Comprehensive Guide to Learning Theories and Behavioral Modification

1. Learning • Relatively permanent modification of behavior that occurs through practice or experience • Learning is not maturation • Learning is not always observable • Associative learning vs. non-associative learning

2. Habituation - relatively persistent waning of a response, results from repeated stimulus not followed by any reinforcement, a process of learning to ignore irrelevant stimuli • Benefit - save time by protecting animals from responding the irrelevant stimuli, to concentrate on more important stimuli

3. Delayed conditioning (1/2~2 sec.) • Simultaneous conditioning • Trace conditioning (no overlap) • Backward conditioning • Time as a stimulus (zoo animal) • e.g. red light, alarm call

4. Operant conditioning (instrument) • Trail-and-error learning • Response is emitted by reinforcement, it is rewards which cause animals to respond • e.g. chimp fishingtermites • e.g. search image

5. Reinforcement - anything that alters the probability of behavior • Positive vs. negative reinforcement • Schedule of reinforcement: Fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval • Extinction and spontaneous recovery

6. Original principle of learning • Learning is a unitary trait - General process theory • Natural scale of learning ability • Equivalence of association - Principle of equipotentiality

7. Reinforcement is required for learning - Law of effect • Association strength - more reinforcement stronger learned response

8. Rebuttal of principle of learning • Can't fix animal to scale • Latent learning--association made with neither immediate reinforcement or reward nor particular behavior evident at the time of learning. • e.g. digger wasp, rat in a maze • Preparedness

9. Complex learning • Avoidance learning (aversive conditioning) • R* don't come immediately • One trial learning • Long lasting effect • Biased learning

10. Latent learning • Insight learning - the animal makes new associations between previously learned tasks in order to solve a new problem • Imprinting • Acquired preference and development predisposition

11. Social learning • local enhancement: locate foraging sites by attending to others • local facilitation: animals feed faster in a group • observational learning: observers modify behavior after demonstrators • imitation: observers match behavioral action and goal

12. Learning set - the acquisition of a learning strategies, or given a series of problems, an animal will transfer some of what it has learned about solving the first problem to the solution of subsequent problems in a series. • Constraints of learning • preparedness • Methods constraints

13. Cost and Benefit of learning • Cost-- • Take time • More neural complexity • more vulnerable until learning is complete • increase investment by parent • can be fooled

14. Benefit-- • Ability to cope w/ a range of event (high adaptability) • Programming everything is too costly

15. Development of behavior • Question of ontogeny – how behavior changes over lifetime of an individual? • Seek to identify the factors influencing the acquisition of behavior

16. Food of larvae determines if they become queens (behaviorally and morphologically) • Environmental sex determination: incubation temperature • 2M males more likely to attack stranger at 90 days than 0M males • 2M females have larger territory, are more aggressive and less attractive to males than 0M female

17. Seed storing in marsh tit • Hand-reared individuals allowing to store seeds at different developmental stages have larger hippocampus (region ~ spatial learning) than control (no experience)

18. Effects of environment • A variety of environmental cues seem to act as developmental “switches” between behavioral phenotypes • e.g. caste switching in bee • D1 ~12: young adult, clean nest • D13 ~ 20: mid-aged adult, brood & queen care, nest maintenance, food storage • D20 ~: old adults, foraging

19. Interactions within hives can change timing of behavioral switches • Many workers of same young age, some remain nursing till later, some become foragers earlier • When younger bees add to colony, young residents become precocial foragers • When older bees add to colony, young residents do not become precocial foragers

20. Sequential hermaphroditism • Normal pattern = sex changes related to size, but in some species developmental change triggered by social cues • In gobies, change may occur based on the size and sexes of new partners (usually smallest partners is female)

21. In anemonefish, largest females dominate group; when largest female removed, larger males switch to female

22. Social deprivation in rhesus monkey • Total isolation • Isolation + cloth or wire surrogate mother • Peer group • W/ mother only • W/ mother, but w/ varying periods of separation at specific age interval • Small social group (control) • Behavior homeostasis

23. Methods in behavior development • 7 parameters of treatment • Age when treatment is given • Type or quality • Duration or quantity • Age of testing • Type of test • Test for the persistence • Test different strains or species

24. Testing procedure • Longitudinal • Cross-sectioned • Deprivation, enrichment, alter the quality of the stimuli