PY 101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Latent Learning, Habituation, Observational Learning

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PY 101
• Professor: Natalie Dautovich

Document Summary

Learning is a relatively enduring change in behavior. Occurs when an animal benefits from experience so that its behavior is better adapted to the environment. The essence of learning is understanding how events are related. Conditioning- a process in which environmental stimuli and behavioral responses become connected. Classical conditioning (pavlovian conditioning): occurs when you learn that two types of events go together. Operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning): occurs when you learn that a behavior leads to a particular outcome. Unearned, automatic behavior, such as any simple reflex. Acquisition- the gradual formation of an association between a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. The conditioned response is extinguished when the conditioned stimulus no longer predicts the unconditioned stimulus. Stimulus generalization- occurs when stimuli similar, but not identical to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response. Stimulus differentiation- animals learn to differentiate between two similar stimuli if one is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus and the other is not.