Learning and Memory

Learning

a relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior and cognitions due to experience

Memory

Active information processing system that encodes, stores and recovers information

Memory trace

physical change in the brain that occurs when a memory is formed, it's a new neural circuit or pthway that forms

For cells to create relationships with other cells, synaptogenisis needs to occur

Synaptogenesis

new synapses are formed

Neural plasticity

the ability of the brain to change in response to experience through out the life span

There's two

Developmental plasticity

Changes in neurons and synaptic connections, occuring due to DEVELOPMENTAL processes and environmental experience

- When you're young, there's more developmental plasticity because more neurons

Adaptive plasticity

Neurons altering connections between synapses to best suit environmental conditions

- Happens throughout life
- Either from learning or injury
- Occurs through sprouting (growth of bushier nerve fibgers to make new connection) and/or rerouting (undamages neurons seeking new neurons)

LTD

long term depression
- long lasting decrease in strength of transmission, happens from lack of stimulation.
- post-synaptic neuron is less active, less neuro-transmitters, less receptor sites, etc.
- Happens when info isn't access alot

LTP

long-term potentiation
- Enhanced synpatic connections that increases strength of synaptic transmission as it's more stimulation
- Happens through learning and studying, more neuron connections as it also strengthens memory trace

Importance of LTD and LTP

- Both important, LTD weakens unimportant info that takes up space, making way for LTP to strengthen important info

Neurohormones

Chemical messengers manufactures by neurons, but it's released into the blood stream and carried to target connection
- Its slower and can dampen or enhance a response like neurotransmitter

Glumate (learning)

A neurotransmitter that promotes growth and strengthens synpatic connections between neurons.
- Plays a vital role in LTP by exciting the adjacent neuron

Adrenaline (learning)

A neurohormone that enhances long term memory consolidation.
- Emotional events are more likely to be remembered (but not accurate)
- Consolidation is time dependent, influenterm-13ced by other factors

Adrenaline and the amygdala

- Adrenaline is released during emotional arousal, and then induces noradrenaline
- Believed that presence of nora it during consolidation activates the amygdala, signals hippocampus that details are significant, making the emotional memory stand out

Classical conditioning (pavlov)

- Learning through which a neutral, stimlus (bell) comes to elicit a specific respone (salivating) as a result of being associated with an unconditioned stimulus (food)

Classicial conditioning terms

NS - Neutral stimulus (Ringing bell)
UCS - Unconditioned stimulus (meat power)_
UCR - Unconditioned response (salivating)
CS - Conditioned stimulus (ringing bell)
CR - Conditioned response (salivating)

Three phase model

Before conditioning
- NS leads to no relevant response
- UCS leads to the UCR
During conditioning (acquisition)
- NS repeatedly paired and presented immediately prior to the UCS, leads to the UCR
After conditioning
- CS (formally the NS) leads to the CR (formally the UCR)

Key processes in classical conditioning

Acquisition - Process of associating the NS and UCS together
Extinction - Repeated presentation of the CS without the UCS leads to a gradual decrease and eventual disappearance of the CR
Spontaneous recovery - After extinction and a rest period, CR appears at the presentation of the CS
Stimulus Generalisation - CR appears to a stimulus that's simliar to the CS
Stimulus Discrimination - CR only appears to the CS and nothing else

Operant conditioning Vs Classical conditioning

OC is voluntary, learner is active and stimulus presented b4 response, while CC it's involuntary, learner is passive and stimulus presented after response

Operant conditioning

a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher

ABC

Antecedent - what prompts the behaviour, placing the organism in a certain environment or situation

Behavior - behaviour...

Consequence - what happens after, are you reinforced or punished?

Types of consequences

positive reinforcement
- reinforces the behaviour, a pleasant stimlus is given

negative reinforcement
- reinforces the behaviour, a unpleasant stimulus is taken away

Positive punishment
- decreases the behaviour or attempts to, a unpleasant stimlus is given

negative punishment or response cost
- decreases behavour, pleasant stimlus is taken away

Timing of Reinforcement

continuous reinforcement
- given after every correct response, good for acquisiton stage

partial reinforcement
- reinforcing some response, used after acquistion stage

effectiveness of punishment

sometimes people like the attention, may actually be reinforcing the behaviour

OAT

Effectiveness of consqeuences
- Order of consequences, reinforces or punishment after response
- apprpriate, consequence matches behaviour?
- timing, punish or reinforce needs to be immediately after response

Observational learning or social learning theory

- learning by watching someone else (a model), it's various or indirect conditioning (because we're not getting getting the consequence) to learn how whether to avoid or do the behaviour
- Learner is more cognitive in this and it's the most active process

What makes someone more likely a model

Perceived postively to you
Attractive to you
Similar to you
Trust, you trust them

Processes

Attention, learner actively watches model
Retention, remembers it
Reproduction, has the mental and physical ability to do the behaviour
Motivation, makes the learner do the behaviour
Reinforcement, positive outcome makes the learner do the behaviour more likely

SL vs OC

Both learners are active and both have reinforcemnet
But, learner is direct in OB, while SL is indirect
OC you can see someone learning, but in SL it can remain hidden until reinforcemnet
SC has more thinking

Conditioned emotional reponse

Emotional reaction (fear or anger) as reponse to stimulus, learned through CC
- reponse observed when ANS produced reaction to a stimlus that didn't directly trigger the reaction

Little Albert ethical principles breached

Violated benefience
violated no harm policy and debriefing
unclear weather consent was obtained
withdrawal rights violated
Watson failed to follow confidentiality
violated particiation, mother was unaware of the subject of the experiment

Informational processing model

Encoding
- converting info into a useable form for storage
storage
- retaining info for info over time for future use
retrieval
- acessing previously stores info for use

Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory

Sensory memory

Senses like touch, smell. etc.info enters in exact replica

duration = 0.2-4 seconds depending on type of info

Iconic memory

Visual info
- duration = 0.2-0.4
- capacity = unlimited
- allows us to see the world as continious (omg hume!)

echoic memory

audio memory, sound lingers like an echo
- duration = 3-4
- capacity = unlimited

short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, where there we manipulate info and actively process it and makes use of it (whether it's retrived from LTM, or attention from sensory memrory)

- duration = 18-20 seconds (sometimes 30)
- capacity = only - 5-9 items that we can be consciously aware of at short period of times
- the info isn't an exact replica anymore

Attention (STM Concept)

Paying attention to info from SENSORY memory it enters the STM

Retrieval (STM Concept)

Paying attention to info from LONG term meory enters the STM

Types of Long Term Memory

Explicit memory
- Factual memory like passwords, numbers that can be consciously retrieved
- It can include episodic memory (moments and events of your life) or semantic memory (memory of facts and knowledge)
Implicit memory
- Memory that you don't need to consciously retrieve, not always remembering (like how to brush your teeth, driving)
- It can include procedural memory (how to do something) or classical conditioned memories (conditioned responses to conditioned stimuli, learned through classical conditioning)

Damage to the ceberal cortex impacts memory...

Of storing explicit and implicit memory and STM

Damage to the Hippocampus impacts memory...

LTM (consolidating and transferring) and encoding explicit memory

Damage to the cerebellum impacts

Encoding implicit memories, procedural memories and CC reflexive responses.

Damage to the Amygdala impacts..

The emotional component of memory, and not being able to remember CC emotional response, no fear reponse

Types of retrieval methods from lowest to highest sensitivity

Recall
Free call - Listing info with no order
Serial recall
- listing info in a particular order of when it's learned
Cued recall
- Listing info with a cue
Recognition
- Identifying correct info in a list
Relearning
- Relearning the info when you've previously learned that info and having a faster time doing it

Saving Score for relearning

Og Time - Relearning time/Og time X 100/1

Reconstruction

Combining stored info with other available info to make a more coherent and accurate memory.

Brain Trauma

Umbrella term that impairs the normal functioning of the brain

neurodegenerative disease

Progress decline of the brain

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories due to brain trauma as they can't encode or store new info as it's forgotten after it's processed.
- Damage to the Hippocampus
- symptom of alzheimers disease for old ppl

Alheimer's disease

Neurodegenerative disease that include memory decline (LTM-, deteroriation of personality and social skills and personality.

Structures affected

1st structure is the hippocampus, then the degeneration spreads to the ceberal cortex.

Due to amyloid plaques (protein that isn't cleaned and forms hard clumps within neurons that impairs neurons and synapses) neurofibrillary tangles (protein called tau gets tangled within the neurons and inhibits essential subtance within the neuron that leads to it's death)

It leads to the reduction of the neurotransmitters acetlycholine that has a role with memory, and as these proteins, all making neurons inactive and causing them to die off.

Damage to the Cerebellum impacts...

Procedural memory, CC reflexive reponses.

Symptoms

Memory loss
Personality change
Confusion and disorientation
Repition of words
Cortical shrinkage

Forgetting

the inability to retrieve memory from long-term storage (it's there, you just cant access it)

Cues that help you with retrieving memory

Retrieval cues
- Stimulus that assists of recovering info from LTM and it includes
Context Dependent Cues
- Recreating the environment that you were in when learning
State Dependent Cues
- Recreating the physical or pyschological state that you were in when you were learning

Rehearsals that help with retrieving memory

Maintenance rehersal
- just simply rehearsing it, helps with STM
Elaborative rehearsal
- Adding meaning or linking it to other info while you're rehearsing, helps with LTM

Primary and Regency effect

"The tendency to remember the first (primary) and last (regency) items in a sequence

Primary is more into LTM, Regency is more into STM

memory reconstruction

Remembering past events and features of these events and putting them together during memory recall.

Loftus has found that eyewitness testimony is not always...

accurate because when reconstructing memories can be manipulated by leading questions, thus leading to misleading information

leading question bias

sometimes questions are worded in a way that suggests a particular response

(Did you see THE man) assumes that there was a man in the fist place, manipulating memory reconstructing by adding false information

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

*students watched clips of car accidents and were then given questions- one of which was a leading question. (different people were given slightly different questions)
*the verb 'contacted' resulted in a mean estimate speed of 31.8 mph.
*the verb 'smashed' was 40.5 mph.

Conclusion of Loftus

According to lofus
1. Recalling memory is a reconstructive process
2. Process can be influences by leading question, info presented after event can lead to bias
3. Misinfo suggested can cause and updated rep of the memory trace (the neurons physically changing)
4. Leading to inaccuracies

Serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list