Intro to psych Exam two

classical conditioning

a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired: a response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.is centered on involuntary, automatic behaviors

The pairing of two things: bell and salivating

Autonomic nervous system

Pavlov’s experiment

salivation in dogs through a series of experiments where he paired the sound of a bell with the presentation of food. Over time, the dogs began to associate the bell with food and would start to salivate at the sound of the bell, even when no food was presented.

unconditioned stimulus

a stimulus that leads to an automatic response

(EX: food in Pavlov’s experiment)

unconditioned response

an automatic response to a stimulus

(EX: dog salivating when presented with food in Pavlov’s experiment)

conditioned stimulus

a stimulus that can eventually trigger a conditioned response

(EX: ringing the tuning fork then presenting the dog with food in Pavlov’s experiment)

conditioned response

an automatic response established by training to an ordinarily neutral stimulus.

(EX: The dog salivating at the sound of the tuning fork even when not presented with food)

Neutral Stimulus

a stimulus that at first elicits no response

(EX: the sound of a tuning fork BEFORE it was paired with food)

Generalization

the conditioned response is observed even though the conditioned stimulus is slightly different.

(EX: the dog salivating in Pavlov’s example to a different pitch)

Discrimination

the capacity to distinguish between similar but distinct stimuli.

(EX: Your cat being able to tell the difference between hearing you open a bag of chips and you opening a bag of cat treats is another example)

operant conditioning

a type of learning in which the consequences of an organism’s behavior determine whether it will be repeated in the future

Motivation for future behaviors

Voluntary motor system

Difference between operant and classical conditioning

In classical conditioning, the stimulus comes before the behavior to develop a relationship between the two. In operant conditioning, the behavior comes first and the negative or positive reinforcement comes after.

negative reinforcement

occurs when something unpleasant or uncomfortable is removed or taken away in order to increase the likelihood of the desired behavior.

(EX: You take away your child's chores for the weekend because they kept their room clean all week)

positive reinforcement

the act of rewarding positive behavior in order to encourage it to happen again in the future,

(EX: taking a kid out for ice cream after they play well in a sports game)

negative punishment

remove a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior

(EX: when a child misbehaves, a parent can take away a favorite toy)

positive punishment

adding an aversive stimulus after an unwanted behavior to discourage a person from repeating the behavior.

(EX: adding chores when a child misbehaves)

fixed ratio rewards schedule

a rewards schedule when a reward is delivered after a specific number of response

(EX: Getting to go out for ice cream every ten times your child does their chores without being asked)

fixed interval rewards schedule

when the reward only happens after a certain amount of time.

(EX: every twenty minutes of studying you eat a piece of chocolate)

variable ratio rewards schedule

the number of responses needed for a reward varies

(EX: Gambling and games of chance they know they will always win eventually)

variable interval rewards schedule

the reinforcement is given at irregular intervals.

(EX: getting a speeding ticket. Drivers do not get a ticket every time they speed but still may choose to stay within the speed limit since when they get a ticket for speeding varies)

Social Learning theory and Bandura

People learn from watching others

Observational

(vicarious) Learning

Modeling

Imitation

(EX: The kids beating up the Bobo doll after watching adults do it)

Encoding

the process by which we transform what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory

(EX: when someone thinks of their favorite song, they can likely sing-along, line by line)

Storage

the process of maintaining information in memory over time

(EX: studying to store the memory in your brain for an exam)

Retrieval

the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored

(EX: Trying to remember what you studied while taking a test)

Memory

the ability to store and retrieve information over time

Elaborative encoding

Levels of Processing

Intermediate

Deep*

Shallow

Visual Imagery Encoding

the process of storing new information by converting it into mental pictures

Organizational Encoding

the process of categorizing information according to the relationships among a series of items

Sensory Memory

storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less

Types of Encoding

elaborate (levels of processing), visual imagery, organizational

Types of Storage

Sensory memory (iconic and echoic), short-term memory (working memory, chunking, and rehearsal) and identify

Iconic memory

a fast-decaying store of visual information

Echoic memory

a fast-decaying store of auditory information

Short-term memory (STM) or working memory

storage that holds non-sensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute; can hold about 7 items

Working memory

active maintenance of information in short-term memory.

(EX: trying to remember a phone number while a toddler is shouting for attention)

Rehearsal

the process of keeping the information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it

(EX: repeating a phone number mentally, or aloud until the number is entered into the phone to make the call)

Chunking

combining small pieces of information into larger clusters that are more easily held in short-term memory

(EX: "My very educated mother just sent us nine pizzas" for the names of the planets)

Consolidation

the process by which memories become stable in the brain

Encoding specificity principle

the idea that a retrieval cue can serve as an effective reminder when it helps recreate the specific way in which information was initially encoded

State-dependent retrieval

the tendency for information to be better recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and retrieval

brain regions associated with long term memory

hippocampus and other related structures in the temporal lobe. (The hippocampus and the amygdala, nearby, also form part of the limbic system, a pathway in the brain for the signals that underly the emotions.)

Types of amnesia

retrograde and anterograde

Retrograde Amnesia

a type of memory loss where a person is unable to recall past events or previously learned information.

anterograde amnesia

a type of memory loss characterized by the inability to form new memories after the onset of the condition. It is often caused by damage to the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory consolidation.

Forms of long-term memory

explicit (semantic and episodic) and implicit (procedural and priming)

Definition of Explicit Memory

a type of long-term memory that's concerned with recollection of facts and events

Implicit memory

unconscious and automatic

This includes memories of how to perform tasks that you do every day

Semantic memory

a type of long-term memory involving the capacity to recall words, concepts, or numbers, which is essential for the use and understanding of language

Episodic memory

the memory of everyday events that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at particular times and places; for example, the party on one's 7th birthday.

Types of Explicit Memories

Semantic and Episodic

Types of Implicit memory

priming and procedural

Priming

a technique in which the introduction of one stimulus influences how people respond to a subsequent stimulus.

(EX: Dr. Cousins saying green a bunch of times throughout the lecture then asking us all to think of a color and we thought of green)

Procedural Memory

a type of long-term memory involved in the performance of different actions and skills. Essentially, it is the memory of how to do certain things. Riding a bike, tying your shoes, and cooking an omelet without a recipe are all examples of procedural memories.

7 failures of memory

transience, absentmindedness, blocking, memory misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence

Transience definition

forgetting what occurs with the passage of time

Types of transcience

curve of forgetting, types of interference-retroactive and proactive

Curve of Forgetting

the decline of memory retention in time

Retroactive interference

situations in which information learned later impairs memory for information acquired earlier

Proactive interference

situations in which information learned earlier impairs memory for information acquired later

Absentmindedness defintion

a lapse in attention that results in memory failure

Blocking

a failure to retrieve information that is available in memory even though you are trying to produce it

Also known as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

Memory Misattribution definiton

assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source

types of memory misattribution

source and false recognition and brain activation pattern

Source memory

recall of when, where, and how information was acquired

False recognition

a feeling of familiarity about something that hasn’t been encountered before

Suggestibility

the tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections

Bias

the distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences

Persistence definition

the intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget

Type of persistence memory

Flashbulb memory

Flashbulb memory

detailed recollections of when and where we heard about shocking events

Language

a system for communicating with others using signals that are combined according to the rules of grammar and to convey meaning

Grammar

a set of rules that specify how the units of language can be combined to produce meaningful messages

Semanticity

the quality that a linguistic system has of being able to convey meanings, in particular by reference to the world of physical reality

(EX: he word "book" refers to an object made of paper on which something might be written)

arbitrariness

the meaning of linguistic signs is not predictable from its word form, nor is the word form dictated by its meaning/function.

(EX: For example, in English, that sound combination that gets written in English, as b-a-n-k, bank. That could refer to two totally different things)

phoneme

any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another,

(EX: p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat)

morpheme

a meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided

(EX: in, come, -ing, forming incoming ).

deep structure

the abstract representation of the syntactic structure of a sentence.

(EX: The cat was chased by the dog)

Surface structure

the structure of a well-formed phrase or sentence in a language, as opposed to its underlying abstract representation.

(EX: The dog chased the cat.)

Stages of language development for infants

babbling, telegraphic speech and over generalizations

Babbling

prespeech sounds, such as dadada, made by infants from around 6 months of age.

telegraphic speech

two-word sentences, such as “kitty tired” or “I hungry”. Toddlers develop this level of speech between 18-24 months

Overgeneralization in speech

occurs when a child uses the wrong word to name an object

Behaviorist theory of language

explanations state that language is learned through operant conditioning and imitation

Nativist theory of language

language development is best explained as an innate biological capacity

Interactionist theory of language

explanations argue that social interactions play a crucial role in language

Broca’s Area

left frontal cortex; language production

Wernicke’s Area

left temporal cortex; language comprehension

Linguistic relativity hypothesis

the proposal that language shapes the nature of thought; originated by Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941)

Newer studies cast doubt on theory.

Concept

a mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli

(EX: apple ties together all knowledge we have about apples in general, such as their typical shapes and sizes, as well as what they can be used for)

Prototype theory

people make category judgments by comparing new instances to the category’s prototype

(EX: a robin or a sparrow can be regarded as a prototype or a "good example" of the category bird, whereas a penguin or an ostrich is a rather "bad example" of this category)

Exemplar theory

people make category judgments by comparing a new instance with stored memories for other instances of the category

(EX: when one is asked to generate a list of fruits, apples, oranges and bananas will often come to mind first as they are considered more typical)

Rational choice theory

view that we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two

Heuristics

a fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision-making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached

availability bias

items that are more readily availability in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
(EX: a manager may recognize an employee who always responds promptly to their emails or is always available to answer questions)

Types of heuristics

availability bias, conjunction fallacy, representative heuristic

Conjunction fallacy

when people think that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event

(EX: John has glasses so people are more likely to think he reads a lot)

Representativeness heuristic

making a probability judgment by comparing an object or event to a prototype of the object or event

(EX: thinking that because someone is wearing a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, that they must be a lawyer, because they look like the stereotype of a lawyer)

Framing effects

when people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is phrased

(EX: A medicine has a 70% effectiveness rate. V.S. A medicine has a 30% failure rate)

Problem-Solving

Means-ends analysis and analogical problem solving

Means-ends analysis

a process of searching for the means or steps to reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal

Analogical problem solving

solving a problem by finding a similar problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current problem