Transcript Learning

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
• 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
• 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
Operant conditioning (instrument)
• Trail-and-error learning
• Response is emitted by reinforcement,
it is rewards which cause animals to
respond
•
e.g. chimp fishing termites
•
e.g. search image
• 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
Original principle of learning
• Learning is a unitary trait - General
process theory
• Natural scale of learning ability
• Equivalence of association - Principle of
equipotentiality
• Reinforcement is required for learning
- Law of effect
• Association strength - more
reinforcement stronger learned
response
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.
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e.g. digger wasp, rat in a maze
• Preparedness
Complex learning
• Avoidance learning (aversive
conditioning)
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–
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R* don't come immediately
One trial learning
Long lasting effect
• Biased learning
• Latent learning
• Insight learning - the animal makes
new associations between previously
learned tasks in order to solve a new
problem
• Imprinting
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Acquired preference and development
predisposition
• Social learning
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local enhancement: locate foraging sites by
attending to others
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local facilitation: animals feed faster in a
group
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observational learning: observers modify
behavior after demonstrators
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imitation: observers match behavioral
action and goal
• 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
Cost and Benefit of learning
• Cost-–
Take time
–
More neural complexity
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more vulnerable until learning is
complete
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increase investment by parent
–
can be fooled
• Benefit-–
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Ability to cope w/ a range of event
(high adaptability)
Programming everything is too costly
Development of behavior
• Question of ontogeny – how behavior
changes over lifetime of an individual?
• Seek to identify the factors influencing the
acquisition of behavior
• 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
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)
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
• 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
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)
• In anemonefish, largest females
dominate group; when largest female
removed, larger males switch to female
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
Methods in behavior development
• 7 parameters of treatment
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Age when treatment is given
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Type or quality
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Duration or quantity
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Age of testing
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Type of test
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Test for the persistence
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Test different strains or species
Testing procedure
• Longitudinal
• Cross-sectioned
• Deprivation, enrichment, alter the
quality of the stimuli