Classical Conditioning
Learning that certain events occur together
Associative Learning?
Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.
Law of Effect
Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.
Respondent behavior
A mental representation of the layout of one’s environment. For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it.
Cognitive Map
Learning by observing others. Also called social learning.
Observational learning
The acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language.
Cognitive Learning
In operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.
Reinforcement
Behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.
Operant Behavior
Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.
Latent Learning
The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior.
Modeling
Any event or situation that evokes a response.
Stimulus
An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.
The view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).
Behaviorism
A sudden realization of a problem’s solution.
Insight Learning
Frontal lobe neurons that some scientists believe fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy.
Mirror Neurons
An organism’s decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it
Habituation
In operant conditioning, a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement (in contrast to related stimuli not associated with reinforcement).
Discriminative Stimulus
The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.
Spontaneous Recovery
A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.
Intrinsic Motivation
Positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior.
Prosocial Behavior
A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.
Classical Conditioning
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.
Variable-ratio Schedule
The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.
Generalization
The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
Learned Helplessness
The war between impulsivity and doing what's right or beneficial.
Self Control