General Psychology Exam 2 - Rutgers Prof. Larry Jacobs

Learning

a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.

it is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values, through our experience, research, or teaching, that causes a change of behavior that is measurable

learning involves changing our behavior in response to experience

that's called classical conditioning

How we respond to the environment

operant conditioning

How we act in the environment

observational learning

How we observe the environment

to describe how an animal learns by watching others. Observational learning occurs with no outside reinforcement -- the animal simply learns by observing.

Ivan Pavlov

a physiologist who won a Nobel Prize for his research on digestion. He is the Founder of Classical Conditioning

}Pavlov saw that dogs used in his research salivated when they saw the lab workers who fed them.

}He suspected that the reflex was "psychological" - based on the dog's previous experiences.

}Further testing showed that showing food to the dog produced the same effect as feeding it.

Example of Classical Conditioning:

How does your dog or cat know when you are going to feed them, Or take them for a walk? Or know when you are coming home? Why?

In Pavlov's famous experiment

an example of classic conditioning is a dog's ability to associate the sound of a bell (something that originally has no meaning to the dog) with the presentation of food (something that has a lot of meaning for the dog) a few moments later.

Dogs are able to learn the association between bell and food, and will salivate immediately after hearing the bell once this connection has been made.

Purpose of Experiment(In Pavlov's famous experiment)

}For the first time, scientists could research human learning by the associations between two stimulus.

}

They could chart out what effect this had on our responses.

◦The research helped us understand and use the power of positive association.

It paved the way for us to understand the role that negative associations can play in our phobias and irrational fears

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

a stimulus that evokes an unconditioned response without any prior conditioning (no learning needed for the response to occur).

- It is when animals react to stimulus without training

Produces a response without prior learning

Unconditioned Response (UR)

an unlearned reaction/response to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without prior conditioning.

- It is an action that the unconditioned stimulus automatically brings out. You react

Unlearned response that is automatically associated with US

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

a previously neutral stimulus that has, through conditioning, acquired the capacity to evoke a conditioned response.

- It is a stimulus that we react to only after we learned about it

In Pavlov's experiment, the sound of the bell meant nothing to the dogs at first. After the dogs learned that the sound of the bell is associated with the presentation of the meal, it became a conditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Response (CR)

a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of prior conditioning.

- You learned how to react to the stimulus

The Eye-Blink Experiment

The processes of classical conditioning:

A rabbit is conditioned to blink its eye. A musical tone is repeatedly followed by a puff of air dblown in its eye. After a few repetitions, the rabbit blinks when the tone sounds. (Acquisition)

The tone is repeatedly played without the air puff. Gradually, the rabbit stops blinking. (Extinction)

ACQUISTION

The process that establishes or strengthens a conditioned response is called acquisition. This means that when an organism learns something new, it has been "acquired".

EXTINCTION

To extinguish a classically conditioned response, the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus. This is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the CR tendency.

Extinction is the elimination of a learned behavior by discontinuing the reinforcer of that behavior.

SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY

sometimes there will be a reappearance of a response that had been extinguished. The recovery can occur after a period of non-exposure to the CS. It is called spontaneous because the response seems to reappear out of nowhere. The temporary return of an extinguished response is called spontaneous recovery.

Stimulus Generalization

a response to a specific stimulus becomes associated to other stimuli (similar stimuli) and now occurs to those other similar stimuli.

For Example - a child who gets bitten by black lab, later becomes afraid of all dogs. The original fear evoked by the Black Lab has now generalized to ALL dogs

Stimulus Discrimination

learning to respond to one stimulus and not another. Thus, an organisms becomes conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and not to other stimuli.

For Example - a puppy may initially respond to lots of different people, but over time it learns to respond to only one or a few people's commands. Discrimination is the process of learning to respond differently to two stimuli because they produce two different outcomes.

Edward Thorndike (Thorndike and Operant Conditioning)

}In 1911 Edward Thorndike developed a simple, behaviorist explanation of learning.

}He used a learning curve, a graph of the changes in behavior that occur over successive trials of an experiment, to record how quickly cats learned to escape from a maze.

Thorndike research included cats, dogs, chickens. To see how they learn new behaviors, he used a small chamber called a Puzzle Box.

}He would place an animal in the puzzle box.

} If it performed the correct response (such as pulling a rope, pressing a lever, or stepping on a platform), the door would swing open and the animal would be rewarded with some food located just outside the cage. Soon it would take the animal just a few seconds to earn its reward.

He noted that cats would learn more quickly if the response selected produced an immediate escape

reinforcement

Thorndike observed that the escape from the box acted as a reinforcement for the behavior that led to the escape.

◦A reinforcement is an event that increases the future probability of the most recent response.

}is an event that increases the probability that a response will be repeated.

A reinforcement is either the presentation of a desirable item such as money or food, or the removal of an unpleasant stimulus, such as verbal nagging or physical pain

operant or instrumental conditioning

The simple version is: behavior + consequences = Learning. The type of learning that Thorndike studies has come to be known as operant or instrumental conditioning. It involves changing behavior by following a responses with reinforcements.

Thorndike

is the founder of The Law of Effect

This states that behaviors that are followed by pleasant consequences will be strengthened, and will be more likely to occur in the future.

Conversely, behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences will be weakened, and will be less likely to be repeated in the future. Thorndike's law of effect is another way of describing what modern psychologists now call operant conditioning

B.F. Skinner

Founder of Operant Conditioning

B.F. Skinner is considered to be the most influential of all radical behaviorists.

}believed much of behavior could be studied in a single, controlled environment such as the Skinner Box.

}Instead of observing behavior in the natural world, he attempted to study behavior in a closed, controlled unit. This prevents any factors not under study from interfering with the study.

Operant Conditioning

involves increasing a behavior by following it with a reward, or decreasing a behavior by following it with punishment.

}The term operant conditioning refers to the fact that the learner must operate, or perform a certain behavior, before receiving a reward or punishment.

}Operant Conditioning encourages us to behave in ways that exert influence or control over our environment.

Example: When a rat learns that by pressing a lever gets more food, it has been operant conditioned to push the lever. When a child screams and gets her way, she has been conditioned the same way.

}It can be defined as a type of learning in which voluntary behavior is strengthened if it is reinforced. It is weakened if it is punished (or not reinforced)

Beginning in the 1930s, Skinner spent several decades studying the behavior of animals—usually rats or pigeons—in chambers that became known as Skinner boxes.

operant chamber, or Skinner box

}comes with a bar or key that an animal manipulates to obtain a reinforcer like food or water.

The bar or key is connected to devices that record the animal's response

Using Thorndike's law of effect as a starting point, Skinner developed the Operant chamber, or the Skinner box, to study operant conditioning

}Skinner used an "operant chamber" (referred to as a "Skinner box" by others) into which he put the animal he wished to train by shaping.

◦Gradually the animal was reinforced for behaviors that approached the target activity until it fully performed the behavior.

SHAPING

using reward or reinforcement to produce progressive changes in behavior in a desired direction.

}Shaping is a reinforcement technique that is used to teach animals or people behaviors that they have never performed before.

}Deborah Skinner

The famous baby box experiment

Skinner's famous pigeon experiment (Shaping Behavior)

To make a pigeon turn in a complete clockwise circle, Skinner would first reinforce the pigeon with food for just turning a few degrees to the right.

When the pigeon began turning to the right regularly, he would cease reinforcing until the pigeon turned a few more degrees in that direction.

When that behavior was established, he would wait until the pigeon turned further to the right,

and reinforce that movement,

until finally the pigeon turned

in a complete circle.

punishment = Passive avoidance Learning

is an event that decreases the probability of a response.

is the removal of a desirable condition such as driving privileges or the presentation of an unpleasant condition such as physical pain.

◦is called passive avoidance learning or negative reinforcement, because in response to punishment, the organism avoids the outcome by being passive.

A child learns to avoid being sent to his room for the evening by not teasing his little sister.

A woman avoids distress by not calling her sister who always says cruel things whenever they talk.

Positive reinforcement

}The presentation of an event that strengthens or increases the likelihood of an event.

◦A parent praises a child for excellent performance on a test.

A waiter receives an extra large tip for good service

Chaining Behavior

This is an operant conditioning method in which sequential behaviors are reinforced by opportunities to engage in the next one.

Eating is an example of a chained behavior in humans. We first learn to eat with utensils, and gradually acquire the preceding activities of buying the food, and preparing food.

Chaining is a teaching technique that consists of breaking a task down into small steps and then teaching each specific step, one step at a time.

Forward chaining breaks a task down into understandable and manageable steps. Each step in the sequence is taught from the beginning to the end.

•The teacher begins to teach the student the first step in the chain. When the first step is learned, the teacher moves to the second step.

Reinforcer

is something that increases the likelihood of the preceding response. What is a Reinforcer? Ex: saccharin, a sweet chemical. Tobacco, alcohol are all reinforcers.

Stimulus

is any stimulating information or event; acts to arouse action.

A stimulus, such as a reward, the removal of an unpleasant event, or a punishment, that in operant conditioning maintains or strengthens a desired response.

Primary Reinforcers

are unconditioned reinforcers like food and water

satify biological needs which is crucial for survival. These can include food, water, shelter, safety

Unconditioned reinforcers

meet primary, biological needs and are found to be reinforcing for almost everyone.

Secondary Reinforcers

are conditioned reinforcers like money, because it can be exchanged for food and water which are necessary reinforcers. It's paying for the primary reinforcers. Another ex - you learn that good grades will win your parents' approval. Secondary reinforcers means "learned." We spent most of our time working for secondary reinforcers.

Secondary reinforcers however are reinforcers which we have learned to associate with satifying our biological needs. These can include money, praise, tokens.... Money can be used to buy food + water

negative punishment = Omission Training

Behavior avoids the event

Decrease in the behavior

negative reinforcement = escape or avoidance learning

Increase in the behavior, and therefore a decrease in pain

Ex. "If you go into the doctors office over there, the doctor will remove the thorn form your leg."

Conditioned Taste Aversions

One kind of learning that occurs after a single trial is an association between eating something and getting sick.

This is referred to as a conditioned taste aversion - where you learn to avoid foods, espec unfamiliar foodss, if you become ill afterwards.

- If you eat something with an unfamiliar flavor and then feel ill, you quickly learn to avoid that flavor. Associating eating something with getting sick is conditioned taste aversion.

Albert Bandura

Founder of Observational Learning

social-learning approach

defined by Albert Bandura, states that we learn many behaviors before we attempt them for the first time.

Much learning, especially in humans, results from observing the behaviors of others and from imagining the consequences of our own.

Two of the chief components of social learning are modeling and imitation.

The famous BOBO Doll Experiment

}Bandura and his assistants did experiments in which children watched films of real people and cartoon characters either attacked an inflated "Bobo" doll or did not.

◦Children who saw the versions of the films with aggressive behavior were more likely to repeat those actions when left alone with a similar toy.

◦The implication was that the children were imitating the aggressive behavior they had just witnessed in the film.

}Another aspect of the social learning approach is the idea that we are more likely to imitate behaviors that have been rewarding for other people, and we are less likely to imitate behaviors that create unpleasant results for others.

Memory

is a general term for the storage, retention and recall of events, information and procedures

a process by which we store, save, and recall information

is that your brain never loses anything. Once a perception or thought is place into your memory, it stays there forever.

What we call forgetting is either the inability to recall stored info, or the failure to store info. Once info is stored in memory, it is never forgotten.

Hermann Ebbinghaus - Founder of Memory studies

conducted the scientific study of memory.

studied his own ability to memorize new material

¡We are indebted to Ebbinghaus for initiating the scientific study of memory. He invented over 2300 nonsense syllables and put them into random lists.

¡Over 6 years he memorized thousands of lists of nonsense syllables.

pioneered the scientific study of memory by observing his own

capacity for memorizing lists of nonsense syllables

Von Restorff effect

Distinctive or unusual information is easier to retain. The tendency of people to remember unusual items better than more common items

Recall (or free recall)

) is the simplest method for the tester but the most difficult for the person being tested. Information must be produced with little to no hint provided (essay and short-answer items.). It is a memory task in which the individual must reproduce material from memory without cue .

Free recall is remembering the author of the book without the hints of the Author's initials.

Retrieval Cues

Reminders or hints that help us to retrieve information from long-term memory are called retrieval cues. They are bits of associated information that help you to regain complex memories

Cued recall

gives significant hints about the correct answer. A fill-in-the-blank test uses this method.

Cued recall includes seeing the hint of the author's initials

Recognition

requires the person being tested to identify the correct item from a list of choices. Multiple-choice tests use the recognition method

The savings (relearning) method

compares the speed that new material is learned to the speed of relearning of old material. The time saved between the original learning and the relearning is a measure of memory

Explicit memory

memory that we are aware we are using. Explicit Memory is your ability to retain info that you've put real effort into learning, like recalling describing a basic principle of classical conditioning to your classmate.

Implicit or indirect memory

is any experience that influences us without our awareness. This is your ability to remember info you did not deliberately try to learn, that you did not know exists. It holds trivial facts, song lyrics, general nonsense your brain files away while you're concentrating on something else.

Declarative memory

is the ability to state a fact, info, names, dates, faces. Fact memory. It stores why, how, when, where, what, who.

Procedural memory

is memory of how to do something. Skills memory.

It's conditioned responses like writing, riding bike, typing. It's performing actions

your memory of how to play the piano

Semantic

is dealing with principles of knowledge. Like mental dictionary. It stores meanings of words

your memory of how to read music

Episodic

is containing events and details of life history. Autobio of thoughts, things that happened to us, retention of info about what happened to you, what you did on your birthday

The information-processing model of memory

you input information into

the system, you file and save it, and you can retrieve the info.

The sensory memory

is considered to be the first stage of memory processing.

It is a combination of memory & perception.

¡It lasts less than a second.

¡It registers perception of the moment called "now."

Short-term memory or Working memory

¡If a friend asks you what was just said in class, and you were paying

attention, you could repeat it. This is because you are being asked to

recall something from short-term memory.

¡If you were not paying attention, you would not recall it.

¡Attention moves information from the sensory store to short-term

memory.

¡It's limited capacity memory of info retained for 30 seconds.

Long-term memory

¡Long-term memory is a relatively permanent storage of mostly meaningful information. When is your birthdate, your address, your social security number, names of your parents.

Decay of short and long-term memory

¡Information that has been stored in long-term memory may be vulnerable to the effects of interference. Information held in

short-term memory is vulnerable to the passage of time.

Forgetting begins in seconds unless rehearsal is permitted

Capacities of short and long-term memory

¡Most normal adults can immediately repeat a list of about seven bits or pieces of information, with expected variations in range from five to nine items.

¡It can be expanded through techniques such as chunking into larger, meaningful units.

Chunking

This is grouping or packing info into units, making info more manageable to remember

Encoding

This is transfer of info into your memory. Put info in

Storage

Holding info for later use. Filing it away

Retrieval

Recovering info from storage. Finding it

primacy effect

is the tendency to remember the beginning of the list.

tendency to remember stimuli presented earliest

recency effect

is the tendency to remember the items at the end of the list

tendency to remember stimuli that presented most recently

The SPAR method

Situation, Task/Problem, Action, Result) technique is very helpful in responding to behavioural questions

Mnemonic devices

¡A mnemonic device is any memory aid that is based on encoding each item in a special way.

¡Short, verbal strategies that improve, expand our ability to remember new info. Use mental pictures, form unusual mental associations.

¡Use acronyms, strategies or tricks for improving memory

The method of loci

is one of the oldest mnemonic devices. First, learn a list of places, such as my desk, the door of my room, the corridor, . . ." Then link each of these places to an item on a list of words or names, such as a list of the names of Nobel Peace Prize winners.

reconstruction

When remembering an event, you start with details you remember clearly, and fill in gaps.

This is reconstruction. We construct a memory during the event.

When we try to retrieve memories, we reconstruct based on surviving memories combined with expectations.

Reconstructive Memory

When remembering, we actively reconstruct memories, not passively reproduce them

Interference

memories block each other

Decay

the memory is subject to the combined effects of time and interference

There are understandable reasons for forgetting

Interference

Decay

Loss of retrieval cues

Source amnesia

Proactive interference

retaining old material makes it hard to recall new material.

•happens when earlier learning gets in the way of new learning.

Retroactive interference

¡learning new material makes it hard to recall old material.

happens when learning new information hampers memory for earlier learning

Hindsight bias

¡is the tendency to mold our recollection of the past to how events later turned out.

¢We say "I knew that was going to happen!" after the event has occurred.

¢Our memories are tailored as we reconstruct the event to fit that outcome.

Memory for traumatic events

¡Sigmund Freud believed that it was possible to repress a painful memory, motivation or emotion, to move it from the conscious to the unconscious mind.

¡Research indicates that it is possible to forget a traumatic event, but whether this happens depends on a number of factors - age at the time of the event, reaction of family, and type of event.

Flashbulb Memory:

Long lasting deep memories in response to traumatic events

False memory

is a report that an individual believes to be a memory but actually never occurred. Memories may or may not be reliable.

There is much evidence of forgetting and distortion.We use adaptive strategies for "filling in the gaps" - reason and logic

Repressed memory

is memory of a traumatic event that is made unavailable for recall.

Amnesia

is a severe loss or deterioration of memory. We can learn a lot about the different forms of memory by studying these cases. Amnesia is a memory disorder that is caused by brain damage or a traumatic event

Anterograde amnesia

is a disorder that results in the loss of memory after an injury. Unable to store any new memories

difficulty storing new memories

Retrograde amnesia

is a disorder that results in the loss of memory prior to an injury. Could not remember many events that occurred between 1 and 3 years before his surgery

loss of old memories

Korsakoff Syndrome

Sergei Korsakoff, a Russian psychiatrist, introduced the concept of psychiatry

a dementia brought on by deficiency of vitamin B1 related to chronic alcoholism, leads to loss and shrinkage of neurons all over the brain.

A degenerative memory disorder caused by chronic alcoholism and vitamin deficiency. Symptoms include amnesia, confabulation, lack of insight and apathy.

Treatment includes vitamin B injections, proper nutrition, and hydration

Amnesia After Brain Damage: The frontal lobe damage occurs as a result of stroke, head trauma, or Korsakoff's syndrome

¡Typical symptoms of Korsakoff's syndrome include -

¢Apathy and confusion

¢Retrograde amnesia - usually dating back to about 15 years before the onset of the syndrome

¢Anterograde amnesia

Causes:

§A deficiency in Vitamin B and alcoholism are symptoms as well as any other poor nutritional state.

§The syndrome also appears in people who don't have exposure to alcohol.

Confabulation

wild guessing mixed in with correct information in an effort to hide memory gaps. Patients have pre-frontal cortex damage in brain. Confab fills in gaps or reconstruct in their memory (kind of like a false memory)

Dementia

: Condition of a slow decline in memory, problem solving ability, learning ability and judgment

Alzheimer's Disease

is the most common cause

It is a degenerative brain disease where the brain starts wearing down.

Nerve cell death in parts of the brain for memory.

Discovered by Dr. Alois Alzheimer in 1906. He detected tangles and plaques in the brain of a woman.

Symptoms include repeating questions, forgetting how to do simple tasks, forgetting who you are and where you are.

•Progressive, devastating brain illness that causes cognitive decline, including memory, language, and thinking problems.

Motivated Forgetting

People unknowingly revise their memories.

Repression

A defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Cognition

refers to thinking, acquiring and managing knowledge

Language is intimately related to the activities of cognition. It is a system of arbitrary symbols that can be combined to create an infinite number of meaningful statements

Cognitive psychologists

study how people think and acquire knowledge, know what they know, and how they solve problems and imagine.

Attention

is the tendency to respond selectively to stimuli

-It is generally true that a feature or object that is unusual or different will get your attention quickly, while one that is surrounded by similar objects will require a long and patient search.

Preattentive process

lFinding an unusual feature or figure relies on a preattentive process, a procedure for extracting information automatically

attentive process

Finding a typical feature or figure requires an attentive process, a procedure that considers only one part of the visual field at a time.

Shifting attention

-During a brief time after perceiving one stimulus, it is difficult to attend to something else.

-This is the attentional blink.

This is important in both the trivial activity of playing a video game, and potentially life-and-death situations such as flying an airplane or operating other complex machinery

Stroop Test/ The Stroop Task

is a psychological test of our mental (attentional) vitality and flexibility

directed attention

you have to manage your attention, inhibit or stop one response in order to say or do something else