Learning, Memory, and Metacognition

What is learning

A fairly permanent change in behaviour due to pastexperience

What relationship does learning emphasise

the relationship between experience and behaviour.

What are reflexes

innate responses that don't need to be learnt.Learning allows us to adapt to our environment.

What is habituation

Response to a stimulus declines with repeated presentations of that stimulus

What evidence is there that habituation develops early (Dirix, Nijhuis, Jongsma, & Hornstra, 2009)

Foetuses show habituation to a vibroacoustic stimulus as early as 30 weeks gestational age.

How is habituation highly adaptive

diminished attention to "old" stimuli allows infants to pay attention and learn about new stimuli

Brief explanation of classical condition

learning of anassociationbetween twostimuli (aconditionedstimulus and anunconditionedstimulus)

What is acquisition

the phase of classical conditioning when the CS and the US are presented together

What is extinction in classical conditioning

the weakening of the conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus is absent.

How is classical condition seen in infants

Association between mother and comfort, security and warmth. Classical conditioning in newborns is limited to biologically programmed reflexes.11

Classical conditioning in infants Lipsitt & Kaye (1964)

Neutral tone paired with a breast à 2-3 day old infants made suckingmotions at the sound of the tone, before the breast was presented.

Fear conditioning - Little Albert (Watson & Rayner, 1920)

9 month old: well adjusted. No fear for a wide range of objects. Watson smashed a big steel bar down behind his head which made a horrible noise. Albert was scared. Noise paired with a white rat 7 times resulting in a fear of white rat

Instrumental/operant conditioning

Concerns the relationship between one's own behaviour and the reward(reinforcer) or punishment it produces.

What are reinforcers and what types are there

Changes in environment that follow a behaviour and increase the probability that the behaviour will reoccur. Can be positive or negative.

What are positive reinforces

Bringing good things to the animal/person (e.g., money, praise, food)

What are negative reinforcers

Taking bad things away from the animal/person (e.g.,removing pain, toothache, hunger). This is different to punishment

What does punishment do in operant conditioning

Changes in environment that follow a behaviour and decrease the probability that thebehaviour will reoccur .

What is positive punishment

Presenting an aversive stimulus after a response (e.g., electric shock to induce pain). It is not a reinforcement

What is a negative punishment

Taking good things away from the animal/person (e.g.,withdrawal of food or money) it is not a reinforcer 44

What are the two main behaviours that are studied in instrumental conditioning

Sucking and head turning

How is sucking part of instrumental conditions in newborns

- Newborns to obtain a sugar solution (Lipsitt et al., 1966).

- 5-12 week olds to keep a movie in focus (Kalnins & Bruner,1973)

How is head turning part of instrumental conditioning in infants

Infants as young as 4 days will turn their head to obtainsucrose water.

What is the mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm

A ribbon is connected to a baby's ankle and a mobile.• Infants naturally kick their legs. They then learn thecontingency between kicking and the movement of the mobile.

What is observational learning (Bandura 1965)

Observational learning and modelling:watching behaviour of others. No reinforcement needed to learn-mere exposure BUT whether behaviour is repeated depends on observed consequences

Bandura's bobo doll

Nursery school children watched adult hit the bobo doll. Adult was rewarded, punished, or experienced no consequence for beating up the bobo doll• Children's actions were determined by model's actions and the consequences

What is imitation

Imitation is a form of observational learning

When do babies start imitating (Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

as a newborn but it is disputed by 6 - months infant show clear and complex imitation

What are the challenges with measuring infant memory

Infants cannot give verbal responses until ~1 year. Early childhood is a time of rapid cognitive growth, but different systems grow at different paces

When can foetuses recognise their mothers voice (Kisilevsky et al., 2003)

One-twoweeks before birth

How do infants showing novelty preferences show recognition of memory

Infants can be presented with a novel stimulus,which is later hidden. When the stimulus ispresented, reduced looking is indicative ofrecognition memory.23

When can the Visual paired comparison task (Fantz, 1964) be used and why

Can be used across the entire period of infancy because it doesn't require motor skills.

What is the earliest the lovely response has been record and how long is the retention interval (Pascalis & de Schonen, 1994)

2-minute retention interval

How does time needed to familiarise with original stimulus change with age and why (Morgan & Hayne,2006)

decreases with age because stimulus encoding gets faster.

How does retention change with age

Retention over longer interval (days to months) increases withage à internal representation of stimulus is viable for longer

How does the Mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm work

Baseline then Acquisition then Retention interval finally Test. The test is infant presented with either the same mobile from the acquisition phase ("old"), or a different one ("new"). More kicking during the test than the baseline suggests recognition.

Why is the Mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm useful

Features of the test mobile can be systematically varied to determine which features were encoded. The retention interval length can vary, and can be filled/unfilled.

How long do 3 month olds remember the kicking -experiment for

up to a week later

How does renting of the kicking experiment change with age (Rovee-Collier and Boller, 1995)

ncrease with age (e.g. 6-month olds - 2 weeks, 12-month olds - 2 months

Can remming be reinstated (evidence from the Mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

Remembering can be reinstated after long delays even in very younginfants with reminders of the contingency.

What effects does the Mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm reveal

The spacing effect and the misinformation effect

What is the spacing effect (Mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

two practice trials spaced apart produces better retention than two practice trials close together

What is the information effect (Mobile conjugate reinforcement paradigm)

exposure to second mobile reduced the likelihood that the infant would remember the first mobile.

Two theories as to why memory improves during early childhood

Memory efficiency and memory strategies

Memory efficient theory Kail (1991)

memory processes improve with age (i.e. working memory capacity increases, learning becomes more efficient)- Digit span increases from two (2-yr olds) to six (9-yr olds)

Memory strategies - De Loache et al., (1985)

Children learn effective memory strategies (e.g., elaboration, rehearsal, organisation) as they get older.- Children as young as 18 months verbally rehearse the location of a hidden object more than a visible object. Young children (age 3-6) do not spontaneously use elaborative encoding, but older children (7-8) do. 27

What is infantile amnesia

Adults usually don't remember events from the first three years of life, and fewfrom the next two

Do young children have episodic memory if not what do they have.

Young children have something similar/identical to episodic memory, but they forget those memories as they age

What is the cause of infantile amnesia and children forgetting as memories are they age

Exact cause is unknown, but may be due to development of brain regions that are crucial for learning and memory (e.g., hippocampus).

What is memory like in older children (Holliday, Reyna, and Brainerd, 2008)

As memory becomes adult like (around age 14-15), working memory capacity increases and children integrate meaning into episodic memory. Incorporating meaning leads to a richer memory trace, but can make older children more susceptible to memory illusions

What is theory of mind

awareness thatother people have different states ofawareness to you.

What is metacognition

understanding ofour own minds

What is meta memory

our knowledge and awareness of own memory processes

What is the development of metacognition

From age 5: children know which material is easy/difficult to learn.• By the first few years of school, this can be seen throughJudgements of Learning (JOLs)

Overconfidence in children prating - Shin, Bjorklund, & Beck (2007)

Children consistently overestimated the number of pictures they would recall across multiple lists. Children with higher levels of overconfidence showed greater gains in recall than children with lower levels of overconfidence

adaptivity hypothesis for reason behind overconfidence - (Bjorklund & Green, 1992)

overconfidence helps to keep children engaged in difficult activities

What is metacognitive control - (Schneider & Löffler, 2016)

Young children use their metacognitive knowledge to influence their learning. By around age 7-8, children will choose to restudy items that they gave lower JOLs more often than items to which they gave high JOLs