First part (the second part will be available soon ... stay tuned)

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