This PPT is for FYBSc students of University of Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, studying in course one semester II. For further query you may email at sudesh_rathod@yahoo.co.in

1. BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF
LEARNING
Prof. S D Rathod
B N Bandodkar College of Science
Thane, Maharashtra, India

2. Autoshaping
 various events are learned by animals in the
nature by experience called as autoshaping.
 The dangerous cues are avoided while the
friendly cues are accepted.

3. Learning to avoid enemies
 The goose shadow is accepted while the
hawk shadow is avoided

4. Warning signals (innate avoidance
behavior)

5. Freezing posture (Motionless)
 E.g. opossum
 White tailed deer fawn

6. Camouflage

7. Protean display (sudden change in
posture to frighten enemy)

8. Mimicry
Mullerian mimicry
 Warning coloration of one noxious species to
another

9. Batesian Mimicry
 Mimic resembles a model that is noxious

10. Batesian Mimicry

11. Automimicry
 Edible monarch butterfly mimic poisonous
monarch and hence are not eaten by birds

12. Mertensian mimicry
 Similar to Batesian mimicry but it does not involve
bad taste or permit trial and error learning e.g.
beefly, grass snake.

13. Learning to avoid sickness
 Animals learn to eat food which are healthy
or full of all minerals e.g. sodium deficient
rats can learn which food contains salt and
select the food which contains more amount
of sodium.
 A/c to Rozin (1976) Animals classify food into
novel, familiar-safe, familiar-dangerous and
familiar beneficial food.

14. Cognitive aspects of
learning
 Are animals conciously aware of
themselves???
 Do animals have sense of sorrow and feel
pleasure???
 There are several aspects of learning that
cannot be clearly explained by conditioning.

15. Hidden aspects of
conditioning
 From cognitive point of view during shaping
or conditioning animals might not work
mechanically. It is of concern whether
animals use their emotions along with their
experience to learn the things
 In classical conditioning the animal might be
pairing the UCS with CS thoughtfully to give
CR.

16. Insight Learning
 Animal uses its experience to
respond to something new
problems. They suddenly
resolve the problems and give
appropriate response to the
situations. The response thus
exhibited might be the result
of the calculation done before
acting on it.

17. Chimpanzee solving problems

18. Thank You