PSYC 100: Principles of Psychology - Learning, Memory Encoding, and Conditioning

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering principles of learning, types of memory, working memory, encoding strategies, classical and operant conditioning mechanisms, observational learning, and knowledge emotions.

Perceptual Learning

Occurs when aspects of our perception change as a function of experience, such as developing the ability to rapidly distinguish faces or pick up subtle nuances in music through repeated exposure.

Explicit Learning

Knowledge of experiences and material that can be consciously recalled and intentionally remembered, such as studying specifically for an upcoming psychology quiz.

Implicit Learning

The process of unintentionally acquiring knowledge and changes in behavior without having intended to learn something, resulting in information that cannot easily be expressed verbally.

Implicit Memory

The behavioral effect of having unintentionally acquired knowledge previously, revealing the influence of past experiences without any conscious intention to utilize that experience.

Explicit Memory

The conscious, intentional recollection of past events, experiences, facts, and concepts.

Working Memory

The form of memory used to temporarily hold onto information, typically for the purpose of active mental manipulation (such as when playing Tetris, solving Sudoku, or computing arithmetic).

Backward Digit Span Task

A cognitive assessment task used to measure working memory capacity, wherein a participant is presented with a sequential series of digits and must mentally manipulate the series to reproduce it in reverse order.

Chunking

The cognitive process of grouping individual pieces of information together into meaningful units based on prior knowledge and expertise, which expands functional working memory capacity.

Chase & Simon Chess Study (1973)

A landmark study demonstrating that chess masters require fewer trials and correctly replace more pieces when reconstructing typical mid-game and end-game configurations due to chunking based on prior expertise; this advantage disappears entirely when pieces are placed in random configurations.

Incidental Learning

Learning that occurs when an organism acquires information automatically and without conscious intent or explicit instruction to memorize it.

Intentional Learning

Any type of learning that takes place when an individual is actively motivated by the deliberate intention to acquire and retain knowledge.

Survival Processing

An evolutionary-based encoding mechanism identified by Nairne et al. (2007) where rating the relevance of words to a survival scenario yields significantly higher free recall and recognition than intentional memorization or other scenarios like moving or pleasantness ratings.

Generation Effect

The phenomenon in which memory retention is substantially improved when a learner actively generates target information (such as filling in a word fragment) rather than passively reading it.

Spacing Effect

The cognitive principle stating that memory retention is vastly superior when study episodes are distributed across multiple intervals over time rather than massed together in a single cramming session.

Interleaving

A practice schedule where multiple distinct skills, concepts, or problem types are mixed together during training, producing superior long-term test performance ($77\%$ vs. $38\%$ in Taylor & Rohrer, 2010) compared to blocked practice.

Retrieval Practice

The learning strategy of actively producing knowledge from memory (self-testing) rather than passively rereading material, which produces more durable and robust long-term retention.

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

A learning principle stating that memory performance is superior when the cognitive processes and formats required during retrieval match those practiced during the initial encoding activity.

Metacognition

The knowledge, awareness, and skills people possess to monitor and control their own learning, such as allocating more study time to difficult concepts and choosing optimal learning strategies.

The Value of Forgetting

A fundamental principle of memory stating that forgetting serves an adaptive function by discarding outdated and irrelevant information, preventing mental clutter, and setting the stage for more efficient spaced learning.

Classical Conditioning

A form of stimulus-stimulus associative learning in which an organism learns that a neutral environmental cue predicts the occurrence of a biologically significant event, resulting in an involuntary response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

In classical conditioning, a stimulus that naturally, innately, and automatically elicits a specific physiological response prior to any conditioning (e.g., food in Pavlov's experiments).

Unconditioned Response (UR)

In classical conditioning, an innate, unlearned reflexive reaction elicited by an unconditioned stimulus before or in the absence of conditioning (e.g., salivation elicited by food).

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

An initially neutral cue (such as a tone, bell, or light) that, after being repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a learned conditioned response.

Conditioned Response (CR)

The learned physiological or behavioral reaction elicited by a conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has occurred.

Fear Conditioning

A form of classical conditioning in which a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US, such as a foot shock), causing the CS to elicit fear and anxiety responses.

Conditioned Compensatory Response

In classical conditioning, a learned response that opposes rather than mimics the unconditioned response to counteract drug effects and maintain bodily homeostasis, explaining tolerance and overdoses in unfamiliar environments.

Blocking

The finding in classical conditioning that no learning occurs to a new stimulus if it is presented concurrently with a previously conditioned stimulus, showing that learning requires surprise or prediction error rather than mere contiguity.

Prediction Error

The degree to which the outcome of a conditioning trial differs from what is predicted by the conditioned stimuli present; learning occurs only when a prediction error is positive or surprising, declining as the CS accurately predicts the US.

Preparedness

The evolutionary predisposition that makes an organism genetically prone to easily and rapidly learn specific survival-relevant associations (e.g., linking illness with ingested tastes rather than external sounds).

Extinction

The decrease in the strength or cessation of a learned behavior that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus, or when an operant behavior is no longer reinforced.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of an extinguished response following the passage of time without any intervening re-training trials, demonstrating that extinction inhibits rather than erases original associations.

Renewal Effect

The recovery of an extinguished response that takes place when an organism is tested in an environmental context different from the extinction context, particularly when returned to the original learning setting.

Context

Background environmental stimuli (such as a room or cage), internal bodily states (such as drug influence or mood), or temporal periods present when learning occurs that serve as retrieval cues.

Operant Conditioning

A form of stimulus-response associative learning (also called instrumental conditioning) where an organism's voluntary behavior is modified, strengthened, or weakened by its consequences.

Operant

A voluntary behavior that operates on the environment and whose frequency is controlled by its subsequent consequences (e.g., a rat pressing a lever for food).

Reinforcers

Any environmental consequence following a behavior that strengthens that behavior or increases the statistical likelihood that it will be performed again.

Punishers

Any stimulus or consequence following an operant behavior that decreases the frequency, strength, or likelihood of that behavior.

Thorndike's Law of Effect

The behavioral principle asserting that operant responses followed by satisfying, pleasant consequences are strengthened, whereas responses followed by discomfort or unpleasant consequences are weakened.

Quantitative Law of Effect

A mathematical rule stating that the effectiveness of a reinforcer at strengthening an operant response depends inversely on the total quantity of alternative reinforcement available in the surrounding environment.

Stimulus Control

The phenomenon occurring when an operant behavior is systematically elicited or withheld based on the presence of a specific antecedent stimulus that precedes it.

Discriminative Stimulus

In operant conditioning, an environmental cue that sets the occasion for a response by signaling whether a given behavior will or will not be reinforced.

Reinforcer Devaluation Effect

The experimental finding that an animal will decrease or cease executing an instrumental action if the reinforcer that follows it has been separately rendered aversive, undesirable, or satiated.

Goal-Directed Behavior

Instrumental behavior governed by an animal's understanding of the contingency between its action and the resulting outcome, combined with the current subjective value of that outcome (sensitive to reinforcer devaluation).

Habit

An automatic instrumental behavior triggered directly by antecedent stimuli that operates independently of the current value of the reinforcer (insensitive to reinforcer devaluation).

Observational Learning

A learning process described by Social Learning Theory in which individuals acquire new behaviors, responses, and skills primarily by watching the actions of others.

Social Models

Individuals or authority figures whose behaviors, traits, and consequences are actively observed and serve as targets for imitation.

Vicarious Reinforcement

A social learning process whereby an observer becomes more or less likely to replicate a behavior after witnessing a social model receive reinforcement or punishment for that action.

Knowledge Emotions

A specific family of emotions—comprising surprise, interest, confusion, and awe—elicited by unexpected, novel, or complex events that motivate exploration, mental reflection, and knowledge building.

Surprise

A knowledge emotion rooted in an expectancy violation that executes a rapid expectedness check, quickly orienting sensory attention toward an unexpected event to assess potential danger.

Interest

A knowledge emotion elicited by appraising an event as novel, complex, or unfamiliar while simultaneously appraising high coping potential (believing one is capable of understanding it), motivating sustained exploration.

Confusion

A knowledge emotion elicited when an event is appraised as high in novelty and complexity but difficult to comprehend (low coping potential), which motivates learners to think deeply and resolve cognitive impasses.

Awe

A profound knowledge emotion triggered by encountering something vast that falls outside the normal scope of experience and requires accommodation (revising one's existing mental frameworks).

Impasse-Driven Learning

An educational approach that stimulates active, deep processing by intentionally placing learners before perplexing barriers and cognitive conflicts, leveraging confusion to foster problem-solving.

Functionalist Theories of Emotion

Theories of emotion proposing that specific emotional states evolved because they serve adaptive functions that assist individuals in managing critical evolutionary and cognitive challenges.

Coping Potential

A cognitive appraisal regarding a person's subjective belief in their own capability to handle, understand, manage, and resolve a challenge or ambiguous event.

Appraisal Theories

Theoretical perspectives arguing that emotions are generated by distinct evaluations of environmental events in relation to an individual's personal goals, values, beliefs, and coping potential.

Accommodation

The cognitive restructuring process in which an individual modifies their preexisting beliefs, mental structures, and schemas about how the world works in order to assimilate novel experiences.

Habituation

A nonassociative learning process wherein an organism's behavioral or sensory response to a non-threatening stimulus systematically decreases following repeated or prolonged exposure (e.g., becoming noseblind to odors).

Sensitization

A nonassociative learning process characterized by an increasing magnitude of behavioral response following repeated exposure to a stimulus.

Nonassociative Learning

Learning that occurs when a single, repeated environmental exposure leads to a behavioral change without any association to other stimuli or outcomes.

Taste Aversion Conditioning

A classical conditioning phenomenon wherein ingesting a distinctive taste followed hours later by nausea causes the organism to selectively reject and develop an aversion to that specific flavor.

Openness to Experience

A fundamental Big Five personality factor characterized by elevated levels of intellectual curiosity, creativity, aesthetic sensitivity, and a high propensity to experience interest and awe.

Chills

A physiological bodily response of goosebumps—typically felt on the arms, scalp, and neck—frequently reported during powerful aesthetic experiences or episodes of awe.