1Infant Learning• Habituation• Perceptual Learning• Visual Expectancy• Classical Conditioning• Instrumental Conditioning• Observational LearningHabituation• A decrease in response to repeated stimulation,revealing that learning has occurred.• Habituation is the simplest form of learningand the one first seen in infants.• Infants who habituate more rapidly, haveshort looking time, and have a greaterpreference for novelty, have higher IQ’s later.2Perceptual Learning• Learning regularities in the world from theobjects and events they perceive.• Differentiation-the ability to extractinvariant elements from the constantlychanging environment• Affordances- the possibilities for actionoffered by objects and situations.Infant Learning• Visual expectancy- Infant’s ability to formexpectancies for the future based on pastexperience.3Classical Conditioning• An unconditioned stimulus (UCS), say, anipple inserted into the mouth, elicits areflexive unlearned response (unconditionedresponse, UR), sucking.• The infant can become conditioned to thenipple (now a conditioned stimulus, CS) sothat sucking occurs as soon as the baby sees anipple (now a conditioned response, CR).Little Albert• Little Albert was conditioned to be afraid ofwhite rats.–Loud noise (UCS) = fear (UCR)–Loud noise (UCR) + white rat (CS) = fear–White rat (CS) = fear (CR)4Instrumental (Operant) Conditioning• Learning is based on the relationshipbetween one’s own behavior and rewardor punishment.• Positive reinforcement - a reward thatfollows a behavior and increases thelikelihood that the behavior will berepeated.Observational Learning• The infant learns by observing others.• Observational learning seems to be presentearly in life. At birth?• By 6 months, infant imitation is indisputable.• By 18 months, infants can imitate intendedactions, rather than observed actions.5Observational Learning• Infants will imitate intention of adults (a)but not intention of machines
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