UNITS 4-9 

• Ivan Palov - Russian psychologist primarily known for his work in classical conditioning. (Dogs salivating from the dinner bell) 🔔

  • (book definition) Classical conditioning is the type of learning in which a response naturally elicited by one stimulus becomes elicited by a different formally neutral stimulus. 

  • (working definition) Classical conditioning is when something happens TO you and it causes a NATURAL (almost automatic) response. You learn a warning sign that tells you this thing is going to happen. 

    • Examples: phobias that are caused by an outside influence, throwing up which causes food aversion.

• Biological predisposition to learning - Humans and organisms have some kind of biological predisposition: we are predisposed through evolution to learn some associations better than others. A dramatic example of this is illustrated by food aversions.

• Social learning (Examples) - a type of learning in which behaviors are learned by observing a model 

  • Examples: watching shooting in a game which makes gamers learn more about aggressive behaviors

  • learning to swear by seeing your parents swear

  • associating a ringing bell with classes ending because the teacher ended class

  • Learning to solve problems to receive an award

  • Learning to lie by seeing fellow students lie to get away with things

• Conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus - a CONDITIONED stimulus is an originally neutral stimulus that is paired with an unconditioned stimulus and eventually produces the desired response in an organism when presented alone. An UNCONDITIONED stimulus is a stimulus that invariably causes an organism to respond in a certain way. 

  • Context: In Pavlov's experiment, the dog salivated for food, but had no response to the bell. By repeatedly exposing the sound of the bell with the bringing of food, the dog eventually associated the bell with food and salivated at the sound of the bell even with no food shown. 

    • A conditioned stimulus would be the bell, the conditioned response would be salivation.

    • An unconditioned stimulus would be food, the unconditioned response would be salivation

• Stimulus generalization - the transfer of a learned response to a different but similar stimulus

  • Example: being scared of rats, and subsequently becoming scared of other animals like rabbits that look like the rats.

• Negative and positive reinforcement - A POSITIVE reinforcement is something that ADDS (+) something good to your life. A NEGATIVE reinforcement is something that SUBTRACTS (-) something bad in your life. 

  • Positive: toys, love, good grades, awards which help boost your life

  • Negative: seatbelt, tylenol, which help remove bad things in your life

• Short-term memory - Short-term memory holds information that we are aware of or thinking about at any given moment. Short term memory is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing.

• Long-term memory - everything that is learned is stored in long-term memory. Vast amounts of information may be stored for many years. No known limits to capacity. This information is stored in terms of meaning, sometimes verbatim, and coded in terms of nonverbal images. Types of LTM:

  • Explicit memory- memory for information we can readily express and are aware of having (i.e a bday party, first day of school)

  • Episodic memory- memories for personal events in a pacific time and place (i.e place where you parked in the morning, dinner you had with someone last month)

  • Semantic memory- memory for general facts and concepts not linked to a specific time (i.e name of a capital, random fact)

  • Implicit memory- memory for information that we cannot readily express and may not be aware of having (i.e knowing how to ride a bike or piano, tying your shoes)

  • Procedural memory- motor skills and habit

  • Emotional memory- learned emotional responses to various stimuli (i.e terror when describing an accident or event)

  • Prospective Memory- involves remembering to perform a planned action or recall a planned intention at some future point in time (i.e charging your phone, remembering to pick up eggs after work)

• Hermann Ebbinghaus - one of the psychologists most known for studying human memory. He eventually came up with something called the forgetting curve. Image Courtesy of Quartz. This curve shows that you forget about 75% of the information you learn in one day (without relearning/rehearsing). Combat this with distributed practice, sleep, elaborative rehearsal, and deep processing.

• Automatic processing - is the unconscious processing of well-learned material. It is much like the term “muscle memory,” because you can do something without much thought. An example could be knitting a scarf while your mind goes elsewhere. You have knitted scarves many times before, so you don’t need to put much attention into knitting the scarf. You are able to think about other things while simultaneously doing it.

• effortful processing - the active processing of information that needs sustained effort. It's simply that learning requires both effort and attention. Practice and rehearsal are often needed to learn new things, such as learning a new musical instrument.

• Elaborative encoding to improve memory - Elaborative rehearsal is a type of memory rehearsal that is useful in transferring information into long-term memory. This type of rehearsal is effective because it involves thinking about the meaning of the information and connecting it to other information already stored in memory. 

  • Making an association of sandy beach to the name sandy to remember better.

• Self-reference - The self-reference effect says it is easier to remember information that you have related to yourself because such connections improve more retrieval cues and lend more meaning to the new information.

  • Knowing how to describe yourself better than other people

• Maintenance rehearsal - A cognitive process in which information is repeatedly verbalized or thought about to keep it in short-term memory longer. This type of rehearsal does not involve deeper processing of the material and is primarily used to extend the duration of short-term memory retention. For example, repeating a phone number over and over to remember it temporarily.

• Inappropriate conclusion - In psychology, this can also relate to errors in reasoning or judgment, where individuals make conclusions that are not supported by the evidence. This might occur due to biases, misunderstandings, or incorrect application of logical principles.

• Correlational research - A type of non-experimental research method used to measure the relationship between two or more variables. In correlational research, researchers look for patterns or associations but do not manipulate variables to determine cause and effect. It is important to note that correlation does not imply causation.

• Temperament and child-parent relationships - Temperament refers to the biologically-based individual differences in emotional reactivity and self-regulation, observable in early childhood. These innate traits influence how children interact with their environment and form relationships. The fit between a child's temperament and the parenting style they receive can significantly impact the quality of child-parent relationships. For example, a child with a difficult temperament may require more sensitive and responsive parenting to foster a secure attachment and positive relationship. Conversely, mismatches between a child's temperament and parental responses can lead to conflict and strain in the relationship 

• Albert Bandura - the creator of the social learning theory. This theory states that people can learn simply by observing others in a social context. His most famous social learning experiment was the Bobo Doll experiment. (A Bobo doll is an inflatable toy that is approximately the same size as a prepubescent child. Bandura's experiment aimed to demonstrate that if children were witnesses to an aggressive display by an adult they would imitate this aggressive behavior when given the opportunity.)

• Jean Piaget - Noticed that his children were able to handle logical problems differently at different ages. As children age, their ability to handle logical problems changes. Piaget then spent years studying how cognitive development occurred on average. Piaget proposed four major stages of cognitive development, and called them:

  • (1) sensorimotor intelligence-  the period of development from birth through age two. During this initial phase of development, children utilize skills and abilities they were born with (such as looking, sucking, grasping, and listening) to learn more about the environment.

  • (2) preoperational thinking-  children can think about things symbolically, like using symbols to represent words, things, pictures, people, and ideas. As a result of being able to think symbolically, they can also: Mimic behavior (imitation).

  • (3) concrete operational thinking -  Begin to think logically about concrete events. Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass,

  • (4) formal operational thinking -  children learn more sophisticated rules of logic. They then use these rules to understand how abstract concepts work and to solve problems. The child can analyze their environment and make deductions.

    • Each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood, but only approximately.

• Hans Selye - Came up with the concept of the body's adaptive response to response to stress in three stages known as the general adaptation syndrome. Stages: alarm, resistance, exhaustion

• Causal effect of a reward on an intrinsically motivated behavior - When an external incentive, such as money or prizes, decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task. When individuals are rewarded for doing something they already enjoy, they may start to attribute their participation to the external reward rather than their own internal interest. (They will enjoy it less) 

  • If I give Tobore money to watch anime, he will like it less because he associates anime with money and not enjoyment

• Yerkes-Dodson law - states that for easy tasks, the higher the level of physiological or mental arousal, the higher the performance. But if the task at hand is difficult, a higher level of arousal will only increase performance until a certain point.

  • Feeling anxious or stress before an exam

• Limbic system - A complex system of nerves and networks in the brain, involving several areas near the edge of the cortex. It is associated with emotions, behavior, motivation, long-term memory, and olfaction. Key components include the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus, which play critical roles in regulating emotional responses and memory formation.

• Homeostasis - The tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability. This involves the regulation of various factors such as temperature, pH, and glucose levels, to maintain a stable, constant condition necessary for survival.

• Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) -The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the authoritative guide published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that provides standardized criteria for the classification and diagnosis of mental disorders. It is widely used by clinicians and researchers in the field of psychology and psychiatry to diagnose and study mental illnesses.

• Deviant - Deviance refers to thoughts, behaviors, or feelings that differ significantly from societal or cultural norms. Deviant behavior is often associated with actions that violate social rules and expectations, which can sometimes indicate underlying psychological conditions or disorders.

• 1973 Rosenhan study - was an experiment conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in which healthy individuals pretended to have hallucinations to be admitted into psychiatric hospitals. The study highlighted the potential dangers and inaccuracies of psychiatric diagnoses. The main message he wanted to get across was that it's not difficult to be misdiagnosed as being mentally ill, but it is very difficult to get rid of that diagnosis, and the meanings that it has about you, once it's been made.

• Anorexia nervosa - an eating disorder in which a person maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight; sometimes accompanied by excessive exercise.

• Catatonia -  A state of immobility and behavioral abnormality. It can involve a lack of movement and communication, and may include repetitive or purposeless overactivity, resistance to passive movement, and peculiar movements or postures.

• Attribution - The process by which individuals explain the causes of behavior and events. Attributions can be internal (dispositional) or external (situational). Internal attributions assign causality to personal factors, such as traits, abilities, or feelings, while external attributions assign causality to environmental factors.

• False-consensus effect - A cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others. Essentially, individuals believe that others think and act the same way they do more than is actually the case.

• Foot-in-the-door phenomenon - A persuasion strategy where a person first makes a small request that is likely to be agreed upon, then follows it up with a larger request. The principle is that agreeing to the small request increases the likelihood of agreeing to the larger request.

• Peripheral route to persuasion - A method of persuasion characterized by an emphasis on factors other than the content of the message itself. These factors include the attractiveness or credibility of the source, the emotional appeal, or other superficial cues. This route is contrasted with the central route to persuasion, which focuses on the content and logic of the message.