Learning & Memory

Learning Study Guide

~PRINCIPLES OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING 

-Classical Conditioning Procedure – In classical conditioning, a neutral (conditioned) stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus alone eventually elicits the response that is naturally elicited by the unconditioned stimulus. In Pavlov’s original studies, the meat powder was the unconditioned stimulus and salivation, was the unconditioned response. A tone was the conditioned stimulus; and, as a result of its pairing with meat powder, the tone eventually elicited a conditioned response of salivation

-Effectiveness of Classical Conditioning 

• Temporal Relationship Between CS and US – order and timing of the presentation of the CS and US were important determinants of the success of classical conditioning: 

  • Delay conditioning – a type of forward conditioning and involves presenting the CS so that it precedes and overlaps presentation of the US. When using this procedure, the optimal time interval between the onset of the CS and the US depends on the nature of the target response, but, generally, the most effective interval is about O.5 seconds. Delay conditioning is the most efficient procedure for establishing a conditioned response

  • Trace conditioning – a type of forward conditioning that entails presenting and terminating the CS prior to presenting the US. Trace conditioning produces a weaker CR than does delay conditioning

  • Simultaneous conditioning – even less effective than trace conditioning and involves presenting and withdrawing the CS and US at the same time

  • Backward conditioning – entails presenting the US prior to the CS. Backward conditioning does not usually produce a conditioned response, and its ineffectiveness implies that it’s the contingency of stimuli (rather than their contiguity) that underlies classical conditioning

• Number of Conditioning Trials – the greater the number of conditioning trials, the stronger and more persistent the CR. However, regardless of the number of trials, the CR is usually weaker in intensity or magnitude than the UR

• Pre-Exposure to the CS or US – repeated exposure to the US or to the intended CS before the CS and UR are paired slows down acquisition of the CR

-Classical Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery – Classical extinction is the elimination of a classically conditioned response by repeatedly presenting the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus. Often, an extinguished conditioned response shows spontaneous recovery – i.e., it recurs in response to the CS following extinction without additional pairing of the CS and US

-Stimulus Generalization – refers to responding with a particular response to similar stimuli. In classical conditioning, it refers to responding to stimuli similar to the CS with the CR 

-Stimulus Discrimination and Experimental Neurosis – involves selective reinforcement and extinction, stimulus discrimination training is used to reduce stimulus generalization by teaching the organism to respond with a CR only in the presence of the original CS. When discriminations are difficult, the organism may exhibit experimental neurosis i.e., it may show unusual behaviors such as restlessness, aggressiveness, or fear

-Higher-Order Conditioning – occurs when a previously established CS serves as a US to establish a conditioned response for a new conditioned (neutral) stimulus – i.e., the new neutral stimulus is paired with the established CS so that, eventually, the new neutral stimulus produces a conditioned response

-Blocking and Overshadowing – 

• Blocking – occurs when an association has already been established between a CS and US and, as a result, the CS blocks an association between a second neutral stimulus and the US when the CS and the second neutral stimulus are displayed together prior to the US

• Overshadowing – occurs when two neutral stimuli (rather than a CS and a new neutral stimulus) are repeatedly presented together prior to the US. Subsequently, presentation of the two stimuli together produces a CR, but when the two stimuli are presented separately, only one produces the CR

-Watson/Little Albert – the “father of American behaviorism,” rejected his contemporaries’ use of introspection as the primary method of psychology and argued that the only appropriate domain for psychologists is the study of observable, measurable behaviors; used classical conditioning to establish a phobia in an 11-month-old boy named Little Albert. Watson observed that an unexpected loud noise (US) naturally elicited a startle response (UR) in infants, and he exposed Albert to conditioning trials in which presentation of a white rat (CS) which did not elicit a startle response, preceded by the presentation of a loud noise. After only a few conditioning sessions over one-week period, the rat alone produced a fear reaction in Albert. Subsequently, Albert displayed a great deal of stimulus generalization (white furry objects including a white rabbit, cotton, and a Santa mask)

~INTERVENTIONS BASED ON CLASSICAL CONDITIONING 

-Counterconditioning Interventions – eliminate a maladaptive behavior by pairing a stimulus (CS) associated with that behavior with a stimulus (US) that naturally elicits an incompatible behavior so that the maladaptive behavior is replaced by the incompatible behavior 

• Stages of Systematic Desensitization (Wolpe) – an application of reciprocal inhibition for eliminating anxiety responses. When using this technique, hierarchically arranged anxiety-evoking events are paired with relaxation to eliminate the anxiety, stages include: relaxation training, construction of an anxiety hierarchy, desensitization in imagination, in vivio desensitization 

• Results of Research Using the Dismantling Strategy – to identify the mechanisms responsible for the benefits of systematic desensitization; this strategy involves comparing the effects of the various components of a treatment; the results of these studies have shown that in an incompatible response and gradual exposure to anxiety-evoking events are not the essential components of systematic desensitization; extinction, or repeated exposure to the CS without the US, is the primary factor responsible for its effects 

• Behavioral Sex Therapy – Counterconditioning has also been found useful for treating sexual disorders that are related to performance anxiety. For example, Master’s and Johnson’s (1970) sensate focus involves pairing situations that evoke performance anxiety with pleasurable physical sensations and relaxation (especially premature ejaculation/squeeze technique and vaginismus/relaxation and dilators)

-Aversive Counter-Conditioning Interventions – the maladaptive behavior or a stimulus associated with it (CS) is paired with a stimulus (US) that naturally evokes pain or other unpleasant response. As a result, the maladaptive behavior and stimuli related to it are avoided because they elicit an undesirable response (CR); initially effective but high relapse rates and limited generalizability, better with booster sessions and other therapies

• In-vivo Aversion Therapy – utilizes counterconditioning to reduce the attractiveness of a stimulus or behavior by repeatedly pairing that stimulus or behavior in “real life” (in vivo) with a stimulus that produces an undesirable or unpleasant response. Alcohol consumption with electric shock to reduce alcohol use is an example of in vivo aversive counterconditioning

• Covert Sensitization – similar to in vivo aversion therapy except that the CS and US are presented in imagination

-Classical Extinction Interventions – involve repeatedly exposing the client to the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus while inhibiting his or her usual avoidance response in order to extinguish the client’s conditioned response; According to the two-factor theory of learning (Mowrer), the development of a phobic response is the result of both classical and operant conditioning. A person develops an anxiety reaction to a neutral stimulus (CS) when it's paired with a stimulus (US) that naturally elicits anxiety or other aversive response (classical conditioning). The person then avoids the CS because doing so enables him or her to avoid anxiety (negative reinforcement)

• Vivo Exposure with Response Prevention – a classical extinction technique that involves exposing the individual in “real life” (in vivo) to anxiety-arousing stimuli (the CS) without the original US while preventing the individual from making his/her usual avoidance response (i.e., OCD)

  • Flooding – is a type exposure that involves exposing the individual to the most anxiety-arousing stimuli for an extended period

  • Graduated exposure – begins with exposure to situations that produce minimal anxiety then gradually progresses to situations that evoke Increasingly more intense anxiety

  • Interoceptive exposure – involves the use of strategies that are designed to evoke the feared bodily cues that are associated with fear and anxiety reactions 

• Implosive Therapy – Implosive therapy Is conducted in imagination and Involves presenting the feared stimulus vividly enough so as to arouse high of anxiety; images used during implosive therapy are embellished with psychodynamic themes

• EMDR – originally developed as an intervention for PTSD but has since been applied to other disorders. It combines rapid lateral eye movements with exposure and other techniques drawn from cognitive, behavioral, and psychodynamic approaches. Some research suggests Its effectiveness is not due to rapid eye movements but, instead, to exposure to the feared event (i.e., to extinction)

~PRINCIPLES OF OPERANT CONDITIONING 

-Law of Effect (Thorndike) – proposes that behaviors followed by “satisfying consequences” are more likely to increase or occur again. This theory was originally derived from studies in which hungry cats were placed in “puzzle boxes” and had to perform a particular behavior in order to escape from the box and obtain food

-Operant Conditioning: Reinforcement and Punishment (Skinner) – According Skinner, most complex behaviors are voluntarily emitted or not emitted as the result of the they “operate” on the environment (I.e., as the result of the consequences that follow them)

• Skinner distinguished between two types of consequences: 

• Reinforcement is a consequence that increases the likelihood that a behavior will recur

• Punishment is a consequence that decreases the likelihood that a behavior will recur

• He also distinguished positive and negative reinforcement and punishment:

  • “Positive” referring to the application of a stimulus (consequence) following a behavior

  • “Negative” referring to the withdrawal or termination of a stimulus (consequence) following a behavior

-Operant Extinction and Behavioral Contrast – 

• Operant extinction – refers to the elimination of a previously reinforced response through the consistent withholding of reinforcement following that response; is usually associated with a temporary increase in the response (an “extinction burst”) 

• Behavioral contrast – When a subject has been reinforced for two different behaviors and reinforcement for one behavior is withdrawn in order to extinguish it, the other behavior is likely to increase; for example, if a rat has been reinforced for pressing both a round button and a square button and reinforcement for pressing the round button is stopped, round-button pressing will decrease (as expected) and square-button pressing will increase

-Primary and Secondary Reinforcers – primary (unconditioned) reinforcers are inherently desirable and do not depend on experience to acquire their reinforcing value (i.e., food and water); Secondary (conditioned) reinforcers acquire their value only through repeated association with primary reinforcers (i.e., tokens, applause, money - generalized) 

-Schedules of Reinforcement – rate of acquisition of a behavior is when the behavior is reinforced on a continuous schedule; that is, when reinforcement is presented after each response. However, because satiation and rate of extinction are also high for a continuous schedule, once an operant behavior has been acquired (once adequate operant strength has been achieved), the best way to maintain the behavior is to switch to an intermittent (partial) schedule

• Fixed Interval (FI) – reinforcement is delivered after a fixed period of time regardless of the number of responses made; produce low rates of responding or stop responding after reinforcement then start again toward the end of the period

• Variable Interval (VI) – the interval of time between delivery of reinforcers varies in an unpredictable manner from Interval to interval; produces a steady but relatively low rate of response

• Fixed Ratio (FR) – a reinforcer is delivered each time the subject a specific number of responses; produces a relatively high, steady rate of responding

• Variable Ratio (VR) – reinforcers are provided after a variable of responses; produces the highest rates of responding and responses are most resistant to extinction (i.e., gambling) 

-Matching Law – when using concurrent schedules of reinforcement, there are two or more simultaneous and independent schedules of reinforcement, each for a different response. According to the matching law, in this situation, the organism will match its relative frequency responding to the relative frequency of reinforcement for each response

-Stimulus Control – process by which a behavior does or does not occur due to the presence of discriminative stimuli. Positive discriminative stimuli signal that the behavior will be reinforced, while negative discriminative stimuli [S-delta stimuli) signal that the behavior will not be reinforced (operant and classical conditioning)

-Stimulus and Response Generalization – responding to stimuli similar to the discriminative stimulus with the target behavior

-Escape and Avoidance Conditioning – 

• Escape conditioning – is an application of negative reinforcement in which the target behavior is an escape behavior – i.e.„ the organism engages in the behavior in order to escape the negative reinforcer

• Avoidance conditioning – two-factor/combines classical conditioning with negative reinforcement; a (positive discriminative stimulus) signals that the negative reinforcer is about to be applied so that the organism can avoid the negative reinforcer by performing the target behavior in the presence of the cue

~INTERVENTIONS BASED ON OPERANT CONDITIONING 

-Positive Reinforcement 

• Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Reinforcement – contingent relationship between the target behavior and positive reinforcer, the reinforcer should be delivered immediately after the target behavior

• Satiation – up to a point, the greater the amount of positive reinforcement, the greater the effectiveness, past this point, satiation may occur, which means that the reinforcer has lost its reinforcing value; magnitude 

• Thinning – continuous schedule helpful when learning new behavior whereas maintenance of the behavior is maximized on an intermittent schedule; thinning is reducing proportion of reinforcement

• Prompts/Fading – verbal/physical prompts facilitate the acquisition of a new behavior, when a prompt signals that the behavior will be reinforced, it's acting as a positive discriminative stimulus, the gradual removal of a prompt is referred to as fading 

-Positive Reinforcement Interventions

• Shaping – used to establish complex voluntary behaviors. Shaping, successive approximation training, involves teaching a new behavior through prompting and reinforcing behaviors that come closer and closer to the target behavior; only the final behavior is of concern 

• Chaining – used to establish complex voluntary behaviors. Chaining involves establishing a sequence of responses, a behavior chain; the entire sequence of responses is important; three-term contingency 

• Premack Principle – an application of positive reinforcement that involves using a high frequency behavior as a positive reinforcer for a low frequency behavior 

• Differential Reinforcement – an operant technique that combines positive reinforcement and extinction. During a specified period of time, the individual is reinforced when he or she engages in behaviors other than the target behavior 

-Punishment – applying or withdrawing a stimulus following a behavior in order to decrease that behavior 

• Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Punishment – the sooner the punishment is administered the more successful it will be (immediacy); must be applied on a continuous schedule, with moderate intensity; it is helpful when the contingent relationship between the target behavior and the punishment is verbally clarified and all stimuli that positively reinforced the behavior are identified and consistently withheld; great when combined with reinforcement of alternative behavior

• Habituation – initially administering punishment in a weak form and then gradually increasing its intensity increases the likelihood of habituation, which occurs when a punishment loses its effectiveness 

-Punishment: Interventions 

• Verbal Reprimands – saying “no” or “stop”; effects are inconsistent and temporary/can serve as positive reinforcers

• Overcorrection – involves having the individual correct the consequences of his or her behavior, (restitution) and or practice corrective behaviors (positive practice). It may also require constant supervision and or physical guidance 

• Negative Practice – requiring the individual to deliberately repeat the undesirable behavior to the point that it becomes aversive to the individual or the individual becomes fatigued (helpful for nail biting, hair twisting, pica, motor tics, stuttering, and smoking) 

• Response Cost – removing a specific reinforcer each time the target behavior is performed 

• Time-Out – negative punishment, the individual is removed from all opportunities for reinforcement for a pre specified period of time following a misbehavior in order to decrease the occurrence of that behavior 

-Extinction – entails withholding reinforcement from a previously reinforced response to eliminate/decrease that response 

• Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Extinction - Positive reinforcement must be consistently withheld following the behavior since a single exception can reestablish the behavior and maintain it for a considerable length of time; the schedule of reinforcement that previously established and maintained the behavior, extinction is more rapid for continuous, then fixed or variable interva), the greater the magnitude and the longer the duration of the previous reinforcement, the more resistant the behavior is to extinction; most successful when it's used in conjunction with reinforcement for alternative behaviors 

-Contingency Contracts – an application of contingency management that involves a formal written agreement between two or more people that clearly defines the behaviors that are to be modified and the rewards and punishments that will follow performance of those behaviors (explicit, capable of being monitored, defined sanctions, bonuses for consistent compliance, established record-keeping system)

-Token Economy – a structured environment in which desirable behaviors are increased by reinforcing them with tokens that can be exchanged for desired items, activities, and other primary reinforcers while undesirable behaviors are decreased by withholding or removing tokens following those behaviors (defined target behaviors, selecting secondary and back-up reinforcers, developed monitoring system, developed plan for reducing/eliminating reinforcers) 

-Social Skills Training – used to improve communication, assertiveness, problem solving, and other socially adaptive skills. It incorporates techniques derived from operant and classical conditioning as well as social learning theory (modeling, coaching, behavioral reversal, feedback, reinforcement, and homework assignments) 

-Function-Based Interventions – a FBA (assessment) used to clarify the characteristics of a target behavior and determine its antecedents and consequences in order to identify an alternative behavior that serves the same functions and function-based interventions that can be used to substitute the alternative behavior for the target behavior (interviews, observations, other)

~COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORIES 

-Latent Learning (Tolman) – proposes that learning occurs without reinforcement and without being manifested in performance improvement. Tolman’s research showed that rats formed “cognitive maps” of mazes without being reinforced for doing so

-Insight Learning (Kohler) – Insight learning (the “aha” experience) refers to the apparent sudden understanding of the relationship between elements in a problem-solving situation. Insight learning was originally described by Kohler as a result of his research with chimpanzees

-Observational Learning (Bandura) – Predicts that behaviors can be acquired simply by observing someone else, a model, perform those behaviors and that observational learning is cognitively mediated; boys were more likely to imitate a male model while girls were more likely to imitate a female model, boys and girls imitated the verbally aggressive behaviors of the model to a similar degree but boys were more likely than girls to imitate physically aggressive behaviors, and providing incentives for imitating the aggressive model reduced the gender difference in the imitation of physically aggressive behaviors 

• Four Processes of Observational Learning

  • Attentional Processes: The learner attends to and accurately perceives the modeled behavior

  • Retention Processes: The learner symbolically processes the modeled behavior in memory via visual imagery or verbal coding. Retention is maximized through cognitive rehearsal

  • Production Processes: The learner must be able to accurately produce and rehearse the modeled behavior. Production is enhanced through practice and performance feedback 

  • Motivational Processes: While learning can occur without reinforcement, performance requires motivation. Motivation is enhanced when the learner is reinforced, but reinforcement may be either internal (self-reinforcement), vicarious, or external 

• Model Characteristics – More likely to imitate a model who is high and status, prestige, or expertise; the model is similar to the observer, especially in terms of age and gender; the model’s behavior is visible, salient, and relevant to the observer's needs and goals; the model has been reinforced for engaging in the behavior, which is referred to as vicarious reinforcement 

• Guided Participation – Combines modeling with guided participation (watch model and the perform behavior with the model’s assistance), is the most effective type of observational learning, especially for treating phobic reactions 

• Self-Efficacy – beliefs about one's ability to perform a behavior or achieve a goal, a primary source of motivation; affected by enactive attainment (prior success in performing the task), vicarious experience (observing others similar to oneself successfully performed the task), verbal persuasion (encouragement by others), and emotional and physiological states 

• Reciprocal Determinism – predicts that there is a reciprocal/interactive/influential relationship between a person's environment, overt behaviors, and cognitive, affective, and other personal characteristics 

-Learned Helplessness – derived from the observation that animals who were subjected to an uncontrollable negative event, inescapable electric shock, subsequently did not try to escape that event when they were able to do so. The reformulated version of the model added attributions to the original theory and proposed that some forms of depression are due to the tendency to attribute negative events to internal, stable, and global factors. A subsequent revision acknowledged the role of attributions but proposed that they are important only to the extent that they contribute to a sense of hopelessness 

~COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS 

-Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (Ellis) – Emotions and behaviors are the consequences of a chain of events; ABC, where A is the external event to which the individual is exposed, B is the belief that the individual has about A, and C is the emotion or behavior that results from B. In other words, an emotional or behavioral response to an external event is due to beliefs about that event rather than the event itself. According to Ellis, the primary cause of neurosis is the continual repetition of certain common irrational beliefs which are the targets of therapy; Irrational beliefs are the result of certain biological tendencies that include negativism, moodiness, and excitement seeking; ABCD (dispute, alternative thoughts)

-Cognitive Therapy (Beck) – attributes psychopathology to certain cognitive phenomenon (see below); use daily thought record

• Cognitive Targets

  • Schemas – underlying cognitive structures and rules (core beliefs), determine how individuals codify, categorized, and interpret their experiences; revealed in AT and supported by cognitive distortions

  • Automatic thoughts – surface level cognitions; intercede between a stimulus and the individual's emotional and behavioral reactions 

  • Cognitive distortion – systematic errors in information processing; the link between maladaptive cognitive schemas and negative automatic thoughts 

  • Cognitive profile – each psychological disorder is characterized by a different cognitive profile, for example, depression involves the cognitive triad of negative views of oneself, the world, and the future 

• Collaborative Empiricism – involves developing a collaborative therapist-client relationship and gathering evidence to test hypothesis about the client’s beliefs and assumptions 

• Socratic Dialogue – guided discovery, asking questions that are designed to help the client reach logical conclusions about a problem in its consequences 

-Other Cognitive Restructuring Techniques 

• Self-instructional Training – the Individual learns to modify maladaptive thoughts and behaviors through the use of covert self-statements. It was originally developed as a way to help impulsive/hyperactive children slow down their behavior and guide themselves through academic and other types of tasks (cognitive modeling, cognitive participant modeling, overt self-instruction, fading overt self-instruction, covert self-instruction) 

• Thought Stopping – eliminating obsessive ruminations, self-criticism, depressive or anxiety arousing ideas, and other unwanted or unproductive thoughts by using such techniques as covertly yelling, “stop stop stop” or snapping a rubber band around the wrist whenever unwanted thoughts occur; often combined with covert assertion, which involves making alternate assertive self-statements following thought stopping 

• Attribution Retraining – focuses on altering the individual’s perceptions of the causes of his or her problematic behavior; the goal is to attribute failures to external, unstable, and specific factors and successes to internal, stable, and global factors 

-Coping and Problem-Solving Techniques

• Stress Inoculation – helps people deal with stress by increasing their coping skills, treatment involves three phases:

  • Cognitive preparation phase or conceptualization phase – primarily educational and involves helping the client understand his or her behavioral and cognitive responses to stressful situations 

  • Skills acquisition and rehearsal phase – the client learns and rehearses a variety of coping skills like relaxation, pleasant imagery, arranging escape routes and cognitive techniques 

  • Final application and follow through phase – the client applies the coping skills he or she has acquired to imagined, filmed, and in vivo stress-producing situations 

• Problem-Solving Therapy – Distinguishes between rational, impulsive/careless, and avoidance styles, with a rational style being identified as the only one that's likely to result in adaptive problem solutions. It's characterized by a reliance on five skills: recognizing the problem (problem orientation), defining the problem, generating alternative solutions, choosing the best solutions, and implementing and evaluating the chosen solution (psychoeducation, guided discussion, role-playing, homework assignments) 

-Self-Control Therapy (Rehm) – brief form of therapy that is based on the assumption that deficits and three aspects of self-control increase a person's vulnerability to depression and make it difficult to deal effectively with depressive symptoms. The three aspects are:

• Self-monitoring – selectively attend to negative events and the immediate vs. delayed consequences of their behavior 

• Self-evaluation – make inaccurate internal attributions, compare behavior to excessively rigid/perfectionistic standards

• Self-reinforcement – people with depression engage in low rates of self-reward and high rates of self-punishment 

-Behavioral Model of Depression (Lewinsohn) – attributes depression to a low rate of response-contingent reinforcement due to inadequate reinforcing stimuli in the environment and or the individual’s lack of skill in obtaining reinforcement 

-Self-Management Procedures – emphasizes the client's responsibility for modifying his or her own behavior 

• Self-Monitoring – having the client recorded information about the frequency and conditions surrounding the target behavior, provides information about the nature and magnitude of the behavior so that an appropriate treatment strategy can be developed, helps promote behavior change

• Stimulus Control – behavior is said to be under stimulus control when its performance is contingent on the presence of a certain stimuli. Stimulus control techniques are designed to alter the associations between stimuli and the behavior and or its consequences and include the following:

  • Narrowing – Involves restricting the target behavior to a limited set of stimuli 

  • Cue strengthening – entails linking the behavior to specific environmental conditions 

  • Fading – consists of changing the stimulus conditions associated with the behavior 

• Biofeedback – Provides the individual with immediate and continuous feedback about an ongoing physiological process (muscle tension, blood pressure), with the goal of enabling the individual to exercise voluntary control over that process. For many disorders (hypertension/tension headaches), relaxation is about equally effective as biofeedback (with the exception of thermal biofeedback and Raynaud’s disease and thermal biofeedback with autogenic training for migraine) 

~MEMORY AND FORGETTING  

-Memory Models – include encoding (the translation of incoming stimuli into a code that can be processed by the brain), storage (process of maintaining information in memory), retrieval (recovering stored information) 

• Information-Processing (Multi-Store) Model – describes memory as consisting of three separates, but interacting stores:

  • Sensory memory (sensory register) – seems to be capable of storing a great deal of information, but the information is retained for no more than a few seconds; information in sensory memory is transferred to STM when it becomes the focus of attention (auditory is echoic while visual is iconic)

  • Short-term memory (STM) – hold a lot of information but fades within 30 seconds without rehearsal, encoding in STM is believed to be primarily acoustic but may also be, to a lesser degree, semantic, visual, and/or kinesthetic. Consists of primary memory (passive memory storage) and working memory

    • Primary memory (passive working storage) – proposed that the capacity of short-term memory is between 5 and 9 (7 ± 2) distinct units and the ability to hold larger amounts of information in STM is due to the chunking/grouping of related items of information 

    • Working memory – responsible for the manipulation and processing of information. For instance, it is working memory that allows you to repeat the phone number you just found in the phone book until you dial the number on the phone

  • Long-term memory (LTM) – Information is more likely to be transferred to LTM with elaborate rehearsal, which involves relating new information to existing information, than with maintenance rehearsal, which involves simply repeating the information with little or no processing. Encoding in LTM is largely semantic, although some information may be encoded visually or acoustically. The capacity of LTM seems to be unlimited, and some experts believe that material stored in LTM is permanent. LTM consists of recent (secondary) memory and remote memory 

• Levels-of-Processing Model – proposes that differences in memory are not due to different stores or stages but to different levels of processing. The model distinguishes between 3 levels: structural, phenomic, and semantic. The semantic level is the deepest level of processing and leads to the best retention 

-Components of Long-Term Memory (+ prospective memory – “remembering to remember”)

• Procedural Memory – stores information about how to do things, or “learning how”, implicit (basal ganglia and cerebellum)

• Declarative Memory (Semantic, Episodic, Prospective) – mediates the acquisition of facts and other information, “learning that or what”, and is subdivided into semantic and episodic memory, explicit (hippocampus and frontal lobes)

  • Semantic memory – includes memories for general knowledge that is independent of any context and is responsible for the storage of facts, rules, and concepts 

  • Episodic memory – consists of information about events that have been personally experienced (i.e., flashbulb memories); affected more by normal aging

-Attention and Memory – strong relationship between attention and memory 

• Multi-Component Model – working memory consists of a central executive (“attentional control system”, responsible for directing attention and suppressing irrelevant information) and three subsystems; tasks that depend on this central executive are the ones that are most adversely affected by increasing age 

  • Phonological loop – responsible for temporarily storing audio-verbal information 

  • Visuo-spatial sketchpad – responsible for temporarily storing visual-spatial information

  • Episodic buffer – temporarily integrates auditory, visual, and spatial information 

• Filter Theory of Selective Attention – first bottleneck theory of attention, it's based on the information processing model and explains how information is transferred from sensory memory to short-term memory: a) two sensory stimuli presented at the same time are maintained for a brief period in sensory register, b) a filter selects one of the stimuli to pass through a limited sensory channel based on its physical characteristics while the other stimulus is held in a temporary buffer for later processing, c) the stimulus that passes through the channel to STM is processed for meaning and comes into conscious awareness. The purpose of the filter is to prevent overloading of the capacity of short-term memory

• Feature Integration Theory – initial processing of visual information involves two stages; once an object has been correctly integrated it ordinarily continues to be perceived and stored in memory as a unitary object; however, overtime, the features may disintegrate, and free float once more or perhaps recombine to form illusionary conjunctions as a result of memory decay or interference 

  • Initial preattentive stage – the basic features of the object are perceived in parallel at an automatic or subconscious level 

  • Attentive stage – the features are processed serially to form a coherent whole, and this binding of features depends on focal attention 

-Theories of Forgetting (Ebbinghaus) – rote learning of nonsense syllables is followed by a predictable “forgetting curve” (most happens within 4-5 days then tapers off) 

• Trace Decay Theory – proposes that loss of memory, or forgetting, is due to the gradual decay of memory traces or engrams overtime as the result of disuse 

• Interference Theory (proactive vs. Retroactive Interference) – proposes that the inability to learn or recall information is due to the disruptive effects of previously or subsequently learned information. Retroactive interference occurs when newly learned information interferes with the recall of previously learned information, while proactive interference occurs when prior learning interferes with the learning or recall of subsequent information 

-Methods for Improving Memory

• Encoding Specificity/State-Dependent Learning – greater the similarity between the way information is encoded and the cues that are present at the time of recall, the better the recall. This prediction is confirmed by research on state dependent learning, which has shown that recall of information is sometimes better when the learner is in the same emotional state during learning and recall 

• Elaborative Rehearsal – information Is most likely to be transferred from short term to long term memory when elaborated rehearsal is employed, when new information is made more meaningful by relating it to existing knowledge 

• Visual Mnemonic Devices – make use of Visual imagery. For example, the method of loci involves visually associating items to be remembered with a series of places already in memory. Using this method, a person first forms an image of each item to be remembered and then mentally walks through a familiar room, placing the items in visible locations such as corners and on tables and chairs. To recall the items, the person would again mentally walk through the room and look in the corners and on the tables and chairs. The keyword method is another imagery technique and is useful for paired associate tasks in which two words must be linked (French word for book “livre”, imagine a leaf on a book)

• Verbal Mnemonic Devices – 

  • Acronym – a word that's formed using the 1st letter of each item in the list 

  • Acrostic – a phrase or rhyme that's construed from the 1st letter of each word that is to be memorized 

-Yerkes-Dodson Law – Predicts that moderate levels of arousal are associated with optimal learning and performance so that the relationship between arousal and learning takes the shape of an inverted U