BCS 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Hebbian Theory, Thomas Bayes, Operant Conditioning

• School: University of Rochester
• Department: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Course: BCS 111
• Professor: David Ruskin

Document Summary

All animals readily learn to avoid foods that are associated with sickness. However, animals have a difficult time learning associations between certain types of stimuli. Belongingness animals must be able to cognitively pair the stimuli. The foundation of conditioning was that the nervous system should take information and change in response to consistent s-r pairings. Both of these animals can see and taste. But they both learn to avoid foods by only one of those. Why not the other senses? (authors" explanation: you have to take into account evolutionary history & stimulus relevance) In 10 points, thoroughly refutes skinner"s claim that language arises from conditioning. Skinner"s application of behaviorism to natural human behavior is so weak, that the very definitions that skinner uses must be called into question reinforcement Classic studies in conditioning pair certain stimuli to produce new behaviors. Children picking up new languages / dialects on the playground.