PSY 200 Test 2

Learning

a change in behavior, or the potential for future behavior, as a result of experience

Behaviorists

psychologist who believe that psychology should study only observable, measurable behaviors, not internal mental processes. They don’t deny the importance of heredity, but they don’t emphasize it

Radical behaviorists

Generally, avoid all talk of internal events as causes of behavior

What do radical behaviorists believe in?

1. internal states are caused by events in the environment (or by the interaction of events with genetics)

2. the ultimate cause of behavior is therefore the observable events, not the internal states

3. most discussions of mental states are sloppy and should be rephrased into a description of behavior

Methodological behaviorists

they sometimes use observations of behavior to make inferences about internal events. From observing how an animal behaves in the presence of certain stimuli, we might infer the presence of an intervening variable

Intervening varirable

something that cannot be directly observed yet links a stimulus to a response

Assumptions of behaviorism

determinism is true, mental explanations are ineffective, the most powerful influence on behavior are outcomes provided by the environment (nurture over nature)

When did behaviorism rise

in the 1900s as a reaction against structuralism

Jacques Loeb

argued that all animal behavior, and most human behavior, could be explained with stimulus-response psychology

Ivan Pavlov

Russian psychologist who won a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on digestion, experimented with dog and their salivation and coined the description of classical conditioning

Factors that enhance classical conditioning

unfamiliarity of the neutral stimulus, conscious awareness of the pairing of the CS and UCS, temporal contiguity

Memory

a general term for the storage, retention and recall of events (experiences), information and procedures

What factors influence memory effectiveness

similarly of information in memory, characteristics of information, method of testing, passage of time

Hermann Ebbinghaus

studied his own ability to memorize new material, credited with the first systematic study of memory

Interference

occurs when you have information and memory that is related to each other; similarity among pieces of information in memory can reduce memory effectiveness

Proactive interference

something in memory makes it harder for you to learn something later, acting forward in time

Retroactive interference

when the thing you learn now causes you to make mistakes of the things you learned before, acting backward in time because of the similarity

Factors that affect memory

distinctiveness, meaningfulness, method of testing

Distinctiveness

the tendency to remember unusual items better than more common items is called the von Restorff effect

Meaningfulness

it is clear from more recent studies of memory that meaningful materials are easier to remember

Recall (or free recall)

simple method for the tester but the most difficult for the person being tested (least sensitive memory test)

Cued recall

gives the person being tested significant hints about the correct answer

Recognition

requires the person being tested to identify the correct item from a list of several choices

The savings or relearning method

compares the time required to relearn material to the time required to learn something new

Implicit memory

might be able to show memory of things you weren't subconsciously aware of

Cognitive psychology

studies thinking and information processing

The sensory store

considered to be the first stage of memory processing, analogous to input buffers in a computer system, probably more accurately described as a combination of memory and perception

Capacity

part of the sensory store, very large, registers everything that is perceived in the moment that we call “now”

Decay rate

part of the sensory store, very rapid, data lost in less than one second if not attended to

Short-term memory

temporary storage of information that someone has just encountered, later relabeled “working memory” to reflect what you’re thinking about or working on right now, analogous to RAM in a computer system, capacity: 7 ± 2 bits, decay rate: 18-20 seconds w/o rehearsal

what three components does working memory (short-term memory) have

1. phonological loop

2. visuospatial sketchpad

3. central executive

Phonological loop

one component of working memory that stores and rehearses speech information, similar to the 7 ± 2 idea from the traditional concept of short-term memory

Visuospatial sketchpad

one component of working memory that stores and manipulates visual and spatial information

Central executive

one component of working memory that governs shifts of attention. Process that arise from the interaction of neurons that govern the shift of attention from one thing to another. Good working memory is able to handle shifts between two or more tasks or multiple aspects of complex tasks

Long-term memory

relatively permanent storage of (mostly) meaningful information, analogous to the hard drive in a computer system, capacity not easily measured and has no known limits, decay rate: none, through retrieval may be hindered by interference or loss of retrieval cues

Transfer from short- to long-term memory

also called consolidation, implying a role of time, meaningfulness seems to be the largest factor in whether information will be encoded in long-term memory

Distinctions within long-term memory

can be declarative memory or procedural memory

Declarative memory

the ability to state a fact, stuff you can communicate in words, classified as either semantic or episodic

Semantic declarative memory

your memory of facts

episodic declarative memory

your memory of experiences, the memory based on the context of where you were and your environment, seems to be more fragile

Procedural memory

the memory of how to do something (muscle memory)

Reconstruction with memory

when we retrieve a memory, we reconstruct an account based partly on surviving memories and partly on expectations of what must have happened, this process can result in hindsight bias

Hindsight bias

one manifestation where we tend to remember the past to make it more consistent with the way things turn out after that

The false memory controversy

Reports of long-lost memories, prompted by clinical techniques, known as recovered memories, have included examples of accurate and inaccurate memories constructed through clinical techniques

Factors that could influence forgetting a traumatic event

age at the time of the event, type of event, reaction of family

“Normal” forgetting

the ability to retrieve information from memory, a product of mechanisms that are usually adaptive

Things that may lead to forgetting

decay, interference, loss of retrieval cues, source amnesia, retrograde amnesia, anterograde amnesia

Decay

passage of time alone, information constantly flooding in through your sense

interference

the information is still in memory but there is too much similar information that it makes it hard to find

loss of retrieval cues

different labels that you can put information to allow you to find it

retrograde amnesia

information that has already been in memory

anterograde amnesia

your ability to put new infomration is lost

What does catastrophic loss of memory (amnesia) result from

brain damage or disease

What are the results from frontal-lobe damage

1. stroke

2. head trauma

3. Korsakoff’s syndrome

4. confabulation

Korsakoff’s syndrome

degradation in neural growth in neural concentrations as a result of prolong vitamin B deficiency

Confabulation

people struggling to fill in the gaps in their memory, have pieces of made up information to make up for the gap in their memory

What are the two parts of the brain

the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex

the hippocampus

deep structure in the brain involved in creating and retrieving cues and new memories, indexing system that interacts with the prefrontal cortex

prefrontal cortex

outside front of the brain, responsible for the reconstruction and piecing together data and information to create a coherent answer

H.M. and his memory

had his hippocampus and surrounding areas of the temporal lobes removed to control his intractable seizures, he retained normal short-term memory functions, he had moderate retrograde amnesia, he could not remember many events that occured between 1 and 3 years before his surgery, he experienced massive anterograde amnesia and was unable to store any new long-term declarative memories

Possible reasons for infant amnesia

biological or cognitive (verbal vs. nonverbal memories, sense of self, encoding specificity)

Emotional arousal

way to improve memory, something that produces cortisol further stamps things in the memory

The levels-of-processing principle

states that the ease with which we can retrieve a memory depends on the number and types of associations that we form with that memory

What are the main ways memory works

retrieval cues, personal relevance, and meaningfulness

Study strageties

timing, retrieval cues, SPAR method, mnemonic devices

the serial-order effect

states that we tend to remember the beginning and end of a list better than the middle

the primacy effect

the tendency to remember the beginning

the recency effect

the tendency to remember the end

Retrieval cues

bits of associated information that help us retrieve memories

Encoding specificity principle

the associations you form at the initial exposure will be the best ones later

state dependent memory

the idea that the physical state of your body at the time you are exposed to the information can be a retrieval cue

SPAR method

Survey - when you’re going through the material, give it a quick skim of the overall structure

Process meaningfully- go back and process the information, make connections and establish relevance

Ask questions - quiz yourself

Reviews

Mnemonic devices

any memory aid that is based on encoding items in a special way

Forward Conditioning

The Conditioned response will be acquired only when the Conditioned stimulus precedes the Unconditioned stimulus

Backward conditioning

(unconditioned stimulus followed by the conditioned stimulus) rarely produces any response (or produces inhibition)

Temporal contiguity

The conditioned and unconditioned stimuli are close together

Trace conditioning

slower and less effective way to condition a response

Acquisition

when you have acquired the conditioned response

Extinction

when you unlearn something, does not erase the association between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus

Spontaneous recovery

the temporary return of an extinguished response

Stimulus generalization

a particular stimulus elicits a response and other stimuli similar elicits a reponse

Discrimination

the process of learning to respond differently to two stimuli because they produce two different outcomes

The discovery of blocking effects

suggests that it is difficult to condition the same response in an animal to more than one stimulus

Thorndike and operant conditioning

observed that the escape from the box was a reinforcement for the behavior that led to the escape

Operant (or instrumental) conditioning

the process of changing behavior by following a response with a reinforcement or punishment, the animal’s behavior is instrumental to receiving the reinforcer

belongingness (“preparedness”)

the idea that some associations are easier or more likely to form than others

Behavior more likely

when a stimulus is applied - positive reinforcement

when a stimulus is removed - negative reinforcement (espace learning for active avoidance learning)

Behavior less likely

when a stimulus is applied - positive punishment (passive avoidance learning)

when a stimulus is removed - negative punishment (omission training)

Punishment

must be applied quickly and very consistently to sustainably change behavior, decreases the probability of a behavior to happen again

Reinforcers

decreases the probability of a behavior to happen again

Is punishment or reinforcement the weaker influence on behavior?

punishment

Primary reinforcers

meet primary, biological needs and are found to be reinforcing for almost everyone, requires no learning or experience, hardwired into the biology, ex: food and drink

Secondary reinforcers

effective because they have become associated with primary reinforcers, requires experience and prior knowledge, ex: money and grades

The Premack Principle

states that the opportunity to engage in a frequent behavior can be a reinforcer for a less frequent behavior (not the prevailing view)

The Disequilibrium Principle

states that each person has a preferred pattern of diving time between various activities and if the person is removed from that pattern, a return to it will be reinforcing

Schedules of reinforcement

a set of rules or procedures for delivery of reinforcement

Continuous reinforcement schedule

provides reinforcement every time a response occurs, top level

Intermittent reinforcement schedules

reinforces some responses but not others, reinforced at a level less than continuous, can be ratio schedules or interval schedules

Intermittent ratio schedule

based on the count of how many times the animal did the behavior, can be fixed ratio or variable ratio

intermittent interval schedule

based on how much time has gone by since the last reinforcement