Psychology Notes Intro to Biological and Cognitive Psych (1st year) Notes
Intro To Animal Psych Notes
Updated Intro To Animal Psych Notes
Intro to Biological and Cognitive Psych (1st year)
Topics include: biological psych, perception, animal psych, and consciousness. Relevant evidence for each topic is outlined, including methodology and findings. The notes cover a wide span of sub-topics within each larger topics, providing a comprehensive introduction to the topics.
These notes are informative, to the point, and easy to follow. They are drawn from a wide range of sources utilising additional course reading and independent reading....
The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Intro to Biological and Cognitive Psych (1st year) Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:
| Darwin | Natural Selection |
|---|---|
| Romanes | Used anecdotes Hierarchy animal int – linear Insects birds Animals Humans |
| Lloyd-Morgan | Opposed Romanes and anthropomorphism Shouldn’t attribute behaviours to complexity if they can be explained more simply |
| Thorndike | Trial and error learning Studied cats using puzzle boxes – gradual decrease in escape times |
| Watson | Behaviourist Reward/punishment learning Little Albert trained to be afraid of furry animals |
| Skinner | Operant/Instrumental Conditioning Reward learning response shaping Schedules of reinforcement |
| Pavlov | Type 1/Respondent Conditioning Neutral stimulus paired with reward |
| Acquisition | CS-US Pairings |
|---|---|
| Extinction | CS Alone |
| Spontaneous Recovery | CS Alone |
INTELLIGENCE DISTRIBUTION
Banks & Flora – Fish Cows Dogs Apes Humans
Justification for rankings:
Appearance
Jerison: ratio brain weight to body weight
Anaxagoras: all animals equally intelligent just only some animals can access hypothetical nouse
MacPhail: null hypothesis – only humans are more intelligent
Romanes: ranked on where they appeared in fossil record
Jerison:
Brain weight (E)
Body weight (P)
Cephalisation Index = E / P2/3
Learning: relatively permanent change in behaviour caused by experience
Operant: Response Food
Classical: Stimulus Food
Problems with speed of learning as a measure of animal intelligence
Unexpected between-species differences
Skard: looked at the rate at which rats and humans can get thro’ a maze without making errors
Difficult to equate perceptual demands of test
Difficult to equate motivational demands of test - Bitterman (1975) systematic variation
comparing species’ intelligence is hampered by contextual variables
Within-species differences in speed of learning
Garcia & Koelling
| Train | Test | Vol drunk |
|---|---|---|
| Saline illness Saline shock | Saline Saline | Small Large |
| LTW illness LTW shock | LTW LTW | Large Small |
Learning depends on outcome:
Saline paired with illness NOT shock
LTW paired with shock NOT illness
External stimulus external outcome
Internal stimulus internal outcome
Garcia Effect = seeing a light is readily learned when paired with a shock
ANIMAL MEMORY
= current behaviour under influence of past experience
| Location of hidden food | Vander-Wall | Clark’s nutcracker bird remember 3000 different location |
|---|---|---|
| Photos | Vaughan & Greene | Over time, pigeons could discriminate which of the 320 photos food |
| Periodic timing | = ability to respond at a given time Circadian Clock – 24hr | |
| Interval timing | = ability of animals to respond on the basis of specific durations | |
| Church & Gibbon | Lights turned off Reward given if rats pressed lever 4 seconds after light turned back on = rats remember duration | |
| Number | Clever Hans | Couldn’t actually count, just responded to tiny human signals |
| Meck & Church | Rats can time 2 different intervals simultaneously | |
| Brannon & Terrace | Monkeys trained to touch number of items in increasing order on a touch screen: using novel shaped and sized stimuli | |
| 5 day old chicks | Associated smaller numbers with L space, larger numbers with R space | |
| Pepperberg | Alex the parrot: could count up to 6 and order numbers based on magnitude | |
| Categories - feature | Herrnstein, Loveland & Cable | Tested pigeons’ ability to respond +vely to new pics of trees |
| Cerella | Pigeons shown 80 photos Reward for responding to pics of oak leaves Only 24 slides needed for them to be able to discriminate | |
| STM - habituation | Whitlow | Distractor stimuli between S1 and S2 habituated to S1 |
| Wagner | Terminating S1 leaves a decaying rep of itself S2 shown before decay matches S1 = habituation | |
| Beatty & Shavali | Eventually remember where they have/not visited on radial arm maze After 4hrs – remember Long than 4 hrs - errors | |
| Roberts | 24 locations on radial arm maze – soon less errors BUT rats automatically turn R | |
| LTM | Consolidation | Rehearsal needed pot evet so the memory can later be retrieved |
| Duncan | ECS shock post learning prevents rehearsal | |
| Retrieval | Failure to retrieve a memory due to absence of cues to retrieve | |
| Reactivation | Activating memory by presenting some cues that were present at the time of the event Deweer, Sara & Hars | |
Explanations for Categorisation
Innate categories
Exemplar learning
Feature learning
Exemplar learning + stimulus generalisation
Habituation = reduction in responsiveness to a stimulus due to its repeated presentation
depends on memory of the repeated stimuli
Properties of STM
Radial Maze: Olton (1978)
Capacity - at least 8 items
Duration - up to 4 hours
Content - landmarks
ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING = when CS alone
Drugs
Bonson: drug using Ps who watched a drug film = more cravings than non-users
Holland:
| Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Test |
|---|---|---|
| Tone Wintergreen + Sucrose Noise Peppermint + Sucrose | Wintergreen + Sucrose LiCL | Tone + Sucrose Noise + Sucrose |
Tone/Noise evokes a memory of the taste produces the same response
The influence of the Unconditioned Stimulus on the Conditioned Response
USs have Specific (unique eg flavour) and Affective (in common with other stimuli - pleasant/unpleasant) qualities
Affective qualities can be Appetitive (pleasant) or Aversive (unpleasant)
Autoshaping in pigeons
Press a lever, get food response time decreases
Preparatory Response
= CR that suggests the animals is preparing for the imminent US
Salivation during CS that signals US general increase in activity
Conditioned Suppression decrease in movement
Compensatory Response and drug tolerance
Compensatory CR = CR elicited by a CS that opposed the effects of the US
| CR is in preparation for US | Eg salivation in Pavlov’s dogs, freezing in conditioned fear |
|---|---|
| CR is a substitute for US | Eg autoshaping in pigeons |
| CR opposes the action of the US | Rat placed in cold box produces a CR that compensates for cold |
Siegel (2005) = reviews role of conditioning in drug tolerance
Tolerance = decrease in sensitivity to a drug as a result of...
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Intro To Animal Psych
Topics include: biological psych, perception, animal psych, and consciousness. Relevant evidence for each topic is outlined, including methodology and findings. The notes cover a wide span of sub-topics within each larger topics, providing a comprehensive introduction to the topics.
These notes are informative, to the point, and easy to follow. They are drawn from a wide range of sources utilising additional course reading and independent reading....
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