Psychology Exam

Terms

Learning and Conditioning

Learning: process of acquiring new information or behaviors through experience

Adaptability: human capacity to learn new behaviors that help us cope with our changing world

Cognitive learning: acquiring mental information that guides behavior; we can learn things we’ve neither experienced nor observed

Associative learning: learning that certain events occur together

Classical conditioning: to expect and prepare for significant events; a basic form of learning that virtually all species use to adapt to their environment

Operant conditioning: to repeat acts that bring rewards and avoid acts that bring unwanted results 

Observational learning: learning from others’ experiences

Stimulus: any event or situation that evokes a response

Response: behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

Ivan Pavlov: physiologist studying the digestive system of dogs; demonstrated associative learning via salivary conditioning; conducted novel experiments on learning

Unconditioned stimulus (US): stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers the unconditioned response (ex. food)

Unconditioned response (UR): naturally occurring (unlearned) response to unconditioned stimulus (ex. Dog salivating at the sight of food)

Neutral stimulus (NS): stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning (ex. Sound of the metronome)

Conditioned stimulus (CS): originally neutral stimulus that, after association with the unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger the conditioned response (ex. Sound of the metronome)

Conditioned response (CR): learned response to the conditioned stimulus that used to be a neutral stimulus (ex. Dog salivating at the sound of the metronome because it is associating the sound with food)

5 major conditioning processes: Acquisition, Extinction, Spontaneous recovery, Generalization, Discrimination

Acquisition: how much time should elapse between presenting the neutral stimulus(NS) and the unconditioned stimulus(US); not much time needed, half a second works well

Conditioning will not occur: if you present the unconditioned stimulus(US) after the neutral stimulus(NS)

If the conditioned stimulus(CS) keeps being presented without the unconditioned stimulus(US): 1. Extinction: diminishing of conditioned response or 2. Spontaneous recovery:  reappearance, after a pause, of a weakened conditioned response

Idealized curve of acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery: 

Generalization: the tendency for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses once a response has been conditioned (ex. attaching miniature vibrating devices to various parts of a dog’s body, conditioning salivation based on stimulation of the dog’s thigh, and then stimulating other areas)

Discrimination: learned ability to distinguish between conditioned stimulus that predicts the unconditioned stimulus and other irrelevant stimuli (ex. dogs learned to respond to the sound of a particular tone and not to other tones)

John B. Watson: believed that the theoretical goal of science of psychology is prediction and control of behavior; influenced by Pavlov’s work

Behaviorists argue psychology should: 1. be an objective science and 2. study behavior without reference to mental processes (i.e., stop with the inner thoughts, feelings and motives)

Little Albert: Watson and Rayner applied classical conditioning principles in studies of “Little Albert” to demonstrate how specific fears might be conditioned (child’s startled fear reaction was generalized to sight of rabbit, dog, and a fur coat after five days)

Operant behavior: behavior that operates on environment to produce rewarding or punishing stimuli (ex. Saying please and getting a treat may lead you to say please more)

Law of effect: principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely (ex. Cat in a puzzle box experiment by Thorndike, cats escaped the box faster over a series of trials after knowing they would receive a fish reward)

B.F. Skinner: developed principles of behavior control by teaching pigeons new behaviors; Elaborated on Thorndike’s work; urged people to use operant conditioning to influence others’ behavior (ex. Skinner box experiment, there is a bar/key that the animal can manipulate to obtain food or water reward in the chamber and a measuring device records the animal’s rate of pressing the bar/key outside the chamber)

Reinforces: gradually guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of a desired behavior

Reinforcement: any event that strengthens a preceding response

Positive reinforcement: increases behaviors by presenting positive reinforcers; any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens response (ex. Petting a dog that comes when you call it)

Negative reinforcement: increases behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli; any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens response; not punishment (ex. Fastening a seat belt to stop the beeping)

Punishment: administers an undesirable consequence or withdraws something desirable in attempt to decrease frequency of behavior 

Positive punishment: punishing by adding an unpleasant stimulus; presenting a negative consequence after undesired behavior is exhibited, making behavior less likely to happen in future (ex. Getting a speeding ticket for driving too fast)

Negative punishment: punishing by taking away a desired stimulus after a particular undesired behavior is exhibited, making behavior less likely to happen in the future (ex. Player is benched for breaking team rules)

Contemporary learning theorists: recognize that learning is the product of the interaction of biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences

Biological limits on operant conditioning: predispositions prepare each species to learn the associations that enhance its survival (ex. a horse’s inborn ability to move around obstacles with speed and agility)

Cognition’s influence on classical conditioning: animals can learn the predictability of an event; the more predictable the association, the stronger the conditioned response

Albert Bandura: pioneering researcher of observational learning; found that the children’s actions directly imitate the adult’s behavior from the Bobo doll experiment

Modeling: process of observing and imitating a specific behavior

Memory

Memory: learning that persists over time; information that has been acquired, stored, and can be retrieved

How psychologists study memory: 1. measuring retention of learned information and 2. creating models that help us understand our brain’s memory-making processes

Types of retrieval processes: recall, recognition, and relearning

Recall: retrieving information that is not currently in conscious awareness but was learned at an earlier time

Recognition: identifying items previously learned

Relearning: learning something more quickly when encountering it a second or later time

Ebbinghaus’s retention curve: found that the more times he practiced a list of nonsense syllables on Day 1, the less time he required to relearn it on Day 2

Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve: information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it

Information-processing model: compares human memory to computer operations; involves three processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval; not the best analogy because human memories are less literal and more fragile than a computer’s memory and our brains use parallel processing while computers process information sequentially

Encoding: process of getting information into the memory system

Storage: process of retaining encoded information over time

Retrieval: process of getting information out of memory storage

Connectionism information-processing model: focuses on multitrack processing; views memories as products of interconnected neural networks; anytime we learn something new, our brain’s neural connections change

Three-stage information processing model: Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model; record to-be-remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory, process information into short-term memory where we encode it through rehearsal, and information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval

Three-stage memory outdated model:

Working memory model: Baddelet and Hitch’s model; short-term memory would be better described as working memory, a stage where short-term memories combine with long-term memories; Central executive coordinates focused processing of new information with existing memory; information typically fades without focused attention and cultural traditions influence how information is encoded and retrieved 

Working memory model: 

Three-stage memory modified model: working memory is added

Automatic processing: processing of information outside of conscious awareness, is included in modified model

Sensory memory: first stage in forming explicit memories; immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Iconic memory: momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; lasts a few tenths of a second

Echoic memory: momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; can be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

Short-term memory: activated memory that holds a few items briefly before the information is either stored or forgotten (most people can store 7+-2  bits of information)

Short-memory decay experiment: short-term memories have a limited life without active processing; Lloyd Peterson and Margaret Peterson (1959) asked people to remember three-consonant groups, such as CHJ; To prevent rehearsal, they distracted participants (asking them, for example, to start at 100 and begin counting aloud backward by threes); after 12 seconds, they seldom recalled them at all

Working memory: conscious active processing of incoming sensory information and information retrieved from long-term memory; capacity varies by age and other factors

Dual-track memory system: helps us encode, store, and retrieve information through both effortful and automatic tracks

Implicit/nondeclarative memories: form through automatic processing and bypass the conscious encoding track

Explicit/declarative memories: conscious facts and experiences encoded through conscious, effortful processing

Two memory systems: automatic and effortful

Automatic processing: implicit memories include procedural memory for automatic skills and classically conditioned associations among stimuli; information about space, time, and frequency is often automatically processed (ex. How to ride a bike and going about your day)

Effortful processing: with experience and practice, explicit memories can become automatic (ex. reading); strategies are chunking, mnemonics, and hierarchies

Stroop task: demonstrates how automatic processes like reading a word can interfere with effortful processes like naming the color of the ink; task is to name the color of the ink and not read the word itself

Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Mnemonics: memory aids, especially techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices; ex. The Method of Loci/Memory Palace

Hierarchies: organizing items into a few broad categories that are divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts

The Method of Loci/Memory Palace: choose a location that is familiar to you and that you can easily visualize, mentally walk through this location and choose 5-10 specific areas or rooms you can use as reference points to place items in, there will be a list of items to remember, try to visualize each item and place it in one of the specific locations in your memory palace, and mentally walk through your memory palace from the beginning and recall the items you placed there

Spacing effect: encoding is more effective when it is spread over time

Massed practice: produces speedy short-term learning and feelings of confidence

Distributed practice: produces better long-term recall

Testing effect: retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced effect; repeated self-testing; testing is more effective than highlighting/rereading text

Shallow processing: encodes information on a very basic level like a word’s letters or a more intermediate level like a word’s sound

Deep processing: encodes information semantically based on the meaning of the words

Trouble processing: if new information is neither meaningful nor related to our experience

Self-reference effect: Individualist Western cultures excel at remembering personally relevant information; Collectivist Eastern cultures remember self-relevant and family-relevant information equally well

Retaining information in the brain: memories are brain based and brains distribute components of a memory across a network of locations

Explicit memory system: semantic/episodic/explicit memories are processed through a network that includes your frontal lobes and hippocampus; Brain regions send input to the prefrontal cortex for working memory processing

Hippocampus: is active as you form explicit memories of names, images, and events; memories are not stored in it but it temporarily holds the elements of a to-be-remembered episode here; one of the last brain structures to mature and as it does more gets retained

Memory consolidation: process of storing memories; memories migrate to the cortex for storage; supported by sleep, hippocampus processes memories for later retrieval during deep sleep

Result of TEDxClermont experiment: sleeping between sessions of learning reduced the amount of practice needed by half and ensured better long-term retention

Implicit memory system: memories for skills and newly conditioned associations are implicit; cerebellum forms and stores implicit memories created by classical conditioning while basal ganglia helps form procedural memories for skills/motor movement

Damage to hippocampus: disrupts formation and recall of explicit memories

Damage to cerebellum: difficult to develop certain conditioned reflexes 

Emotions: trigger stress hormones that influence memory formation

Memory trace: a lasting physical change as the memory forms; initiated by stress to the amygdala

Tunnel vision memory: focusing our attention on high-priority information and reducing our recall of irrelevant details; can be caused by emotional events

Flashbulb memories: mental snapshots of exciting or shocking events; occur via emotion-triggered hormonal changes and rehearsal

Memory retrieval: the process of accessing and bringing stored information into conscious awareness; often need retrieval cues to trigger memory retrieval (ex. content-dependent like location, sights, sounds, and smells or state-dependent like emotions or physiological conditions)

Serial position effect: tendency to recall the last/recency and first/primacy items in a list best; first/most recent items are more likely to be remembered

Positive of forgetting unimportant information: helps us remember what matters most

Hyperthymesia: highly superior autobiographical memory can interfere with life; enlarged brain areas and increased brain activity in memory centers

Forgetting: can happen at any memory stage; as we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it

Two-track mind: loss of ability to form new explicit memories, but automatic processing ability remains intact; can be classically conditioned to learn how to do things, but have no awareness of having learned them

Anterograde amnesia: inability to form new memories

Retrograde amnesia: inability to remember information from one’s past

Encoding failure: leads to forgetting; efficiency decreases with age

Amnesia: “without memory”; a loss of memory, often due to brain trauma, injury, or disease; course of forgetting is initially rapid but then levels off with time

Retrieval failure: leads to forgetting; insufficient information to access memories may put them out of reach and interference or motivated forgetting may create retrieval problems

Proactive interference: older memories make it more difficult to remember new information; forward-acting disruption

Retroactive interference: new learning disrupts memory for older information; backward-acting disruption

Positive transfer interference: previously learned information facilitates learning of new information

Freud: repressed memories protect a person’s self-concept and minimize anxiety; self-censored information; the repressed memory is still around and can be retrieved later

Reconsolidation: stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again; each time you retrieve a memory, your brain restores it along with any new information, emotions, or present context which can change the memory

False memories: they feel like real memories and can be persistent, but are usually limited to the gist of the event; can be especially persistent when aligned with our beliefs

Source amnesia: faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined; at the heart of many false memories

Deja vu: sense that you’ve been in this exact situation before; cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

Children’s recall: children can often accurately recall events and actors when questioned by a neutral person and asked non leading questions soon after an event, using words they can understand

Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck experiment: 58 percent of preschoolers produced false and often vivid stories about unexperienced events

SQ3R study technique: rehearse repeatedly, make the material meaningful, activate retrieval cues, use mnemonic devices, minimize proactive and retroactive interference, sleep more, and test your own knowledge to rehearse it and to find out what you don’t yet know

Thinking, Language, and Thought

Cognition: all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information

Metacognition: cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes (thinking about our thinking)

Concepts: mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Prototype: mental image or best example of a category or concept

Trial and error: attempt various solutions to a problem until they find one that works; may be systematic, may not be

Algorithms: methodical, logical rule, or procedure that guarantees a solution to a problem; slow process

Heuristics: simpler thinking strategies that are usually speedier than an algorithm, but also more error-prone

Insight: abrupt, true-seeming, and often satisfying solution; a burst of right temporal lobe activity accompanied insight solutions to word problems

Confirmation bias: searching for information that supports our ideas and ignoring or distorting contradictory evidence

Fixation: inability to see a problem from a new perspective

Mental set: is the tendency to approach a problem with previously successful mindset; example of fixation

Intuition: effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought; implicit (unconscious) knowledge we gain from experience

Representativeness heuristic: judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Availability heuristic: judging the likelihood of events based on their mental availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are commonplace

Overconfidence: tendency to be more confident than correct; to overestimate accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

Belief perseverance: our tendency to stick to our beliefs and ignore evidence that proves these beliefs are wrong

Motivated reasoning: rather than using evidence to draw conclusions, conclusions are used to assess evidence

Framing: how an issue or idea is presented can sway decisions and judgments

Creativity: ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Types of thinking: divergent and convergent

Divergent thinking: expanding the number of possible problem solutions; diverges in different directions 

Convergent thinking: narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Components of creativity: expertise, imaginative thinking skills, venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and creative environment

How to boost creativity: develop expertise, allow time for incubation, set aside time for the mind to roam freely, and experience other cultures/ways of thinking

Language: a dynamic system of symbols used for thought and communication; spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Phoneme: smallest distinctive sound unit in language

Morpheme: smallest language unit that carries meaning

Grammar: system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand each other

Semantics: deriving meaning from sounds

Syntax: correct ordering of words in a sentence

Noam Chomsky: father of modern linguistics; argued that all languages share basic elements called universal grammar

Language acquisition: children learn grammar as they discern patterns in the language they hear

Receptive language: ability to understand and comprehend spoken and written language 

Expressive language: ability to produce words 

Language development in infancy: at 4 months babies can recognize differences in speech sounds and read lips; at 7 months infants can segment spoken words and analyze which syllables most often go together

Sensitive period for mastering language: childhood

Processing language: brain operates by dividing its mental functions—speaking, perceiving, thinking, remembering—into smaller subfunctions; brain is busily multitasking and networking 

Aphasia: caused by damage to any one of several areas of the brain’s cortex; language can be impaired

Broca’s area: frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere; impairs speaking; helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech

Wernicke’s area: brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe; impairs understanding; involved in language comprehension and expression

Linguistic determinism: language determines the way we think; a bit too extreme of a position because we can think about things we don’t have words for 

Linguistic relativism: our words influence our thinking; words define our mental categories as we use native language to classify and remember them

Thinking in images: after learning a skill watching the activity activates the brain’s internal stimulation of it 

Intelligence

Intelligence: the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations (psychologists’ definition)

Charles Spearman: around 1904 proposed one general intelligence (g) that is the core of all human intelligent behavior; those who score high in one area typically score higher than average in other areas

Specific intelligence(s): any intelligence that is needed to be successful on one particular task or in a certain situation 

L.L. Thurstone: early critic of Spearman’s intelligence theory; mathematically identified seven clusters of primary mental abilities

Raymond Cattell and John Horn: simplified Thurstone’s primary mental abilities into two factors, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence

Fluid intelligence(Gf): ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood

Crystallized intelligence(Gc): accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tend to increase with age

Cattell-Horn-Carroll Intelligence Theory: affirms general intellectual ability factor and the existence of Gf and Gc; identifies more specific abilities, such as reading and writing ability, memory capacity, and processing speed; popular theory because it recognizes that intelligence comprises many abilities, but specific abilities exist under an umbrella of general intelligence

Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences: eight relatively independent intelligences: naturalist, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, boldly-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal; later proposed a ninth possible intelligence: existential intelligence

Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory: analytical, creative, and practical intelligence

Analytical intelligence: traditional academic problem-solving smarts; well-defined problems having a single right answer

Creative intelligence: ability to adapt to new situations and generate novel ideas; innovative smarts

Practical intelligence: skills required for everyday tasks that may be vague and have multiple solutions; street smarts

General intelligence factor(g): predicts performance on various complex tasks, in various jobs, higher income, and exceptional achievements

Deliberate practice: characterized by years (10-year rule) of intense, daily practice to reach expert status

Jay Zagorsky smart and rich experiment: participants’ intelligence scores showed a moderate positive correlation (+30) with their later income (correlation is not causation)

Emotional intelligence: ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Four abilities that are a critical part of social intelligence: perceiving - recognizing emotions in faces, music, and stories, and identifying our own emotions; understanding - predicting emotions and how they may change and blend; managing - knowing how to express emotions in varied situations, and how to handle others’ emotions; using - enabling adaptive or creative thinking

Intelligence test: method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others using numerical scores

Achievement test: designed to assess what an individual has learned

Aptitude test: designed to predict an individual’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn

Sir Francis Galton: believed mental and physical features are equally inherited—a proposition that was not accepted at the time; believed in inheritance of genius and coined the term eugenics

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon: started the modern intelligence testing movement in France in 1904 by developing questions to help predict children’s future progress in the Paris school system; assumed that all children follow same course but not same rate of intellectual development; measured each child’s mental age

Lewis Terman: the Stanford-Binet intelligence quotient; revised Binet’s test for wider use in the United States and extended upper end of the test’s range to include adults; theorized intelligence tests reveal a mental capacity present from birth

Intelligence Quotient(IQ): (mental age/chronological age) x 100

David Wechsler: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC); yields an overall intelligence score and separate scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed

Three criteria of a widely accepted psychological test: it must be standardized, reliable, and valid

Standardization: defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with performance of pretested group

Reliability: extent to which test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of test, on alternative forms of test, or on retesting

Validity: extent to which test measures or predicts what it is supposed to measure or predict

Intelligence and heath: children and adults who are more intelligent tend to live healthier and longer lives

Aging and intelligence: recall memory and processing decline, but vocabulary, knowledge, and social reasoning skills increase

Heritability of intelligence: extent to which intelligence test score variation can be attributed to genetic variation; estimates range from 50 to 80 percent

Heritability: variation among individuals in a group that we can attribute to genes (genes shape the experiences that shape us)

McVicker Hunt (1982): Iranian orphanage study found dire, negative effects of extreme deprivation, including depressed cognitive development

Mani et al. (2013): study with sugar cane farmers in India being paid for their harvest found that poverty can impede cognitive performance and deplete cognition capacity 

Growth mindset: involves a focus on learning and growing rather than viewing intelligence (abilities) as fixed; ability + opportunity + motivation = success

Test bias: if a test does not accurately predict future behavior for all groups of test-takers or detects not only innate differences in intelligence but also performance differences caused by cultural experiences, it is biased; culture-neutral questions contribute to culture-fair aptitude tests

Self-fulfilling prophecies: expectations cased test-takers to become this; negative stereotypes may undermine people’s academic and professional potential

Stereotype threat: self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype