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Animal Learning:

Animal Learning:. Associative or Cognitive?. Learning/Behavioral Psychology. Environment. Behavior. Cognitive Psychology. The Mind mental representations. Environment. Behavior. Arguments against cognitive approach. Philosophical: Positing internal processes doesn’t add information

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Animal Learning:

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  1. Animal Learning: Associative or Cognitive?

  2. Learning/Behavioral Psychology Environment Behavior Cognitive Psychology The Mind mental representations Environment Behavior

  3. Arguments against cognitive approach • Philosophical: • Positing internal processes doesn’t add information • Infinite # of cognitive models for any one phenomenon • Purpose is to predict and control; what good do cognitive models do? • Empirical (testable): • All behavior can be explained in terms of stimulus-response learning

  4. Skinner on Language • Book: Verbal Behavior (1965) • Language Learned through response chaining • E.g.: Mary had a little lamb. MaryHadALittleLambREWARD! SD SD SD SD

  5. Chomsky’s Critique • Impossible: At one sentence per sec it would take 2887 years to learn all grammatical 3-word sentences. • Transitional probabilities meaningless: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” vs. “Goes down here is not large feet are the days.” • Ambiguity: “They are shooting hunters.”

  6. Representational Systems Require: An orderly mapping between the Represented and Representing worlds A mental representation is a system of symbols, conscious or unconscious, that are isomorphic to some aspect of the environment, used to make behavior-generating decisions that anticipate events and relations in that environment C.R. Gallistel

  7. HUNTER ON “REPRESENTATIONS” ...If comparative psychology is to postulate a representative fact, ...it is necessary that the stimulus represented be absent at the moment of the response. If it is not absent, the reaction may be stated in sensory-motor term (Hunter, 1913, p. 21).

  8. A Classic Hunter Experiment Food I shall run around the circle 5 times in order to procure a morsel of food.

  9. Another Attack on S-R Theory Edward Tolman

  10. Radial-Arm Maze (Olton & Samuelson) How to solve it: Random choice Odor Trail Response Chaining *Memory

  11. Control Procedures Forced Choice Phase Free-Choice Phase 6 1 7 2 5 8 8 4 3 7 1 3 4 6 2 5 Rotate and unblock

  12. Let rat visit N arms WAIT Return rat to maze 1 1 2 2 8 8 3 3 7 7 4 6 4 6 5 5

  13. Results hi Performance after break lo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 # choices before break

  14. On probe trials give the recognition test here Memory Rehearsal?

  15. The Pole Maze

  16. Pole Box: Performance Hmm…Where shall I go next?

  17. Tool Use “This occurred onthe fifth trial of an experiment in which the crows had to choosebetween a hooked and a straight wire and only after the hookedwire had been removed by the other subject (a male). The animalshad prior experience with the apparatus, but their only previousexperience with pliant material was 1 hour of free manipulationwith flexible pipe-cleaners a year before this experiment, andthey were not familiar with wire.”

  18. Numerosity Basic paradigm: Touching stimuli in numerical order produces a reward.

  19. Numerosity (Brannon & Terrace, 1998)

  20. Test with novel stimuli

  21. Conclusions • S-R accounts are not sufficient • Animals can represent abstract properties of stimuli and the relations among stimuli • The cognitive differences between humans and other species are unclear.

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