Docente
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CAPRIOLI DANIELE
(programma)
Note: the module will be taught in english
As a result of reading, classroom instruction, and critical thinking exercises, students should be able to understand, evaluate, and explain how:
• Learning versus evolution enables organisms to adapt to their environment
• Work in philosophy and biology identified key factors and problems, as well as how these two disciplines interacted to shape the field of animal learning
• Scientific versus nonscientific approaches have been used to study learning
• Classical conditioning differs from instrumental/operant conditioning
• The different approaches to behaviorism
• Theories and metaphors are used as tools to explore learning phenomena
• Animal learning informs us about general learning phenomena
• Classical and instrumental conditioning occur in everyday learning phenomena
• The comparison between natural selection and "fitness" from a learning perspective and from an evolutionary perspective
• The difference between fixed action patterns and associative learned behaviors
• The difficulty of establishing the innateness of a behavior
• The way in which habituation occurs, its significance, and how it is distinguished from other associative learning phenomena
• The occurrence of instrumental contingencies (i.e., reward, negative reinforcement, punishment, omission, extinction, spontaneous recovery) as both a procedure and as a behavioral outcome, and the importance of the distinction between the procedure and the behavioral outcome
• The role of shaping in instrumental contingencies
• The phenomena of taste aversion learning, territorial and reproductive cueing, fear conditioning, drug tolerance, and sign tracking and the ways these illustrate associative learning contingencies and principles
• How extinction, punishment, omission, and habituation change response probability as well as the benefits versus disadvantages of each procedure’s impact on behavior
• The impact of S* parameters on strength and rate of learning; and
• The ways in which preparedness or biological constraints influence what can be learned and the ease of learning
• Behavioral flexibility and adaptability can arise from innate behaviors and everyday events through the process of classical conditioning
• S-S learning and S-R learning differ
• Arranging the sequence of CS-CS and CS-US pairings in second-order conditioning and sensory preconditioning produce associations that provide insights into what is learned
• Standard classical conditioning preparations (i.e., eyeblink, CER, autoshaping, and taste aversions) are used to discover and test classical conditioning phenomena and predictions
• Different procedures for pairing CS and US (e.g., delay, trace, simultaneous, backward) affect what is learned
• Variables such as timing, novelty, trial spacing, preexposure, and stimulus intensity affect conditioning
• Pseudoconditioning and sensitization differ from true classical conditioning
• Latent inhibition and conditioned inhibition differ
• Summation, retardation, and bidirectional response tests are used to distinguish conditioned inhibition from habituation, preexposure, and extinction effects
• Different conditioning procedures can be used to produce either conditioned excitors or conditioned inhibitors and
• Taste aversion and blocking phenomena are used to evaluate the parsimony and validity of contingency versus contiguity explanations of classical conditioning
• The Rescorla-Wagner model’s use of US salience to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, and CS overexpectation
• Why the Rescorla-Wagner model has difficulty explaining sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, extinction of inhibition, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition
• Comparator theories’ explanations and predictions regarding conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition
• The Mackintosh model’s use of attentional variables to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition
• The Pearce-Hall model’s use of CS salience to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition
• Modern memory models using variables such as self-generated priming, retrieval-generated priming, rehearsal, and retrieval
• The impact of network schemas on CS and US associability
• The modification of the basic Rescorla-Wagner model that resulted in the SOP model, and how the incorporation of memory processing assumptions expanded the model’s predictive capacity
• The further modification of the SOP model into AESOP by means of a distinction between sensory and emotive learning processes, and the expanded predictive capacity that resulted
Basic principles of motivation and addiction and social experience
![](/images/icon-multipage.png) Students will be provided with the slides and additional reading.
It is also strongly advice the textbook: Animal learning and cognition (an introduction) by John Pearce
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