Psych 100 Exam 2 udel

Learning

Enduring changes in behavior that occur with expierence
NOT innate NOT maturation process (ex. walking) through expierences

Association

Processes by which two pieces of information in environment are linked, so we connect them in our minds

Contiguity
Frequency
Similarity

Contiguity

Nearness in time and space

ex. thunder and lighting happen at the same time

Frequency

How often something occurs

How frequently you talk about two items together

Ex. cats & dogs, black & white

Similarity

How alike things are

Ex. cats & dogs are both animals/pets, black & white are both shades not colors

Behaviorism

Psychology should:
1. Be an objective science
2. Study behavior without reference to mental processes
Not open to interpretation

Conditioning

Form of associative learning in which behaviors are triggered by associations with events in the environment

1. Classical Conditioning (Pavlov conditioning)
2. Operant conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Uses rewards or punishments to increase or decrease behaviors

Process of changing behavior by manipulating consequences of that behavior

Action is strengthened if followed by reinforcer

Action is diminished if followed by a punisher

E.L. Thorndike
Learning Curve
Law of Effect

Classical Conditioning

Neutral stimulus becomes associated with stimulus which has automatic, inborn response

Neutral stimulus
Unconditioned stimulus
Unconditioned response
Result of unconditioned stimulus
Conditioned stimulus
Conditioned response

neutral stimulus

an object or situation than when presented alone does not lead to an automatic

Unconditioned Stmulus

something that has ability to naturally create a response

Unconditioned response

the neutral, automatic, in born and involuntary reaction to stimulus

Conditioned stimulus

a previously neutral input that an organism learns to associate w/ the unconditioned stimulus

conditioned response

a behavior that an organism learns to perform when presented w/ the conditioned stmulus

Acquisition

Initial learning of the stimulus-response relationship

forward conditioning
backward conditioning
higher order conditioning
extinction
generalization
Discrimination

Forward conditioning

CS comes before US (e.g. bell before food) ** most effective

Backward conditioning

US comes before CS (e.g. food before bell)

Higher-order conditioning

A new neutral stimulus can become a new CS

The second stimulus is never compared with the other stimulus

Ex. Kissing + Onion breath + Aunt w/ onion breath = being attracted to your aunt (oh!)

Extinction (RIP)

Diminished responding when the CS is no longer paired with US

Generalization

Tendency to respond with the CR to stimuli similar to the CS

Discrimination

1) Learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other irrelevant stimuli

2)John Watson's Little Albert Study
a) Fear is learned
b) Took white rat and put in near Little Albert, everytime Albert reached for it Watson made a loud bang behind babies ears
c) Eventually baby would start crying when it would see white rat

Law of Effect

Operant Conditioning

Consequences of a behavior increase or decrease likelihood of behavior will be repeated

Reinforcers

Operant Conditioning

an external or internal event that increases the frequency of behavior

Positive Reinforcement

Strengthen response by following it with a pleasing stimulus
Money
Candy

Negative reinforcement

Strengthen response by removing something undesirable
Seat Buckle light
Alarm clock

Primary reinforcers

Unlearned & innately satisfying

Related to satisfaction of biological need

Ex. food, water, sleep

Secondary reinforcers

Are associated with primary reinforcers to achieve result

Shaping

Using reinforcers to gradually guide an animal's actions towards a desired behavior

Successive approximations

Baby steps

Continuous reinforcement

Reinforce behavior everytime it occurs
Resource heavy (time, rewards, etc.)

Partial/Intermittent reinforcement

Reinforce behavior but not every time it occurs

Less resources
More resistant to extinction

Partial/intermittent reinforcement schedules

Positive punishment

Diminish response by following it with unpleasant stimulus

Negative punishment

Diminish response by removing a desired stimulus

Conditioned Taste Aversions

Learned avoidance of particular taste or food

Instinctive Drift

Learned behavior that shifts toward instinctive, unlearned behavior tendencies

Biological constraint model

View on learning which proposes that some behaviors are inherently more likely to be learned than others

Latent learning

Learning that occurs in absence of reinforcement and is not demonstrated until later when reinforcement occurs

Memory (a process, and as a thing)

(v)Ability to take in, solidify, store and use information
(n)The store of what has been learned and remembered

Four Steps in Forming Memories

Encoding
Consoldiation
Storage
Retrieval

Encoding

Brain attends to, takes in, and integrates new information from senses

Driven by attention

Automatic processing v. effortful processing

Automatic processing v. effortful processing

Automatic
Little effort or conscious attention

Effortful
careful attention and conscious effort

Consolidation

Putting memories into a permanent form

Establishing, stabilizing or solidifying memory

Protein synthesis
Occurs during REM sleep

Storage

When you store the information

Retention of memory over time

Hierarchies- organize information from most common to most specific

Makes a distinction between categories and properties

Schemas- Mental frameworks; from experiences with people, objects, or events

Associative networks- Chain of associations between related concepts

Retrieval

Use information when important

Recovery of information stored in memory

Ease of retrieval influenced by how well we encoded, consolidated, and stored the information

Sleep

Protects memories from being forgotten; makes memories more accessible to recall

Falling asleep soon after learning information leads to greater retention-less interference

Emotion

Generally better at remembering emotional memories (especially negative ones) than factual ones

Switch on genes that build proteins

Connection between hippocampus and amygdala

Flashbulb memory
-Detailed snapshot for what we were doing when we first heard about a major, public, and emotionally charged event
-Highly emotional events

Depth of Processing

The more deeply people encode information the better they will recall it
-Structural/visual encoding (Shallow)
-Phonemic (intermediate)
-Semantic (deep)

Retrieval cues

Prompt that helps access information in memory (ex. Question on a exam)

Spreading Activation

Activation goes to all nodes that are attached to a node that is turned on

Encoding Specificity

If learning and testing conditions match, performance is good

Impediments to Memory Formation

Distraction
Mulitasking
emotion

Three-Stage Model

Classification of memories based on duration as sensory, short-term, long term

Sensory memory

Holds information in original sensory form for brief period time: fraction of a second

Capacity is unlimited

Everything that is in your field of view or every sound is picked up and entered into sensory memory

Duration is fractions of a second

Short term memory

Temporary memory system

Capacity is 7+ or - 2 (somewhere between 5 and 9)

Duration is 30 seconds

Long term memory

Permanent memory system

Unlimited in capacity and duration

If you rehearse information in theory you could remember it forever

Chunking

Breaking list of items to be remembered into smaller set of meaningful units

Short term memory capacity

Serial Position effect

Primacy effect
Better memory for items at beginning of list
Long-term memory

Recency effect
Better memory for items at end of list
Short-term memory

Explicit Memory

Long term memory

Conscious
Episodic memory
-Memory for specific events
-Autobiographical
-Events that you experienced

Semantic memory
-General knowledge, not tied to any place or time

Implicit memory

Revealed by indirect tests

Procedural memory

-Knowing how (ie. memory for skills)

Priming

-Changes in perception and belief caused by previous experience

Perceptual learning

-Recalibration of perceptual systems as a result of experience

Classical conditioning

-Learning about associations among stimuli

False memory

Memories for events that never happened but were suggested by someone or something

Imagination inflation vs. being told about event

Imagine yourself going through an event that never actually took place

Recovered memories

Memory from a real event that was encoded, stored, but not retrieved for a long period of time until some later event brings it to consciousness

Suggestibility

Memories are implanted in our minds based on leading questions, comments, or suggestions by someone else or some other source

Misinformation effect

Information learned after an original event is wrong or misleading but gets incorporated into the memory as true

Forgetting

Weakening or loss of memories over time

Interference

Disruption of memory because other information competes with what we are trying to recall

Proactive
Old information makes it difficult to learn new information

Retroactive
New information makes it difficult to recall old information

Decay

Gradual fading of physical memory trace
Forgetting curve or decay function

Encoding Failure (due to absent-mindedness)

Absent mindedness
Results from inattention
You never learned it in the first place
Normal for it to be age related (60s and 70s), decline
Aerobic exercise, higher education level, conscientiousness buffer against encoding failure
Neuroticism associated with higher rates of encoding failure

Retrieval failure (aka blocking)

Inability to retrieve information that was once stored
T.O.T Phenomenon
Tip of the tongue

Repression

Basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
Often associated with freud but he wasn't really right

Amnesia

Retrograde
Lose memory for things that happened prior to injury

Anterograde
Unable to form new memories

Human language

Communication system specific to homo sapiens
Open & symbolic
Grammar
Allows users to express abstract and distant ideas

Phonemes

Smallest distinctive sound units (not redundant with letters)

International Phonemic Alphabet

Like a rosetta stone for how to pronounce words in any language

Place of articulation
What are you teeth, tongue, or lips doing
Manner of articulation
How the air is expelled out of your body

Morphemes

Smallest unit that carries meaning; word or part of word (e.g. prefix or suffix)

Grammar

System of rules that facilitate communication
Syntax
Rules governing order of words in sentences
Subject, verb, and object
E.g. Dogs chase cats

Semantics
Deriving meaning from sound

Protolanguage

Very rudimentary language; aka pre-language used by earlier species such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis

Comprehension

4 months- distinguish speech sounds
Pair sounds with face that makes sound
7 months - sound suggestion
Where one word ends and the next beings

Preferential Looking/listening task
Experiment
Infants get bored

Statistical Learning

Infants require language through this

Pick up on regularities in speech pattern

Trained on a set on nonsense words (e.g. bidaku, padoti, golabu, tupiro)

Presented string of words (e.g. bidakupadotigolabutupiro)

Listen to string of “words” for two minutes

Listen to pairs of words- “whole” and “part”

Ability to produce words

Cooing stage
During first 6 months; first sounds made other than crying; almost exclusively vowels

Babbling stage
5-6 months; spontaneously otters various sounds initially unrelated to household language
Often consonant-vowel pairs
By 10 months-imitates sounds of household language

One-word stage
Age 1 to 2; speak in single word utterances
Learn words that appear at ends of sentences first


Two-word stage
Begins at about 18-months; speak in 1-word statements
Telegraphic speech-use mostly nouns and verbs (e.g. want juice); follows syntax

Sentence phase
Begins about 2.5-3 years; fill grammatical sentences

The Sensitivity Period

If not exposed to human language, abilities never develop normally
From birth to about age 12
Neural pruning and wiring have reached peak; plasticity becomes less flexible

Aphasia

Impairment in language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage

Broca's aphasia

Difficulty with language production

Wernicke's aphasia

Difficulty with language comprehension

Conditioning & Learning Theory (B.F. Skinner)

We use language because we have been reinforced for doing so
Successive approximation & shaping behavior in kids

Nativist theory

We discover language rather than learn it; language development is inborn

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Innate, biologically based capacity to acquire language (Chomsky)
Evidence: Universality