302L Midterm

Ethics

A common set of principles and standards upon which psychologists build their professional and scientific work (e.g., Ethics Code and the Belmont Report). Includes how we collect and handle data, how we interact with participants, what we can and can’t do in an experiment, and to whom we give credit.

Beneficence and Nonmaleficence

Take care to do good, no harm. Benefits of research MUST outweigh the risks. Seek to safeguard the welfare and rights of others.

Fidelity and Responsibility

Create trust with those we work with. Aware of our professional and scientific responsibilities to society. Uphold professional standards of conduct.

Integrity

Promote accuracy, honesty, and truthfulness in the science, teaching, and practice of psychology. Do not steal, cheat, or engage in fraud or intentional misrepresentation of fact.

Justice

Fairness and justice entitle all persons to access to and benefit from the contributions of psychology. Exercise reasonable judgement and take precautions to ensure that any potential biases and the limitations of our expertise do not lead to or condone unjust practices.

Respect for People's Rights and Dignity

Respect the dignity and worth of all people which includes cultural, individual, and role differences, such as those based on age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language, and socioeconomic status.

Tuskegee study

An unethical U.S. government experiment that observed black men with untreated syphilis without their informed consent to study the disease's progression.

Reasons for nonreplication

Falsified data, sample size, culturally and generationally specific, and poor replication quality.

Solutions for replication issues

More systematic programs of scientific research and change in journals and textbooks.

Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning

a form of learning in which an animal acquires the expectation that a given stimulus predicts a specific upcoming important event.

Extinction

The process of reducing a learned response to a stimulus by ceasing to pair that stimulus with another previously associated stimulus.

Blocking

A 2-phase training paradigm in which prior conditioning with one cue (CS1 US) blocks later learning of a second cue when the two are paired together in the second phase of the training (CS1 + CS2 US).

Rescorla-Wagner Model

A model that describes how the strength of a conditioned response is influenced by the prediction error.

Blocking in RWM

explains blocking as a consequence of prediction error: prior conditioning of one stimulus reduces or eliminates prediction error when a new stimulus is subsequently presented with it, preventing substantial learning about the new stimulus.

Prediction error

The difference between what was predicted and what occurred.

Latent inhibition

A conditioning paradigm in which prior exposure to a CS retards later learning of the CS-US association during acquisition training.

Purkinje cells

A type of large, drop-shaped, and densely branching neuron in the cerebellar cortex.

Interpositus nucleus

One of the cerebellar deep nuclei from which conditioned response output is generated in classically conditioned responses.

Inferior olive

Located in the brainstem, a nucleus of cells that conveys information about aversive stimuli, such as an air puff US, up to both the interpositus nucleus and the cerebellar cortex.

Classical conditioning in Aplysia

During habituation, the response decreases, meaning there is a decrease in glutamate release. During sensitization, the response increases, releasing serotonin which increases glutamate release. In classical conditioning, an association is learned, where the pairing of sensory input and serotonin strengthens the sensory-to-motor synapse.

CREB1

Activates genes in the neuron's nucleus that initiate the growth of new synapses.

CREB2

Plays an opponent role, inhibiting the actions of CREB1.

Drug tolerance

The intense craving felt in response is the CR resulting from the body's conditioned compensatory response of lowering the levels of the brain chemicals enhanced by the drug in anticipation of the drug's arrival.

Operant conditioning

The process whereby organisms learn to make or to refrain from making certain responses in order to obtain or avoid certain outcomes.

Discrete

An operant conditioning paradigm in which the experimenter defines the beginning and end points of each trial.

Free-operant

An operant conditioning paradigm in which the animal can operate the apparatus as it chooses to obtain reinforcement (or avoid punishment).

Primary reinforcers

Such as food, water, sleep, that is biological value to an organism.

Secondary reinforcers

Initially has no biological value but that has been paired with (or predicts the arrival of) a primary reinforcer.

Negative contrast

A normally acceptable reinforcer evokes less responding if a preferred reinforcer is expected.

Punishers

A consequence of behavior that leads to decreased likelihood of that behavior in the future.

DRA

Differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors; a method used to decrease the frequency of unwanted behaviors by instead reinforcing preferred alternative behaviors.

Altruism

Occurs when organisms act in ways that benefit another-at the expense of some cost to themselves.

Dorsal striatum

A region of the basal ganglia that is important for stimulus-response learning.

Orbitofrontal cortex

Underside of the front of the brain; appears to evaluate the expected timing of those rewards.

VTA

Ventral tegmental area; small region in the midbrain of rats, humans, and other mammals.

Incentive salience hypothesis

A theory that explains how certain stimuli can become attractive due to their association with rewards.

Reward prediction error

Information that is critical when an organism is learning how to predict (and act to obtain) future reward.

Insula

A brain region that is involved in conscious awareness of bodily and emotional states and that may play a role in signaling the aversive value of stimuli.

Addiction

A strong habit or compulsion that is maintained despite known harmful consequences.

Delay

A conditioning procedure in which there is no temporal gap between the end of the CS and the beginning of the US and in which the CS co-terminates with the US.

Trace

A conditioning procedure in which there is a temporal gap between the end of the CS and the beginning of the US.

Interstimulus Interval (ISI)

The temporal gap between the onset of the CS and the onset of the US.

Hippocampal-dependent processes

Brain functions that rely on the hippocampus, such as forming, storing, and retrieving certain types of memories-especially spatial and episodic memories.

Fixed ratio (FR)

A specific # of responses must occur before a reinforcer is delivered.

Fixed interval (FI)

The first response after a fixed amount of time is reinforced.

Variable-ratio

A specific # of responses, on average, must occur before a reinforcer is delivered.

Variable-Interval (VI)

The first response after a fixed amount of time, on average, is reinforced.

Behavioral economics

The study of how organisms allocate their time and resources among possible options.

Bliss point

In behavioral economics, the allocation of resources that maximizes subjective value or satisfaction.

Self-control

Refers to an organism's willingness to forgo a small immediate reward in favor of a larger future reward.

CS input —> CR output circuit diagram

models Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning. It maps how an initially neutral stimulus transforms into a learned trigger that fires a specific behavioral response.

Delay discounting

The progressive reduction (or discounting) of the subjective value of a reward the longer it is delayed.

generalization gradient

a curve showing how changes in the physical properties of stimuli correspond to changes in responding

consequential region

a set of stimuli in the world that share the same consequence as a stimulus whose consequence is already known

Discrete representation

a representation in which each individual stimulus (or stimulus feature) corresponds to one element (node) in the model

Distributed representation

a representation in which information is coded as a pattern of activation distributed across many different nodes

learned specificity

a characteristic of the learned connections between early visual representations and task-related decision units

errorless discrimination learning

a training procedure in which a difficult discrimination is starting with an easy version of the task and proceeding to incrementally harder versions as the easier ones are mastered

preconditioning

a process that prepares an organism for a specific learning task

negative patterning

a behavioral paradigm in which the appropriate response to the individual cues is positive, whereas the appropriate response to their combination (pattern) is negative (no response)

acquired equivalence

a learning and generalization paradigm in which prior training in stimulus equivalence increases the amount of generalization between 2 stimuli, even if those stimuli are superficially similar

associative network theory for A1

suggests that sounds activate linked memories or concepts in the brain based on learned associations

nucleus basalis

a small group of neurons located in the basal forebrain; these neurons deliver acetylcholine to the cortex, enabling cortical plasticity

hippocampus

hippocampus and associated brain regions, including the entorhinal cortex and dentate gyrus in humans, also referred to as the medial temporal lobe

impaired reasoning in schizophrenia

a form of hippocampal-region-dependent reasoning in which learned information is used to guide later inferences

immediacy

to build strong associates, as in the example where a rat presses a lever and immediately receives a mild shock, quickly learning to avoid pressing the lever

consistency

to form reliable memory patterns, as in the example where a student is consistently penalized for plagiarism, making them more likely to remember the rule and follow it

proper intensity

to engage attention and retention, as in the example where a pop quiz (moderate stress) for not doing readings can be motivating, while public humiliation would be too intense and harmful

clarity

to ensure accurate encoding of the behavior-consequence relationship, as in the example where a teacher explains, 'you lost points because you talked during the exam,' helping the student encode the correct association

Rescorla-Wagner model pros

explains important learning effects like blocking and overshadowing, introduces the idea of prediction error, provides a clear, simple mathematical rule for how associative strength changes, helps us understand how animals and humans learn from experience

Rescorla-Wagner model cons

can't explain spontaneous recovery, fails to explain latent inhibition, doesn't handle context or changes in attention well, assumes extinction is unlearning

overshadowing

a phenomenon accounted for in the Rescorla-Wagner model

over expectation

a phenomenon accounted for in the Rescorla-Wagner model

spontaneous recovery

not accounted for in the Rescorla-Wagner model because it assumes learning is completely erased and never returns