behavior sciences 3

recovery of response to a stimulus after habituation has occurred.

• taking advantage of reflexive unconditioned stimulus to turn a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus
• process is called acquisition

if bells rings enough times without dog getting the meat

an extinct conditioned stimulus is presented again, a weak conditioned response may be exhibited.

broadening effect in which a stimulus similar enough to conditioned stimulus may produce the conditioned response

Pavlov's dogs could learn to distinguish between two different bell tones.

links voluntary behaviors with consequences in an effort to alter the frequency of those behaviors.

• BF SKinner
• behaviorism is the theory that all behaviors are conditioned

is the process of increasing the likelihood that an individual will perform a behavior

increase a behavior by adding a positive consequence. Money is a strong positive reinforcer

• they also increase the frequency of behavior, but they do so by removing something unpleasant
• aspirin takes away headaches, so that you are more likely to take aspirin next time you have a headache

negative reinforcement: the role of the behavior is to reduce the unpleasantness of something that already exists (like headache)

negative reinforcement is to prevent the unpleasantness of something that has yet to happen

is the fish that is fed to the dolphins

the clicker when trainers pair the fish with the clicker

uses conditioning to reduce the occurence of a behavior

adds an unpleasant consequence in response to a behavior to reduce that behavior

• reduction of behavior when stimulus is removed
• ex. forbidding kid to watch tv as a consequence for bad behavior

• reinforce a behavior after a specific number of performances of that behavior
• continuous reinforcement is a fixed ratio schedule when rat rewarded every third time it presses a bar

reinforce a behavior after a varying number of performances of the behavior, but such that the average number of performances is relatively constant

• reinforce the first instance of a behavior after a specified time period has elapsed
• 60 seconds before the rat can get another pellet

• reinforce a behavior the first time that behavior is performed after a varying interval of time
• rewarded after 20, 30 or 60 seconds

variable ratio

process of rewarding increasingly specific behaviors

• learning that occurs without a reward but that is spontaneously demonstrated once a reward is introduced.
• rats with food reward in the end performed just as well as those who had been trained to run the maze by operant conditioning

rewarding birds after they peck (they naturally do peck) works well...birds are prepared

it is hard to overcome instinctual behaviors in animals

by watching others

located in frontal and parietal lobes, fire when both individual performs the action and when individual observes someone else perform that action

process of putting new information into memory

repetition of a piece of information to either keep it within working memory or store it in short term (then long term)

associating each item in the list with a location along a route through a building that has already been memorized

• associates numbers with items that rhyme with or resemble the numbers
• one is with sun
• two with shoe

taking individual elements of a large list and grouping them together into groups of elements with related meanings.

the association of the info to knowledge already stored in long-term memory

information is stored, though you may not be able to recall, relearning is faster

longer the amount of time between sessions of relearning, the greater the retention of the info later on

• when one node of our semantic network is activated, the other linked concepts are also activated
• priming is when recall is aided by first being presented with a word or phrase that is close to desired semantic memory

degenerative brain disorder thought to be linked to loss of acetylcholine in neurons that link to the hippocampus

process of creating vivid but fabricated memories

• loss of the ability to recognize objects, people, or sounds
• usually caused by physical damage to the brain by stroke or neurological disorder

• memory loss caused by thiamine deficiency in brain
• marked by retrograde and anterograde amnesia

• retrieval error caused by the existence of other (usually similar) information
• proactive interference (old info interferes with new)
• retroactive interference: new info causes forgetting of old info

• remains mostly in tact in old age when it is event based: when primed (seeing a grocery store and remembering to buy milk)
• time based prospective memory tend to decline with age (like taking meds everyday at 7pm)

• person remembers the details of an event, but confused the context under which those details were gained
• person hears story and later recalls the story has having happened to him.

weak neural connections are broken while strong ones are bolstered, increasing efficiency of our brain's ability to process info