Learning as a process?
A process of change that occurs as a result of an individual’s experience.
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Learning as a process? | A process of change that occurs as a result of an individual’s experience. |
| Learning as a product? | The long-term changes in one’s behaviour that result from a learning experience. |
| Who used white rats as test subjects and lever pressing as a response in his first major work, The Behavior of Organisms (1938)? | B.F Skinner. |
| Who is generally acknowledged to be the first Associationist? | The Greek philosopher Aristotle. |
| According to Aristotle, how many principles did association have? | Three. |
| What was Aristotle's first association principle called? | Contiguity. |
| According to Aristotle, what is contiguity? | The more closely together (contiguous) in space/time two items occur, the more likely will the thought of one item lead to the thought of the other. |
| Give an example of Aristotle's principle of contiguity. | The response chair to the word table shows association by spatial contiguity since the two items are often found close together. |
| What were Aristotle’s other two principles of association? | Similarity and contrast, whereby the thought of one concept leads to the thought of similar concepts. |
| Give an example of Aristotle’s similarity and contrast principles of association. | Apple-orange or blue-green. |
| What did John Locke (1690), James Mill (1829), and John Stuart Mill (1843) all have in common? | They were all British Associationists and Empiricists. |
| Who asserted that claim that a newborn child's mind is like a a tabula rasa (a blank slate) onto which experiences make their marks? | John Locke. |
| What is the opposite of Empiricism? | Nativism, the position that some ideas are innate and do not depend on an individual’s past experience. |
| Who was a notable Nativist? | Immanuel Kant (1781), who believed that the concepts of space/time are inborn and that through experience new concepts are built on the foundation of these original, innate concepts. |
| According to the Associationists, there is a direct correspondence between which two things? | Experience and memory. |
| What is James Mill's (1829) concept of a complex idea? | When two or more simple sensations are repeatedly presented together, a product of their union may be a complex idea. E.g., if the sensations red and rectangular occur together repeatedly, a complex idea of brick may form. |
| Who was the first person to put the Associationists’ principles to an experimental test. | Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885). |
| What was a major bias in Ebbinghaus' tests with memory? | He served as his own subject, but despite this, many of his findings have been replicated. |
| What is the process called when one continues to practice after performance is apparently perfect? | Overlearning. |
| What type of curve provides strong confirmation of Brown’s principle of recency? | The forgetting curve. |
| What was the dominant approach to the investigation of learning for the first half of the twentieth century? | Behaviourism. |
| What new approach to psychology occurred during the 1960s? | Cognitive psychology. |
| What approach to psychology is encompassed by the following: (1) a heavy reliance on animal subjects and (2) an emphasis on external events (environmental stimuli and overt behaviours) and a reluctance to speculate about processes inside the organism that cannot be seen. | Behavioural. |
| What is a subject-effect? | It occurs when those who are participating in an experiment change their behaviour because they know they are being observed. |
| What are the three main reasons that psychologists used animals as subjects? | (1) to avoid subject-effect. (2) convenience. (3) comparative simplicity (less intelligent and less complex than humans). |
| What is a disadvantage of using animals for research? | Many of the most advanced human abilities cannot be studied with animals. |
| Who coined the term behaviourism? | John B. Watson (1919). |
| What popular research method did John B. Watson (1919) argue against? | Introspection (or unobservable events). |
| What is the 'Intervening Variable' as criticised by B.F Skinner? | The unobservable event. |
| Who rejected Skinner's assertion that intervening variables are always undesirable? | Neal Miller (1959). |
| Which type of psychologist used animals as subjects more? | Behavioural psychologists. |
| According to John B. Watson, if psychology is to be a science it must focus on observable events like? | Stimuli and responses. |
| What is the name of the specialised cells that make up the nervous system of all living things? | Neurons, which transmit information. |
| What are the three main components of a typical neuron? | (1) cell body. (2) dendrites. (3) axons. |
| What does the cell body of a neuron contain? | The nucleus. |
| What is the nucleus of a neuron responsible for? | Regulates the basic metabolic functions of the cell. E.g., oxygen intake and release of carbon dioxide. |
| What two major components of a neuron are on the receptive side? | The cell body and the dendrites and are therefore sensitive to neurotransmitters. |
| What happens to a neuron when its dendrites and cell body receive sufficient stimulation? | It 'fires' - exhibits a sudden change in electrical potential lasting only a few milliseconds. |
| What does the term synapse mean? | It refers to a gap between the axon terminal of one neuron (presynaptic neuron) and the dendrite of another neuron (postsynaptic neuron). |
| What does the presynaptic neuron release into the postsynaptic neuron? | Transmitters. |
| How can a transmitter affect the postsynaptic neuron? | (1) Excitatory synapse: makes the postsynaptic neuron more likely to fire. (2) Inhibitory synapse: makes the postsynaptic neuron less likely to fire. |
| What are receptors? | A variety of specialised neurons that are the nervous system's only means of contact with the stimuli of the external environment. |
| True or false, all sensory systems begin by breaking down incoming stimuli into simple sensations. | True. |
| What are feature detectors? | Where neurons in the brain each respond to a specific visual stimulus. |
| Who discovered feature detectors neurons? | Hubel and Wiesel (1965, 1979). |
| What are simple cells? | They were also discovered by Hubel and Wiesel (1965, 1979) and they fired most rapidly when the visual stimulus was a line of a specific orientation, presented in a specific part of the visual field. E.g., one simple cell might fire most rapidly in response to a line at a 45-degree angle from the horizontal and respond less to a 30-degree angle. |
| What is long-term potentiation? | When brain tissues are given a brief burst of electrical stimulation; this action can produce long-lasting increases in the strength of existing connections between neurons. |
| True or false, learning experiences can lead to the growth of new synaptic connections between neurons. | True. |
| True or false, new neurons continue to appear in the brains of adult mammals. | True. |
| What is the growth of new neurons called? | Neuro-genesis. |
| In communication between neurons, a chemical transmitter is released by the ______ of one neuron and received by the ______ of another neuron. | (1) axon terminal. (2) dendrite. |
| There are three types of cones in the human retina that respond to three different types of stimuli: ______, ______, and ______. | (1) red. (2) green. (3) blue. |
| The 'simple cells' in the visual cortex found by Hubel and Wiesel respond specifically to ______. | Line of specific orientation. |
| Three main types of changes that can occur in the brain as a result of a learning experience are ______, ______, and ______. | (1) chemical. (2) growth of new synapses. (3) growth of new neurons. |
| By removing different parts of the brains of rats after they learned a maze, Lashley concluded that memories are stored ______. | Spread out through the brain. |