Psychology of Learning

Module 01: What is Learning

Key Terms

Attachment Behavior: The formation of strong emotional bonds between infants and caregivers, considered a prepared behavior in humans.

Behavioral Approach: The approach to studying learning that emphasizes observable behaviors and environmental causes while avoiding discussion of unobservable mental processes.

Behavioral Repertoire: The range of behaviors an organism is capable of performing based on what it has learned.

Behaviorism: The approach to psychology that focuses exclusively on observable behaviors and their environmental causes, avoiding discussion of mental states.

Cognitive Approach: The approach to studying learning that emphasizes understanding mental processes such as memory, attention, expectation, and reasoning.

Cognitive Map: A mental representation of spatial relationships in an environment, as demonstrated in Tolman’s maze experiments.

Comparative Psychology: The study of behavior across different species, examining both similarities and differences in learning mechanisms.

Contraprepared Behaviors: Behaviors that are extremely difficult or impossible to learn because they conflict with evolved predispositions.

Critical Period: A specific time window in development when an organism is especially receptive to learning a particular behavior.

Cultural Transmission: The spread of learned behaviors through a population via social learning; behaviors pass from individual to individual through observation rather than genetic inheritance.

Drive: In Hull’s theory, the motivational state (such as hunger or thirst) that energizes behavior.

Emotion: Physiological changes and conscious feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness, aroused by external or internal stimuli, that lead to behavioral reactions.

Equipotentiality: The traditional conditioning assumption that any CS could be equally well conditioned with any US; this assumption was violated by taste aversion research showing that certain stimuli associate more readily with certain outcomes.

Evolutionary Adaptation: Changes in behavior that occur across generations through natural selection rather than individual learning.

Fatigue: A temporary state affecting performance that does not involve learning.

Hebb’s Law: The principle that neurons which are repeatedly activated at the same time will develop stronger connections; often summarized as ‘neurons that fire together, wire together.’

Heliotropism: A growth response in plants toward or away from a stimulus, such as a sunflower turning toward the sun.

Hypothetical Construct: A theoretical concept that cannot be directly observed or measured but is inferred from observable behaviors.

Imprinting: A rapid form of learning in which young animals form a strong attachment to the first moving object they see, typically occurring during a critical period.

Incentive: A property of reinforcement that increases or decreases its reinforcing effectiveness.

Instinct: A complex, species-typical behavior pattern that occurs without prior experience.

Instinctive Drift: The tendency for learned behaviors to drift toward instinctive behaviors over time, even with continued reinforcement.

Intervening Variables: Theoretical constructs inferred to exist between observable stimuli and responses, such as hunger, motivation, or learning itself.

Latent Learning: Learning that occurs without being immediately expressed in performance, demonstrated when the learned behavior becomes useful.

Learning: An inferred change in an organism’s mental state that results from experience and influences what the organism can do.

Learning Curve: A graph showing how performance changes with practice or experience, representing inferences about the learning process.

Learning-Performance Distinction: The recognition that learning (internal capability) and performance (observable behavior) are not the same and don’t always match.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP): The strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons that occurs when they are repeatedly activated together; the neural mechanism underlying learning and memory formation.

Mathematico-Deductive Theory of Behavior: Hull’s formal theory proposing that learning must combine with motivation and other factors for behavior to be exhibited.

Maturation: Behavioral changes that occur due to biological development and aging rather than experience.

Operational Definitions: Definitions of concepts in terms of observable, measurable operations rather than internal states.

Parsimony: The scientific principle (Occam’s razor) that simpler explanations should be preferred over more complex ones when both account for the data equally well.

Performance: Observable behavior at any given moment; distinguished from learning, which is the internal change in capability.

Prepared Behaviors: Behaviors that organisms learn so easily and quickly they almost appear instinctive, typically vital to survival or reproduction.

Preparedness Continuum: Seligman’s framework categorizing behaviors as prepared, unprepared, or contraprepared based on how biological predispositions affect learning.

Reflex: An automatic, involuntary response to a specific stimulus that is innate rather than learned.

Savings: The phenomenon where relearning previously learned material is faster than original learning, indicating lasting neural changes.

Sensitive Period: A developmental window when learning is facilitated but not strictly limited to that time; sometimes used interchangeably with critical period.

Sensory Adaptation: A temporary decrease in sensory receptor responsiveness due to constant stimulation; not a form of learning.

Social Learning: Learning that occurs through observing the behavior of others; the acquisition of new behaviors by watching and imitating other individuals rather than through direct experience.

Taste Aversion Learning: A special case of classical conditioning in which consumption of a novel flavor (CS) followed by illness (US) results in avoidance of that flavor (CR); can develop after a single pairing and with delays of many hours between CS and US.

Transfer-Appropriate Processing: The principle that memory performance is best when the processes used during retrieval match those used during encoding.

Unprepared Behaviors: Behaviors that organisms can learn but only with moderate effort and repeated practice; most typical learning falls in this category.