Introduction to Learning

• Kinds of change and kinds of memory in biological systems
  • Evolutionary change; genetic memory, genotype
  • Cultural change; cultural memory
  • Development; phenotype
  • Learning; long-term memory
  • Processing (behavior); short-term (working) memory
• Why learn (develop)? (Miller & Todd)
  • Learning (development) allows an organism to build a more complex phenotype than it could otherwise, given a genotype of a certain size; environmental regularities can do much of the work of wiring up adaptive behavior-generators.
  • Learning allows an organism to make use of the past as well as the here-and-now through the creation of episodic memories which can be retrieved later on.
  • Learning allows an organism to adjust its behavior faster than natural selection would allow to changes in (a) the environment and (b) the organism's body.

Learning: Basic Concepts