General Psychology - Chapters 6 & 7

Chapter 6 - Conditioning and Learning Chapter 7 - Memory

Which of the following may occur if a learned operant response is not reinforced?

Extinction

A learned response that is exhibited following an extended period of absence has undergone ________.

Spontaneous Recovery

A therapist who helps patients overcome a fear of heights by gradually exposing them to locations of increasing height is employing ________.

Systematic Desensitization

Thorndike's law of effect is primarily focused on which of the following?

Consequences

Which of the following defines negative reinforcement?

Strengthening a behavior by removing something unpleasant from the environment.

One of the drawbacks of using punishment to manage behavior is that the person it is applied to can experience elevated levels of ________.

Aggression

Which of the following terms describes nonlearned reinforcers that usually satisfy physiological needs?

Primary

The partial reinforcement effect is focused on which of the following?

The partial reinforcement effect is focused on extinction.

Which of the following is an example of a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement?

Receiving money every Saturday for doing chores.

A classroom of third-grade children who recite the multiplication tables aloud every morning demonstrates which type of learning?

Rote

Learning from models is primarily based on what two factors?

Observing and Imitating

In operant conditioning, the learner's response can be described as ________.

Voluntary and Spontaneous

Which of the following methods is primarily characterized by presenting information in small amounts, offering immediate practice, and providing continuous feedback to learners?

Programmed Instruction

Which of the following, whether positive or negative, increases the likelihood that a response will be repeated?

Reinforcement

Which of the following is an example of a primary reinforcer?

Water

Amber is conducting research to condition rats to press a lever for a food reward. During week two of the study, the rats are given a food pellet every six minutes, regardless of how many times they press the lever. Which type of reinforcement schedule is Amber using?

Fixed Interval

Marvin sees on the work schedule that he is assigned to work with the manager that he doesn't like. So Marvin calls into work sick that night. He enjoyed not having to listen to the manager yell at everyone, so he does the same thing the next two times they are scheduled for the same shift. What is Marvin engaging in?

Avoidance Learning

When the big new high school opened, students asked friends and staff in the hallways to help them locate their classrooms, lockers and other locations. At first it was a funny chaotic adventure, but within a few days, the students were bustling around easily from place to place, just like in the old school. What enabled the students to quickly master the new facility?

Cognitive Maps

As a young teenager riding in the car to her grandparents' house, Malika always noticed the various landmarks, highway exits, and street signs. When she got her license, she drove to visit her grandparents by herself, without once having to turn on the GPS or ask for directions. Malika is demonstrating ________.

Latent Learning

Professional athletes often donate time and money to various community programs and nonprofit organizations, with their efforts documented by cameras, social media, and news stories. In addition to helping people in need, the athletes hope their celebrity status will encourage others to perform similar actions through the process of ________.

Observational Learning

A form of learning that occurs when a person or animal comes to recognize a relationship between various stimuli or behaviors.

Associative Learning

A form of learning that occurs when we use existing knowledge and higher mental processes to understand, know, or anticipate. This type of learning is regarded as more advanced and more typical of humans rather than lower animals.

Cognitive Learning

A form of conditioning when you learn to spread a reflexive response to a new precipitating stimulus.

Classical Conditioning

A form of conditioning where the consequences of our behaviors mediate future repetition of those actions.

Operant Conditioning

Arguably one of the most influential discoveries in the entire field of psychology, Ivan Pavlov's recognition of how dogs learned to associate two external stimuli and to spread a natural response from one of the other, which is...

the crux of classical conditioning.

When we are first learning a classically conditioned response, this is called...

Acquisition

Once an acquisition has occurred it can serve as a part of future conditioning which is called...

Higher Order Conditioning

Whenever you suffer from heartbreak, immediately after the relationship ends, you tend to associate everything you see with the pain you are feeling. Over time, however, those associations fade away and the heartbreak heals. This is the basis of what?

This is the basis of Extinction.

__________ shows us that even an extinguished response can re-emerge, often for no identifiable reason whatsoever.

Spontaneous Recovery

The fact that we learn to respond to one specific stimulus does not mean that we won't make a mistake and respond to others that are similar. This is what Pavlov called...

Stimulus Generalization

___________ occurs when we recognize that similar but different stimuli should evoke different responses.

Stimulus Discrimination

Phobias can be initiated via classical conditioning, when a fearful response to one stimulus spreads to another stimulus. This is called a...

Conditioned Emotional Response

A form of counterconditioning that can help treat phobias.

Systematic Desensitization helps treat phobias.

Conditioning where we acquire another person's emotional response and then absorb or adopt that response as our own.

Vicarious Classical Conditioning

Thorndike's law of effect noted that the type of outcome predicated how behaviors would be repeated in the future, what came to be called...

Instrumental Conditioning

Conditioning that identifies the importance of reinforcement and punishment, and was later noted by behaviorist B.F. Skinner who adapted instrumental conditioning.

Operant Conditioning

The association of a specific behavior with a specific reinforcement that helps to increase the impact of that behavioral outcome.

Response Contingency

A form of conditioning where we misinterpret a reinforcement as being attached to a specific behavior.

Superstitious Conditioning

The process of reinforcing successive approximations of a desired response.

Shaping

The removal of some unpleasant or aversive stimulus which serves the purpose of strengthening behavior which is an often-confused concept.

Negative Reinforcement

Behavior that has been reinforced and begins to spread to other similar situations.

Stimulus Generalization

The stimuli that signal specific responses.

Discriminative Stimuli

Reinforcers that provide comfort, end discomfort, or satisfy a basic biological need.

Primary Reinforcers

Reinforcers, also known as "acquired" reinforcers, are those rewards that we have to learn to like. They often gain their value through an association with a primary reinforcer, but on their own, their value is not automatic.

Secondary Reinforcers

An outcome that weakens, or discourages, a particular behavior. The three variables that influence the effectiveness of this outcome are timing, consistency, and intensity.

Punishment

Timing - _________ is the most effective, so that the association is made with the undesirable behavior.

Immediate Punishment

Consistency - when the same inappropriate behavior is ___________, it will decrease with the greatest effectiveness. Inconsistency, however, will undermine the intention of the punishment.

Consistently Punished

Intensity - when ____________, it can lead to several undesirable and unintended outcomes even though it may effectively halt the behavior.

punishment is too severe

The Downside to Punishment

1. Punishment can lead to fear, resentment, and anger

2. Escape learning occurs when a behavior is halted for the sole purpose of escaping an unpleasant outcome. (This does not actually teach about the behavior itself, but rather about strategically manipulating)

3. Avoidance learning is similar, only now we engage in specific actions simply to avoid negative outcomes.

4. Aggression-punishment that involves very aversive consequences can trigger aggression in the recipient, either in response to the punishment itself or in response to the frustration caused by the punishment.

Learning that can occur but not show up until a later time.

Latent Learning

An important part of the use of learning aids that give continual information about our behaviors.

Feedback

A form of learning that takes place through mechanical repetition (doing something over and over again).

Rote Learning

A form of learning that occurs in moments of insight and understanding.

Discovery Learning

A form of learning that occurs when a person learns what to do or not to do by watching the behavior of another person's behaviors and consequences.

Observational Learning

_________ is defined as an active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters information as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage.

Memory

Shaquin finished his term paper and handed it in. As he walked out of the classroom, he realized that there were a few more things he should have included in the paper. Shaquin’s problem is the _________ component of memory.

Retrieval

The first step in the memory process is _________ information in a form that the memory system can use.

Encoding

The processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval are seen as part of _________ model of memory.

The Information Processing

Which memory system provides us with a very brief representation of all the stimuli present at a particular moment?

Sensory Memory

One problem with relying on eidetic imagery to study for tests is that _________.

you may be able to recall the material but you don’t necessarily understand it

Suzy looks up from her lunch, realizing that Jacques has just said something to her. What was it? Oh, yes, he has just asked her if she wants to go to the movies. Suzy’s ability to retrieve what Jacques said is due to her _________.

Echoic Sensory Memory

Information gets from sensory memory to short-term memory through the process of _________.

Selective Attention

What “magic number” did Miller find to be the capacity of short-term memory?

7

Bits of information are combined into meaningful units so that more information can be held in short-term memory through the process of _________.

Chunking

Repeating items over and over in order to aid memory is known as _________ rehearsal.

Maintenance

The portion of memory that is more or less permanent is called _________.

Long-Term Memory

You are learning a list of items for a test by relating the items to each other and to information that you already have stored in memory. Which type of rehearsal are you using?

Elaborative

A police officer is shot in a gun battle with bank robbers. Although emergency brain surgery saves his life, it leaves him unable to store new information. The officer’s family is applying to the state for compensation for his injuries. When asked to provide a diagnosis of the difficulties he suffers, what will they write?

Anterograde Amnesia

Memories for general facts and personal information are called _________.

Declarative Memories

General knowledge, language, and concepts are seen as parts of ___________.

Semantic Memory

Remembering your first day of college classes is an example of _________ memories.

Episodic

Janie is taking an exam in her history class. On the exam, there is a question that asks her to state and discuss the five major causes of the Trans-Caspian War. Janie remembers four of them. She knows there is a fifth and can almost remember it; she knows that it starts with a “T.” Janie is walking down the stairs, when all of a sudden, she remembers that the fifth point is taxes, but it is too late. Janie was suffering from _________.

The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

When given a list of items to remember, people tend to do better at recalling the first items on the list than the middle of the list. This is known as the _________.

Primacy Effect

Mike can remember only the last two items on the grocery list that his wife just read to him over the phone. The other five items in between are gone. His memory of things at the end of the list demonstrates the __________.

Recency Effect

A witness on the stand swears that he saw someone commit a crime. Must you believe that the testimony is valid when a witness testifies so forcefully?

No, because there is a great possibility of a "false positive" identification.

Many middle-aged adults can vividly recall where they were and what they were doing the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, although they cannot remember what they were doing the day before he was assassinated. This is an example of _________.

A Flashbulb Memory

As memories get older, they are most likely _________.

to become changed or altered in some fashion

It’s Thanksgiving and the whole family has gotten together. You start to reminisce about your childhood and get into an argument with your brother. Both of you claim that you were the innocent victim of the other. This is an example of _________.

Constructive Processing

In the curve of forgetting developed by Ebbinghaus, the greatest amount of forgetting occurs _________.

within the first hour after learning new material

An active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters that information as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage.

Memory

What are the three processes of memory?

Encoding, Storage, & Retrieval

The set of mental operations that people perform on sensory information to convert that information into a form that is usable in the brain's storage systems.

Encoding

Holding onto information for some period of time.

Storage

Getting information that is in storage into a form that can be used.

Retrieval

The very first stage of memory where information enters the nervous system through the sensory systems.

Sensory Memory

Visual sensory memory, lasting only a fraction of a second.

Capacity: everything that can be seen at one time

Duration: information that has just entered iconic memory will be pushed out very quickly by new information, a process called masking

Iconic Memory

The (rare) ability to access a visual memory for thirty seconds or more.

Eidetic Imagery

The brief memory of something a person has just heard.

Capacity: limited to what can be heard at any one moment; smaller than the capacity of iconic memory.

Duration: last longer than iconic; about two to four seconds

Echoic Memory

The memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used.

Short-term Memory (STM; working memory)

The ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory inputs.

Selective Attention

A series of numbers is read to subjects who are then asked to recall the numbers in order.

Conclusion: capacity of STM is about seven items or pieces of information, plus or minus two items - or from five to nine bits of information.

"Magic Number" = 7

Digit-Span Test

Bits of information are combined into meaningful units, or chunks so that more information can be held in STM.

Chunking

Saying bits of information to be remembered over and over in one's head in order to maintain it in short-term memory (STMs tend to be encoded in auditory form)

Maintenance Rehearsal

How long does STM last without rehearsal?

Twelve to thirty seconds.

What is STM susceptible to?

Interference

The memory system into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently.

Long-term Memory (LTM)

A method of transferring information from STM into LTM by making that information meaningful in some way.

Elaborative Rehearsal

Type of long-term memory including memory for skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses.

These memories are not conscious, but their existence is implied because they affect conscious behavior.

Also includes emotional associations, habits, and simple conditioned reflexes that may or may not be in conscious awareness.

Implicit Memory

Memory that is not easily brought into conscious awareness.

Procedural memory (often called implicit memory)

Loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories. Usually does NOT affect procedural LTM.

Anterograde Amnesia