Biological Psychology

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Preparedness and directed learning
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Food, fears, phobias

• Humans (and other animals) are very quick to
  learn certain associations
• Taste aversion learning the Garcia effect
  (Garcia, 1989)
• Specific to taste in rats difficult to pair
  visual or auditory stimulus
• Can often be learned in a single trial
• Difficult to unlearn

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Food, fears, phobias

• Garcia Koelling (1966)
• CS saccharine taste light sound

• Rats associate flavour with illness and light and
  sound with pain

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Food, fears, phobias

• Humans also appear to be preprogrammed to learn
  certain fears quickly (Marks Nesse, 94)
• We are often afraid of heights, snakes or small
  scuttly things as these were dangerous in
  ancestral times

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Food, fears, phobias

• We are not afraid of plug points, skate boards or
  cars which now account for far more deaths and
  injuries

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Freud Imprinting

• The Oedipus complex - young childrens attraction
  to their opposite sex parent
• Early exposure to parental characteristics
  affects later mate preferences in both birds and
  mammals
• In animals such effects are referred to as
  imprinting

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Imprinting

• Common in birds
• Goslings imprinted to Konrad Lorenzs boots
• Unusual features
• May be tied to specific period
• Possibly irreversible

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Konrad Lorenz and a Goose
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Imprinting in Other Mammals

• Kendrick et al. (Nature, 98) have shown that
  young sheep and goats imprint on foster parents
• Learning is directed at parental models

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Mother
Novel Goat
Goat brought up with sheep mum
Novel Sheep
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Mother
Novel Goat
Sheep brought up with goat mum
Novel Sheep
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Imprinting in Humans

• Parental age at birth effects age preferences
• (Perrett et al., 2002)
• Partners more likely to have similar hair- and
  eye colour as parents than self
• (Little et al., 2003)

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Younger parents like
Older parents like