Lecture Notes 1 27 14 Why do we study animals instead of humans o They are easier to control Example from class following hidden trails o How did the dog know where to go o There is no evidence that proves that dogs have extra senses and can sense where their master wants them to go o Sense of smell himself or heard trail o Memory of visual cues o Hearing abilities listen for familiar sounds in the woods or for cars o Egocentric o Internal compass o Random behavior maybe found the right spot just by chance Two definitions of learning what s the difference Conditioning is the process by which an activity originates or is changed through reacting to an encountered situation provided that the change in activity cannot be explained on the basis of native tendencies maturation or temporary states E R Hilgard 1956 o Hull Skinner o Behaviorist o Reflex modification o Controlled settings are necessary because we do not want to study temporary states o How does your body change in response to experience o Automatic o No intervening cognition introspection thought what you think you do o Inflexible keeps happening automatically o Stimulus evokes a response Conditioning is the learning of relations among events so as to allow the organism to represent its environment R A Rescorla 1988 o Tolman o Cognition psychologists o Animals learn by understanding their relationships in their environments o Flexible o Stimulus stimulus o Thinking o Requires making decisions 1 Sound of bag food has heard it thousands of times and now knows Bag Running to food bowl has happened countless times o Pavlovian Conditioning the dog has learned it will get food o Eventually simply opening the bag will get the dog to run for food o S S when the dog hears the bag it thinks that it is hungry and runs to the food o S R when the dog hears the bag it runs without even thinking of hunger Now let s say the dog has free food all day long whenever he wants it Bag we say he would not move o Hilgard would say that the dog gets up automatically o Rescorla would say we could ruffle the bag and the dog would not respond because he is not hungry
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