Psych Vocabulary - Chapters 6-8

Acquisition

The gradual formation of an association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.

Associative Learning

Linking two stimuli or events that occur together.

Behaviorism

A psychological approach that emphasizes environmental influences on observable behaviors.

Classical Conditioning (Pavlovian conditioning)

A type of associative learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response when it is associated with a stimulus that already produces that response.

Conditioned Response (CR)

A response to a conditioned stimulus; a response that has been learned.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A stimulus that elicits a response only after learning has taken place.

Continuous Reinforcement

A type of learning in which behavior is reinforced each time it occurs.

Equipotentiality

The principle that any conditioned stimulus paired with any unconditioned stimulus should result in learning.

Extinction

A process in which the conditioned response is weakened when the conditioned stimulus is repeated without the unconditioned stimulus.

Fear Conditioning

A type of classical conditioning that turns neutral stimuli into threatening stimuli.

Habituation

A decrease in behavioral response after repeated exposure to a stimulus.

Instructed Learning

Learning associations and behaviors through verbal communication.

Law of Effect

Thorndike’s general theory of learning: Any behavior that leads to a “satisfying state of affairs“ is likely to occur again, and any behavior that leads to an “annoying state of affairs” is less likely to occur again. Or, the likelihood of the occurrence of a behavior is influenced by its consequences.

Learning

A relatively enduring change in behavior resulting from experience.

Modeling

The imitation of observed behavior.

Negative Punishment

The removal of a stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior’s recurrence.

Negative Reinforcement

The removal of an unpleasant stimulus to increase the probability of a behavior’s recurrence.

Nonassociative Learning

Responding after repeated exposure to a single stimulus or event.

Operant Conditioning (Instrumental Conditioning)

A learning process in which the consequences of an action determine the likelihood that it will be performed in the future.

Partial Reinforcement

A type of learning in which behavior is reinforced intermittently.

Partial-Reinforcement Extinction Effect

The greater persistence of behavior under partial reinforcement than under continuous reinforcement.

Phobia

An acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat of an object or a situation.

Positive Punishment

The administration of a stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior’s recurrence.

Positive Reinforcement

The administration of a stimulus to increase the probability of a behavior’s recurrence.

Punishment

A stimulus that follows a behavior and decreases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated.

Reinforcer

A stimulus that follows a response and increases the likelihood that the response will be repeated.

Rescorla-Wagner Model

A cognitive model of classical conditioning; it holds that learning is determined by the extent to which an unconditioned stimulus is unexpected or surprising.

Sensitization

An increase in behavioral response after exposure to a stimulus.

Shaping

A process of operant conditioning; it involves reinforcing behaviors that are increasingly similar to the desired behavior.

Social Learning

Acquiring or changing a behavior after verbal instruction or exposure to another individual performing that behavior.

Spontaneous Recovery

When a previously extinguished conditioned response reemerges after the presentation of the conditioned stimulus.

Stimulus Discrimination

A differentiation between two similar stimuli when only one of them is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus.

Stimulus Generalization

Learning that occurs when stimuli that are similar but not identical to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response.

Temporal Discounting

The tendency to discount the subjective value of a reward when it is given after a delay.

Unconditioned Response (UR)

A response that does not have to be learned, such as a reflex.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that elicits a response, such as a reflex, without any prior learning.

Vicarious Learning

Learning the consequences of an action by watching others being rewarded or punished for performing the action.

Absentmindedness

The inattentive or shallow encoding of events.

Amnesia

A deficit in long-term memory—resulting from disease, brain injury, or psychological trauma—in which the individual loses the ability to retrieve vast quantities of information.

Anterograde Amnesia

A condition in which people lose the ability to form new memories.

Blocking

The temporary inability to remember something.

Chunking

Organizing information into meaningful units to make it easier to remember.

Consolidation

The gradual process of memory storage in the brain.

Cryptomnesia

A type of misattribution that occurs when people think they have come up with a new idea yet have retrieved a stored idea and failed to attribute the idea to its proper source.

Encoding

The process by which the perception of a stimulus or event gets transformed into a memory.

Encoding Specificity Principle

The idea that any stimulus that is encoded along with an experience can later trigger a memory of the experience.

Episodic Memory

Memory for one’s past experiences that are identified by a time and place.

Implicit Memory

Memory that is expressed through responses, actions, or reactions.

Explicit Memory

Memory that is consciously retrieved.

Flashbulb Memories

Vivid episodic memories for the circumstances in which people first learned of a surprising and consequential or emotionally arousing event.

Long-term Memory

The storage of information that lasts from minutes to forever.

Long-term Potentiation (LTP)

Strengthening of a synaptic connection, making the postsynaptic neurons more easily activated by presynaptic neurons.

Memory

The ability to store and retrieve information.

Memory Bias

The changing of memories over time so that they become consistent with current beliefs or attitudes.

Mnemonics

Learning aids or strategies that improve recall through the use of retrieval cues. (PEMDAS)

Persistence

The continual recurrence of unwanted memories.

Priming

A facilitation in the response to a stimulus due to recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus.

Proactive Interference

Interference that occurs when prior information inhibits the ability to remember new information.

Procedural Memory

A type of implicit memory that involves skills and habits.

Prospective Memory

Remembering to do something at some future time.

Reconsolidation

The re-storage of memory after retrieval.

Retrieval Cue

Any stimulus that promotes memory recall.

Retrieval-induced Forgetting

Impairment of the ability to recall an item in the future after retrieving a related item from long-term memory.

Retroactive Interference

Interference that occurs when new information inhibits the ability to remember old information

Retrograde Amnesia

A condition in which people lose past memories, such as memories for events, facts, people, or even personal information.

Schemas

Cognitive structures in long-term memory that help us perceive, organize, and understand information.

Semantic Memory

Memory for facts independent of personal experience.

Sensory Memory

A memory system that very briefly stores sensory information in close to its original sensory form.

Iconic Memory

Visual, 400 ms 

Echoic Memory

Auditory, 3 s

Serial Position Effect

The finding that the ability to recall items from a list depends on the order of presentation, such that items presented early or late in the list are remembered better than those in the middle.

Source Amnesia

A type of misattribution that occurs when people have a memory for an event but cannot remember where they encountered the information.

Source Misattribution

Memory distortion that occurs when people misremember the time, place, person, or circumstances involved with a memory.

Suggestibility

The development of biased memories from misleading information.

Working Memory/Short Term Memory

A limited-capacity (7 +/-2 items) cognitive system that temporarily stores and manipulates information for current use. (30 s)

Storage

Maintaining information in memory over time

Retrieval

Bringing to mind information that was previously encoded and stored

Three Stages of Memory

Encoding -> Storage -> Retrieval

Affective Forecasting

The tendency for people to overestimate how events will make them feel in the future.

Analogical Representations

Mental representations that have some of the physical characteristics of what they represent.

Anchoring

The tendency, in making judgments, to rely on the first piece of information encountered or information that comes most quickly to mind.

Aphasia

A language disorder that results in deficits in language comprehension and production.

Availability Heuristic

Making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind.

Cognition

The mental activity that includes thinking and the understandings that result from thinking.

Concept

A category, or class, of related items consisting of mental representations of those items.

Crystallized Intelligence

Intelligence that reflects both the knowledge acquired through experience and the ability to use that knowledge.

Decision Making

A cognitive process that results in the selection of a course of action or belief from several options.

Deep Structure

In language, the implicit meanings of sentences.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

A form of social intelligence that emphasizes managing, recognizing, and understanding emotions and using them to guide appropriate thought and action.

Exemplar Model

A way of thinking about concepts: All members of a category are examples (exemplars); together they form the concept and determine category membership.

Fluid Intelligence

Intelligence that reflects the ability to process information, understand relationships, and think logically, particularly in novel or complex circumstances.

Framing

In decision making, an emphasis on the potential losses or potential gains from at least one alternative.

Functional Fixedness

In problem solving, having fixed ideas about the typical functions of objects.

General Intelligence (g)

The idea that one general factor underlies intelligence.

Heuristics

Shortcuts (rules of thumb or informal guidelines) used to reduce the amount of thinking that is needed to make decisions.

Insight 

The sudden realization of a solution to a problem.

Intelligence

The ability to use knowledge to reason, make decisions, make sense of events, solve problems, understand complex ideas, learn quickly, and adapt to environmental challenges.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

An index of intelligence computed by dividing a child’s estimated mental age by the child’s chronological age, then multiplying this number by 100.

Language

A system of communication using sounds and symbols according to grammatical rules.

Linguistic Relativity Theory

The claim that language determines thought.