A. How Do We Learn?
a. Learning- the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors.
b. John Locke and David Hume echoed Aristotle’s conclusion: we learn from association, as our minds connect events that occur in sequence.
c. Learned associations often operate subtly and feed our habitual behaviors.
d. Habituation- an organism’s decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it.
e. Sea slug habituates with choppy water, response grows stronger if electrically shocked with each squirt.
f. Associative Learning- learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning).
g. The process of learning associations is conditioning:
-Classical conditioning: We learn to associate
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Conditioned response (CR)- in classical conditioning, a learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS).
g. Conditioned stimulus (CS)- in classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR).
h. Conditioned= learned, unconditioned= unlearned
i. Five major conditioning processes: acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination.
1a. Acquisition
a. Acquisition- in classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.
b. With few exceptions, conditioning doesn’t happen when the NS follows the US.
c. **Classical conditioning is biologically adaptive because it helps humans and other animals prepare for good or bad events.** d. **Conditioning helps an animal survive and reproduce—by responding to cues that help it gain food, avoid dangers, locate mates, and produce