

providing hamsters with food only reinforces certain behaviors that naturally result in being rewarded with food i.e. digging and not other behaviors which naturally aren't rewarded with food i.e. scratching, washing face

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Replacing phototaxis

answer

Gammarids are crustaceans (e.g., shrimp are also crustaceans). Typically it shows a negative phototaxis reflex. Light -->swim away. However, when infected with acanthocephaln larvae, the reflexes switches over to Light-->swim towards.

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Supernormal stimulus

answer

In general, the intensity of the stimulus correlates with the magnitude of the response, supernormal creates a vigorous or stronger repsonse

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How does temporal frequency of a stimulus affect a reflex

answer

via habituation or sensitization, Elicited behavior changes as a function of frequency of stimulation. Often referred to as non-associative learning.

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Habituation effect

answer

decreased response with repeated stimulation

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sensitization effect

answer

increase response with repeated stimulation

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Habituation and Sensitization in Aplysia

answer

Gill and siphon withdrawal reflex- tactile or electrical stimulation of the siphon causes withdrawal of the gill and siphon

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Habituation in the Aplysia

answer

repeatedly touching the siphon results in a smaller response (gill withdrawal)

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How do we know that the habituated response in the Aplysia is not due to muscle fatigue or change in motor neuron response?

answer

touching the head produces a full response, resets the gill withdrawal to the original response level

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What does touching the head of the aplysia after habituation prove?

answer

the habituation is eliminated by another stimulus, the habituation can be recreated by another set of repeated stimuli

question

Sensitization in the Aplysia

answer

periodically touching the siphon (no habituation) results in a consistent response

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Spontaneous recovery

answer

Once you habituate a response, typically the response slowly starts to return over time. This is referred to as "spontaneous" because it happens all on its own.

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Instimulus Interval Effect

answer

Spaced out stimulus presentations generally produce slow habituation, bunched up stimulus presentations generally produce fast habituation. Long ISIs recover slowly, spontaneous recovery is fast after short ISIs

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Generalization

answer

tends to be greater for stimuli that produce sensitization than for those that produce habituation

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Habituation and dishabituation in infant cognition

answer

you habituate an infant to a situation, then you change the situation. If the infant registers the change habituation will momentarily disappear. The response being habituated is attentional

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Needham & Baillergeon dishabituation

answer

Examine understanding of physical models of the world, habituate infant to "possible" event", run a test with impossible event. Very young infants stay habituated to the impossible event, but it's not long before they are dishabituated to the event

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Natural Section

answer

variation among traits, selection of traits, heritability of traits (traits are passed on to offspring)

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Variability

answer

mutations, population exchanges, gene cross-over during meiosis, viruses

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Traits

answer

variability is connected to phenotypic traits, traits are heritable units that manifest themselves in the phenotype of an organism. Behaviors are also traits and natural selection will act on behavior

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Selection

answer

contingent feedback affecting the relative fitness of the trait over time

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Fitness

answer

defined as relative frequency of the trait or the adaptiveness of the trait

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Adaptative

answer

defined as a solution to an problem brought about by the environment, over time natural selection produces better solutions (adaptations) to problems

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Learning

answer

variation among behaviors/stimulus pairings, contingencies/reinforcement, memory

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Associative learning

answer

an adaptive mechanism by which organisms incorporate regularly occurring stimuli and outcomes into their evolved, species-specific reflexive network (behavioral system) in order to adjust to relatively short term variations in their environment, (pavlovian (world learning) and operant (self learning))

question

behavioral system

answer

networks of behavioral adaptations, solutions to solve species-specific problems

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Learning affects behaviors by

answer

learning starts with a behavioral system and then makes behaviors more or less strong or connects new stimuli and outcomes within the existing system

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How does classical conditioning interact with a behavior system

answer

organisms are designed by evolution to have different reactions to different stimuli, even when they are paired with the same outcome.

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Holland experiment with rats and learning systems

answer

in rats, light--> food presentations cause the rat to rear to light. sound--> food presentations cause the animal to shake its head to sound.

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Wasserman experiment with chicks

answer

small light--> warmth presentations produce pecking at light.This behavioral system is connected with a mother hen. Ambient light--> warmth presentations produce squatting + wing trembling. This behavioral system is connected with being out under the sun.

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Sign Tracking (Autoshaping)

answer

If a key lights up for several seconds before food appears, a hungry pigeon will start pecking at the lighted key as if it were food

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The misbehavior of organisms experiment Breland & Breland

answer

Demonstrated instinctive drift, trained raccoons to deposit coins in a container for food rewards, after a while they began to dip the coins in and out of the behavior even though that didn't result in the food reward. This is because their behavioral system, activated by food, was to wash their food so that overpowered their new trained behavior. Similarly, pigs displayed the rooting reflex, of pushing the coins through the dirt and tossing them in the air.

question

Response typology

answer

autoshaping with different paired stimuli so the reflexive behavior that takes over responding to the CS depends on which UCS it is paired with (i.e. grains open beak vs. water closed beak)

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Delayed matching to sample task

answer

The pigeon pecks at the sample which initiates a delay and then the pigeon has to peck at the correct matching sample

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Tinbergen's four levels of analysis

answer

Causation (proximate, how the trait develops across the lifespan of the individual), Development (what are the biological or environmental forces that cause the trait to emerge), Evolution(is the trait found in closely related species or species with similar environments), Function(how does the trait help the individual survive and reproduce)

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Displacement Behavior

answer

displacement activity, the performance by an animal of an act inappropriate for the stimulus or stimuli that evoked it, often comfort movements, such as grooming, scratching, drinking, or eating.

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Displacement Behavior Example

answer

Birds would pace back and forth when listening to a certain tone because they were under stress from the experiment

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Applied behavior analysis

answer

a technology of behavior in which basic principles of behavior are applied to solving real-world issues

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behavior

answer

any activity f an organism that can be observed or somehow measured

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behavior analysis

answer

the behavioral science that grew out of skinner's philosophy of radical behaviorism

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behaviorism

answer

a natural science approach to psych that traditionally focuses on teh study of environemtnal influences on observable behavior

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cognitive behaviorism

answer

a brand of behaviorism that utilizes intervening variables usually in the form of hypothesized cognitive processes to help explain behavior

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cognitive map

answer

mental representation of one's spatial surroundigns

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countercontrol

answer

deliberate manipulation of environment events to alter impact on our behavior

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empiricism

answer

in psychology the assumption that behavior patterns are mostly learned (nurture)

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functionalism

answer

mind evolved to help us adapt to the world around us

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introspection

answer

accurately describing one's conscious thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences

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latent learning

answer

learning that occurs int eh absence of any observable indication of learning, only becomes apparent under different conditions

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law of contiguity

answer

events that occur close to each other in time or space are readily associated

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law of contrast/similarity

answer

events that are opposite/similar to each other readily associate

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law of parsimony

answer

simpler explanations are generally preferable, Morgan's cannon- explanations of animal behavior that are more reflex-based are preferred to those that involve higher up processing

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Watson's methodological behaviorism

answer

psychologists should only study behaviors that are directly observed

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Activity anorexia

answer

an abnormally high level of activity and low level of food intake generated by exposure to a restricted schedule of feeding

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adjunctive behavior

answer

an excessive pattern of behavior that emerges as a by product of an intermittent schedule of reinforcement

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Behavior systems theory

answer

an animal's behavior is organized into certain systems or categories with each category containing a set of relevant responses that can become activated in certain situations

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CS US relevance

answer

an innate tendency to easily associate certain types of stimuli with each other

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displacement activity

answer

irrelevant activity sometimes displayed by animals when confronted by conflict or thwarted from

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Biophilia hypothesis

answer

the inherited predisposition to be drawn to or bond with nature (including other animals)

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communication

answer

sending and receiving a signal

question

comparative cogntiion

answer

study of information processing across a variety of species

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delayed matching to sample

answer

memory task, animal is first shown sample stimulus, following delay required to select stimulus out of group of alternative stimuli

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language

answer

category of communication-symbols, syntax, semantics- distinguish it from other forms of communication

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numerosity

answer

understanding of quantity

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reference

answer

associate arbitrary symbols with objects and events

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semantics

answer

meaning associated with symbols

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symbol

answer

cue representing some experience or object

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syntax

answer

system of grammatical rules by which symbols are arranged, how these symbols can be modified and interact

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theory of mind

answer

assign mental states to other individuals

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transitive inference

answer

form of reasoning, the relationship between two objects can be inferred by knowing relationship of each to a third object

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