Exam 3 study guide
Reasoning vs. Decision-Making
- Reasoning: the mental activity of transforming information to reach a conclusion. This type of thinking uses reason - weighing arguments, applying rules of logic, and coming up with sound conclusions. Involved in problem solving and decision making. Can be either inductive or deductive. Involves following established rules to reach a sound conclusion - Decision Making: involves evaluating alternatives and choosing among them. Differs from reasoning. Such rules may not exist, some of the information might be missing, and we might not trust all of the information we have. It's less certain than reasoning. It means weighing information and coming to some conclusion that we feel will maximize our outcome
Types of stimuli and responses in classical conditioning
- Unconditioned Stimulus (US) : a stimulus that produces a response without prior learning - Unconditioned Response (UR) : an unlearned reaction that's automatically elicited by the US. Involuntary; they happen in response to a stimulus without conscious effort - Conditioned Stimulus (CS) : a previously neutral stimulus that eventually elicits a conditioned response after being paired with the US - Conditioned Response (CR) : the learned response to the CS that occurs after CS-US pairing. sometimes quite similar to UR, but typically weaker - Neutral Stimulus (NS) : stimulus that doesn't evoke a response in the experiment
Role of cultural biases in intelligence tests
- early tests were culturally biased, favoring people who were from urban rather than rural environments, of middle rather than low socioeconomic status, and of non-Latino White rather than Black race/ethnicity - new tests try to accurately reflect a person's intelligence, regardless of cultural background - culture-fair tests : intelligence tests that are intended to be culturally unbiased
Primacy vs. Recency Effects
- primacy: an individual's tendency to better remember the 1st piece of information they encounter than the information they receive later on recency: cognitive bias in which those items, ideas, or arguments that came last are remembered more clearly than those that came first
Characteristics of cognitive flexibility
- recognizing that options are available and adapting to the situation - open-mindedness: being receptive to other ways of looking at things - open to questioning - evaluates arguments without being biased by previous beliefs - play with problems
Gardener's types of intelligence
- verbal: the ability to think in words and use language to express meaning (author, journalist, speaker) - mathematical: the ability to carry out mathematical operations (scientist, engineer, accountant) - spatial: the ability to think 3-dimensionally (architect, artist, sailor) - bodily-kinesthetic: the ability to manipulate objects and to be physically adept (surgeon, /craftsperson, dancer, athlete) - musical: the ability to be sensitive to pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone (composer, musician) - interpersonal: the ability to understand and interact effectively with others (teacher, mental health professional) - intrapersonal: the ability to understand oneself (theologian, psychologist) - naturalist: the ability to observe patterns in nature and understand natural and human-made systems (farmer, botanist, ecologist, landscaper) - existentialist: the ability to grapple with the big questions of human experience, such as the meaning of life and death, with special sensitivity to issues of spirituality (probably philosopher)
Law of effect
-states that behaviors followed by pleasant outcomes are strengthened and that behaviors followed by unpleasant outcomes are weakened - profoundly important because it presents the basic idea that the consequences of a behavior influence the likelihood of that behavior's recurrence - a behavior can be followed by something good or bad and the probability that a behavior will be repeated depends on these outcomes
Types of cognitive biases
1. confirmation bias: the tendency to search for and use information that supports our ideas rather than refutes them. Can also become biased because we tend to seek out and listen to people whose views confirm our own while avoiding those with dissenting views. Seeking out and believing information that supports one's own beliefs 2. hindsight bias: the tendency to report falsely, after the fact, that we accurately predicted an outcome. People tend to view events that have happened as being more predictable than they actually were. 3. availability heuristic: a prediction about the probability of an event based on the ease of recalling or imagining similar events. Events that are cognitively available are believed to be more likely to happen. Plane crashes don't happen nearly as much as car accidents, but we tend to worry more about plane crashes since that gets reported more. 4. base rate neglect: tendency to ignore information about general principles in favor of very specific information. 75 average on test grade, but if student studied more you might guess a higher average rather than the best guess 5. representativeness heuristic: tendency to make judgments about group membership based on physical appearance or the match between a person and one's stereotype of a group rather than on available base rate information. A stereotype is the use of concepts to make generalizations about a group of people
Operant conditioning and types of reinforcement
A form of associative learning in which the consequences of a behavior change the probability of the behavior being repeated - reinforcement: the process by which a stimulus or event (a reinforcer) following a particular behavior increases the probability that the behavior will happen again - positive reinforcement: frequency of a behavior increases because it's followed by a desirable stimulus. EX: if someone you meet smiles at you after you say "hello, how are you?" and you keep talking, the smile has reinforced your talking - negative reinforcement: frequency of a behavior increases because it's followed by the removal of something undesirable. EX: if a parent nagged you to clean out the garage and kept nagging until you cleaned out the garage, your response (cleaning out the garage) removed the unpleasant stimulus (the nagging) - reinforcements involve rewarding behavior - but they do so in different ways
Applicability of behaviorism principles to human and nonhuman learning
Behaviorism: a theory of learning that focuses solely on observable behaviors, discounting the importance of mental activity such as thinking, wishing, and hoping - maintains that the principles of learning are the same whether we're talking about humans or nonhuman animals. - associative learning - occurs when an organism makes a connection, or an association, between 2 events (classical and operant conditioning) - observation learning - occurs when a person observes and imitates another's behavior (relies on mental processes: the learner has to pay attention, remember, and reproduce what the model did)
Convergent vs. Divergent Thinking
CONVERGENT - produces the single best solution to a problem - means taking all those possibilities that divergent thinking comes up with and finding the right one for the job - best when a problem has only one right answer DIVERGENT - produces many solutions to the same problem - occurs during brainstorming, which happens when people openly throw out a range of possible solutions to a problem, even some that might seem goofy, laughable, or really "out there" - producing a lot of possible solutions, however, is ineffective unless we identify the solution that's best
Discrimination vs. generalization vs. extinction in classical and operant conditioning
Classical Conditioning - generalization : the tendency of a new stimulus that's similar to the original CS to elicit a response that's similar to the CR. Once we learn the association between a given CS (a bee) and a particular US (the pain of being stung), we don't have to learn it all over again when a similar stimulus presents itself (a wasp / hornet) - discrimination : the process of learning to respond to certain stimuli and not others. EX: someone stung by a bee, won't typically run screaming from a fly - extinction : the weakening of the CR when the US is absent. Without continued associated with the US, the CS loses its power to produce the CR - spontaneous recovery : the process by which a conditioned response can recur after a time delay, without further conditioning Operant Conditioning - generalization : performing a reinforced behavior in a different situation. EX: the student that gets a good math grade by studying every night starts to do the same for other subjects - discrimination : responding appropriately to stimuli that signal that a behavior will or won't be reinforced. EX: how a service dog "knows" when they're working - extinction : occurs when a behavior's no longer reinforced and decreases in frequency EX: soda machine "eating" your coins, you stop putting coins in
episodic vs semantic memory
EPISODIC : the retention of information about the where, when, and what of life's happenings - how we remember life's episodes. It's autobiographical. EX: includes details of where you were when your younger sibling was born, what happened on your 1st date, and what you ate for breakfast this morning. Is essentially about the episodes or stories we collect in our life. SEMANTIC : a type of explicit memory pertaining to a person's knowledge about the world. It includes your areas of expertise, general knowledge of the sort you're learning in school, and everyday knowledge about the meaning of words, famous individuals, important places, and common things. EX: is involved in a person's knowledge of chess, geometry, and of who LeBron James and Simone Biles are. Seems to be independent of an individual's personal identity with the past. You can access a fact and have no idea when and where you learned it.
Explicit vs. Implicit memory
EXPLICIT - (declarative memory) the conscious recollection of information, such as specific facts and events and, at least in humans, information that can be verbally communicated. EX: recounting the events in a movie you've seen and recalling the names of the justices on the US Supreme Court. Subtypes are Episodic and Semantic memory. IMPLICIT - (nondeclarative memory) another type of long-term memory is related nonconsciously remembering skills and sensory perceptions rather than consciously remembering facts. Memory in which behavior is affected by prior experience without a conscious recollection of that experience. Comes into play, for ex, in the skills of playing tennis and snowboarding, or the physical act of text messaging. Another ex is the repetition in your mind of a song you heard in the supermarket, even though you didn't notice the song playing. This memory explains why you might find yourself knowing all the words to a song you hate, you heard it so many times that you've memorized it without even trying. Subtypes are procedural memory, classical conditioning and priming
Advantages of rehearsal in encoding
Encoding: the process by which information gets into memory storage - rehearsal improves short-term memory, it's the conscious repetition of information. Repeating the information over and over in your head to keep it in memory. - If rehearsal isn't interrupted, information can be retained indefinitely. - It's often verbal, giving the impression of an inner voice, but can also be visual or spatial, giving the impression of a private inner eye - works best when we must briefly remember a list of numbers or items such as entrees from a menu
Fixed vs. Growth mindsets in learning
FIXED - they believe that their qualities are carved in stone and can't change - failure means lack of ability GROWTH - they believe their qualities can change and improve through their effort - failure tells the person what they still need to learn
Differences between human and computer memory
Human memory - Input --> brain, mind, cognition (memory, problem solving, reasoning, consciousness) --> Output Computer memory - Input --> hardware and software (memory operations) --> Output SIMILARITIES - the brain is the computer's hardware and cognition is the computer's software - sensory and perceptual systems provide an "input channel" similar to the way date are entered into a computer - as input (information) comes into the mind, mental processes, or operations, act on it, just as the computer's software acts on data - the processed input generates information that remains in memory in much the same way a computer stores what it's worked on - the information is retrieved form memory and "printed out" or "displayed" (so to speak) as an observable response DIFFERENCES - computers provide a concrete, but oversimplified, model of human information processing. - most computers receive information from a human who's already coded the information and removed much of its messiness. - in contrast, each brain cell, or neuron, can respond to ambiguous information transmitted through sensory receptors such as the eyes and ears - computers can perform complex numerical calculations much faster and more accurately than humans. They can apply and follow rules more consistently and with fewer errors than humans and can represent complex mathematical patterns better than humans - the human brain is incredibly flexible, able to learn new rules, relationships, concepts, and patterns that it can generalize to novel situations - computers are more limited in their ability to learn, to change, and to generalize - computers don't have the means to develop new learning goals - human mind is aware of itself; the computer isn't
IQ scoring
MA (mental age) - an individual's level of mental development relative to that of others - because cognitive ability increases with age, we might expect a child with an intellectual disability to perform like a typically developing child of a younger age CA (chronological age) - age from birth IQ = (MA/CA) x 100
Role of mindfulness and open-mindedness in critical thinking
MINDFULNESS - being alert and mentally present for one's everyday activities. - The mindful person maintains an active awareness of the circumstances of life. - When we're mindful, we're engaged mentally in what's happening to us. - Key to critical thinking OPEN-MINDEDNESS - being receptive to other ways of looking at things - simple openness to other viewpoints can help to keep us from jumping to conclusions - actively open-minded thinking: thinking that is flexible and open to questioning - this thinking style means a person evaluates arguments without being biased by previous beliefs - people who engage in active open-minded thinking tend to be less susceptible to biases in their conclusions
Concepts and Priming
PRIMING : type of implicit memory. The activation of information that people already have in storage to help them remember new information better and faster. It's assumed to be an unconscious process. It occurs when something in the environment evokes a response in memory - such as the activation of a particular concept. Priming a term or concept makes it more available in memory. Priming a concept (achievement) can influence behavior (performance)
Proactive vs. Retroactive Interference
PROACTIVE - occurs when material that was learned earlier disrupts the recall of material learned later - pro "forward in time" - EX: suppose you had a good friend 10 years ago names Prudence and then last night you met someone name Patience. You might find yourself calling your new friend Prudence because the old information (Prudence) interferes with retrieval of new information (Patience) RETROACTIVE - occurs when newer material disrupts the retrieval of older information - retro "backward in time"
Characteristics and limits of sensory, short-term, and long-term memory
SENSORY - holds information from the world in its original sensory form for only an instant, not much longer than the brief time it's exposed to the visual, auditory, and other senses - it's very rich and detailed, but we lose the information in it quickly unless we use strategies that transfer it into short-term or long-term memory - you process more stimuli at this level than you consciously notice - echoic memory and iconic memory SHORT-TERM - a limited capacity memory system in which information is usually retained for only as long as 30 secs unless we use strategies to retain it longer - memory span, chunking and rehearsal - you don't just store information in this memory; you attend to it, manipulate it, and use it to solve problems LONG-TERM - relatively permanent type of memory that stores huge amounts of information for a long time - capacity is staggering; virtually unlimited\ - explicit and implicit memory
Types of reinforcement schedules in operant conditioning
Schedules of Reinforcement : specific patterns that determine when a behavior will be reinforced 1. Fixed Ratio - reinforces a behavior after a set number of behaviors. EX: factory might require a line worker to produce a certain number of items in order to get paid a particular amount 2. Variable Ratio - behaviors are rewarded an average number of times but on an unpredictable basis. EX: slot machine 3. Fixed Interval - reinforces the 1st appropriate behavior after a fixed amount of time has passed. EX: dog waiting to be fed before it's scheduled meal time at 5PM 4. Variable Interval - timetable in which a behavior is reinforced after a variable amount of time has elapsed. EX: pop quizzes - ratio schedule : centers on the number of behaviors that must be performed prior to reward - interval schedule : refers to the amount of time that must pass before a behavior is rewarded
Shallow vs. Deep levels of processing in encoding
Shallow Processing - engage with information superficially - means noting the physical features of a stimulus, such as the shapes of the letters in the word 'mom'. Deep Processing - really getting into engaging with information - entails thinking about the meaning of a stimulus - for instance, thinking about the meaning of the word 'mom' , about your own mother, her face, and her special qualities
Effective use of subgoals in planning
Subgoals : intermediate goals or intermediate problems we devise to put us in a better position for reaching a final goal or solution. - in establishing the subgoals for meeting the deadline, you work backwards - working backward in establishing subgoals is a good strategy. - 1st create the subgoal that's closest to the final goal and then work backword to the subgoal that's closest to the beginning of the problem-solving effort
Verbal vs. Visual Encoding
Verbal Code - word or label Visual Code - highly detailed and distinctive, produces better memory than verbal - dual code hypothesis: claims that memory for pictures is better than memory for words because pictures - at least those that can be named - are stored as both image codes and verbal codes
Counterconditioning
a classical conditioning procedure for changing the relationship between a CS and its CR. - therapists use this to break apart the association between certain stimuli and positive feelings
Insight learning
a form of problem solving in which the organism develops a sudden insight into or understanding of a problem's solution - appears to entail both gradual and sudden processes and understanding how these lead to problem solving continues to fascinate psychologists
Scripts
a schema for an event - often have information about physical features, people, and typical occurrences - this kind of info is helpful when people need to figure out what's happening around them - EX: if you're enjoying your after-dinner coffee in an upscale restaurant and someone in a tuxedo comes over and puts a piece on the table, your script tells you that the waiters has just given you the check - scripts help to organize our storage of memories about events
Brain structures and role in memory
ex: frontal lobe, amygdala... EXPLICIT MEMORY - hippocampus - sometimes called the gateway to memory because it's so vital to explicit memories. Triggers the reinstatement of the brain processes associated with the experience we're remembering - amygdala - plays important role in explicit memory - temporal lobes - info is transmitted from the hippocampus to the frontal lobes, which are involved in both retrospective memory (remembering things from the past) and prospective memory (remembering things that you need to do in the future). Left frontal lobe is especially active when we encode new information into the memory. Right frontal lobe is more active when we subsequently retrieve it IMPLICIT MEMORY - hippocampus is important - temporal lobes - especially important for priming - cerebellum - (structure at the back and toward the bottom of the brain) role in coordination and balance. Active in the implicit memory required to perform skills
