LEARNING AND MEMORY

DEFINITIONS

Behaviour is action that alters the relationship between an organism and its environment.

Caused by: External stimulus

Internal stimulus

Both

INNATE BEHAVIOUR

‘Behaviour determined by the "hard-wiring" of the nervous system’.

Usually inflexible

This elaborate response is "built in" and not something that must be acquired by practice.

EXAMPLES

Taxes: when organisms respond to a stimulus by automatically moving directly toward or away from or at some defined angle to it.

Reflexes: an action that is performed without conscious thought as a response to a stimulus.

Instincts: complex behaviour patterns which, like reflexes, are inborn and inflexible. The entire body participates in instinctive behaviour, and an elaborate series of actions may be involved.

LEARNED BEHAVIOUR

‘Behaviour that is more or less permanently altered as a result of the experience of the individual organism

i.e. learning to ride a bike or to play an instrument or teaching a dog new tricks

HABITUATION

Habituation is a reduction in a previously-displayed response when no reward or punishment follows.

Means animals don’t waste time and energy responding to unimportant stimuli

Animals still stay alert to important stimuli though (stimuli which might threaten their survival)

The lack of response is long lasting

SENSITISATION

Sensitization is an increase in the response to an innocuous stimulus when that stimulus occurs after a punishing stimulus

Consider touching the gills of the sea slug Aplysia

CONDITIONING

The conditioned response is a response that — as a result of experience — comes to be caused by a stimulus different from the one that originally triggered it.

Ivan Pavlov and his meat powder

INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONINGAND TRIAL AND ERROR LEARNING

Pavlov's dogs were restrained and the response being conditioned (salivation) was innate.

But the principles of conditioning can also be used to train animals to perform tasks that are not innate.

In these cases, the animal is placed in a setting where it can move about and engage in different activities

The experimenter chooses to reward only one of these

IMPRINTING

Imprinting is phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behaviour

Konrad Lorenz and his imprinted goslings

LATENT LEARNING

What I learned remains hidden

The behaviour is only obvious when it is used by the animal

INSIGHT LEARNING

Requires thought about the problem and consideration of the situation to arrive at a solution very suddenly

not the result of trial and error, responding to an environmental stimulus, or the result of observing someone else attempting the problem.

DISPLACEMENT ACTIVITY

occur when an animal experiences high motivation for two or more conflicting behaviours

i.e. fight or flight

the resulting displacement activity is usually unrelated to the competing motivations.

WHAT IS A MEMORY?

Process in encoding memories that occurs at the level of the synapse

Part of strengthening a synapse involves making new proteins

The production of new proteins can only occur when the RNA that will make the required proteins is turned on

When synapses got activated, one of the proteins wrapped around that silencing complex gets degraded

Protein degradation and synthesis go hand in hand

WHAT IS A MEMORY?

The faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.