Biology 3593B Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Classical Conditioning, Phenotypic Plasticity, Learning
Document Summary
Essence of learning : adaptive changes in individual behaviour caused by experience which is relatively permanent. learning is a form of phenotypic plasticity phenomenom that a genotype can result in different phenotypes. Performance plotted against trials animals improve over time. Time / latency / errors plotted against tialsls will decrease when animal learns. Learning speed (dependent on relationship between natural behaviour / specific learning task) times what it perceives minus what it already knows. Learning depends on costs and benefit, and there is a lot of variation between animals of the same species. Two factors affect the evolution of learning: environmental stability. Learning does not evolve in a fixed or dynamic word. Fixed world: no need to learn because of environmental constancy. Dynamic world: learning is not beneficial because of unpredictable changes in environment. All species have forms of non-associative learning. Testing habituation vs exhaustion: mechanical shock stimuli can test exhaustion.
