Unit 4- Thinking & Learning

AP Psychology

Behavioral perspective

Psychological approach studying behavior as impacted by the environment

Classical conditioning

Associative learning where one previously meaningless object/event becomes associated with a naturally occurring behavior

Neural stimulus

A previously meaningless thing, the thing that will become paired with the unconditioned response.

Ex: the bell

Unconditioned stimulus

Something that naturally produces a behavior, instinctual

Ex: the food

Unconditioned response

Automatic response due to the unconditioned stimulus (innate)

Ex: salivating

Conditioned stimulus

Called acquisition

NS is considered the CS when the NS and UCS are paired.

UCS no longer has to be present

Ex: the bell

Conditioned response

Behavior in response to the now-paired CS

Same as UCR but the new stimulus triggers it

Ex: salivating

Acquisition

The stage where the NS is now paired with the CR after being paired with the UCR many times

In the CS stage

Higher/second order conditioning

Pairing another neural stimulus with the already paired conditioned stimulus.

Ex: Getting bit = afraid of dog AND dog barking sound

Extinction

Process of weakening or eliminating a learned behavior by withholding the UCS

Spontaneous recovery

Resurface of the previously extinguished CR after a period of time

Stimulus discrimination

Distinguishing between learned (similar) stimuli

Ex: if dogs only salivated to the exact bell tone used in the study

Stimulus generalization

Responding to similar stimuli to the CS

Ex: dogs salivating when they heard all bells

Biological preparedness

Our bodies are divas and are more likely to make connections if they affect our survival.

Taste aversion learning (“Garcia Effect”)

We avoid foods we’ve associated with sickness (yeah, shocker)

Operant conditioning

Consequences and rewards, pair after the behavior happened

Law of Effect 

Woah, groundbreaking, earthshaking discovery

Punished behaviors= less frequent, rewarded behaviors= more frequent

Skinner box

Bar/key animal can press to get a reward

To study frequencies

(Crazy! Not animal abuse this time, I’m so proud)

Little Albert Experiment

Aka child abuse!

Watson makes a loud noise every time the baby reached for a rat, so baby associated the rat with a loud noise and starts hating all fuzzy animals (stimulus generalization)

Shaping

Slooooooooowwwwllllyyyyyyy reinforcing succeeding approximations (behaviors getting closer to the one you want)

Instinctive drift 

Learners drifting back to instinctual behavior instead of the learned one (probably because they stopped getting rewards- JIPPED!!)

Primary reinforcers

Naturally satisfies an instinctive need

Secondary reinforcers 

We learned that we need it, and NOW we want it. (Like money and stuff)

Positive reinforcement

Adding something to increase a behavior (giving a treat)

Negative reinforcement

Taking something away to increase a behavior (removing a grounding)

Positive punishment

Adding something to decrease behavior (spray bottle)

Negative punishment

Taking something away to decrease behavior (taking a phone)

Continuous reinforcement

Get a reward every time a specific behavior is presented (if you’re using treats, that kid’s gonna be a little chubby)

Intermittent reinforcement schedules

Give a reward sometimes when a specific behavior is presented (MAN I would hate that…)

Fixed-ratio

Reward after behavior has been done a certain amount of times

Has a high response rate

Variable-ratio

Reward behavior after an unpredictable amount of times

Steady level of behavior

Fixed-interval

Reward after a set amount of time

Low amount of desired behavior until it nears the time of the reward

Variable-interval

Reward after a random amount of time

Steady level of behavior

Token economy

Teaching method where learners get tokens to cash in for a prize later

Cognitive psychology

Bring thinking back into psych (1960’s)

Learning occurs as a result of thinking, problem solving, memory, and intelligence

We don’t mindlessly react to our environment

Latent learning

Subconscious learning despite no reward

Cognitive maps

Remembering information about our surrounding despite not being rewarded

Social learning theory/observational learning

We learn by modeling/imitating

Some people are more likely to influence us than others

Bobo doll experiment

Training if modeled aggression translates to kids

Control: Did not witness adult being aggressive to the doll

Experimental: Did witness

Albert Bandura

Vicarious learning

Learning about consequences of actions despite not experiencing them yourself

Insight learning

Sudden realization of a problem’s solution

Brain keeps thinking about a problem even if you aren’t aware

Interacting with environment

Learned helplessness

Loss of motivation because you believe yourself unable to control the outcome, even if that changes

Shuttle box

Experiment that discovered learned helplessness

Martian Seligman

Shocking dogs where they can’t move, when moved to a location they can move, they don’t (Say it with me, ANIMAL ABUSE!)

Concept

Mental categories for objects, experiences, ideas

Prototype

The most typical/stereotypical thing in our concept- mental image

Trial and error

Random guessing, no reasoning

Algorithm

Methodical way to test things- will always find answer

Heuristic

Shortcut through an algorithm based on previous success

Intuition

Gut feeling- effortless, automatic

Representative heuristic

What fits our prototype

Availability heuristic

Things more available or important in our memory makes us think they occur more than they do

Priming

Unconscious influence of the environment on a persons thoughts or behaviors

Framing

People’s behaviors are influenced by the way info is presented

Belief perserverance

Keeping hold of beliefs despite evidence to the contrary or disproving

Mental set

Tendency to solve problems in a way that has been successful in the past

Functional fixedness

Inability to think of new uses for familiar objects 

Gambler’s fallacy

Thinking past events influence future probability

Sunk-cost fallacy

Welp, i’ve already spent time/money on this crap, might as well keep going!

Compliance

Changing behavior due to a direct request

Central route to persuasion

Logic, stats getting you to do something. Works on educated people, older people, people motivated to make a change in their life

Periphery route to persuasion

Emotions, celebrities, gimmicks or superficial arguments. (creates halo and physical attractiveness affect)

Works on kids, uneducated people… used in politics

Halo effect

Celebrities create- peoples opinions of them spill over into the product they endorse

Mere-exposure effect

Repetition of something turns it likeable (hated a song, repeated so many times brain sees it as ‘safe’ and therefore likes it)

Foot-in-the-door

Ask for small thing to build relationship then as for big one

Door-in-the-face

Ask for unreasonable request to make your real, smaller one, sound better

Low balling

Attractive offer, terms change after a deal is made. (lets go shopping, 5 mins, only one store… but now this one, and this one, and this one too)

That’s-not-all

More and more incentives to buy piled on (usually with time pressure)

Fear-then-relief

Ooooh nooo Mom, you guys are going out… you would’’t want me to be all alone and scared! Luckily for you, __ can stay over.

Make the person fearful then present a solution (fear creates irrational decisions)

Phoneme

Smallest unit of sound- not syllable or letters. (Ch)(individual letters)(ck)

About 45 different phonemes in English

Morpheme

Smallest break up of words that still have meaning (root, prefix, suffix)

Syntax

Order of words in a sentence

Semantics

The literal meaning of a sentence

Overgeneralization

Often kids, applying grammatical rules too broadly (ex: she hitted me)

Language acquisition device (LAD)

Noam Chomsky

We are biologically hardwired to pick up language, especially as kids. Helps explain universal grammar.

Broca’s area

Frontal lobe. Controls the muscles necessary to speak. Only one, in left hemisphere

Wernike’s area

Temporal lobe. Understanding language. Only one, in left hemisphere

Broca’s aphasia

Damage to Broca. Inability to speak fluently- putting thoughts into words. Speech is broken.

Wernikie’s aphasia

Wernikes is damaged. Inability to understand speech, will speak in long incoherent sentences

Linguistic relativity

Theory that structure of a language influences how the speaker thinks of the world

Ivan Pavlov

Bell experiment. Discovered classical conditioning

John B Watson

Little Albert experiment

BF Skinner

Founder of operant conditioning (Behaviorist)

Albert Bandura

Bobo doll experiment. Created socio-cognitive perspective

Martian Seligman

Doggy abuse learned helplessness experiment.