PSYCH 100 - Final

primary reinforcer

an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need EX: food or water

observational learning

learning by observing others

Classical conditioning

- A process of associative learning - associating two stimuli to anticipate events - responding with respondent behaviour (automatic response to stimulus) EX: we learn that lighting is followed by the sound of thunder, when we see lightning we automatically brace ourselves anticipating the loud thunder

What are the five components of creativity?

1. Expertise 2. Imaginative thinking skills 3. A venturesome personality 4. Intrinsic motivation 5. A creative environment

Hippocampus (memories)

A neural center located in the limbic system that helps process explicit memories (facts and events) for storage.

condition reinforcer (secondary reinforcer)

A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as a secondary reinforcer EX: money

semantic memory

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge

episodic memory

explicit memory of personally experienced events

What are the levels of processing, and how do they affect encoding?

Depth of processing affects long-term retention. 1) Shallow processing 2) Deep processing We also more easily remember material that is personally meaningful—the self-reference effect.

How do emotions affect our memory processing?

Emotional arousal causes an outpouring of stress hormones, which leads to activity in the brain's memory-forming areas. Significantly stressful events can trigger very clear flashbulb memories.

What are the different types of reinforcement schedules?

Fixed-ratio schedules reinforce behaviors after a set number of responses variable-ratio schedules, after an unpredictable number Fixed-interval schedules reinforce behaviors after set time periods variable-interval schedules, after unpredictable time periods.

Connectionism information-processing model

Focuses on multi-track, parallel processing; views memories as products of interconnected neural networks

Which parts of the brain are important for implicit memory processing, and which parts play a key role in explicit memory processing?

Implicit - cerebellum and basal ganglia Explicit - frontal lobes and hippocampus

What is the violence-viewing effect?

Media violence can contribute to aggression. This violence-viewing effect may be prompted by imitation and desensitization. Correlation does not equal causation, but study participants have reacted more cruelly when they have viewed violence (instead of entertaining nonviolence).

What do the abbreviations stand for? NS, US, UR, CS, CR

NS - neural stimulus US - unconditioned stimulus UR - unconditioned response CS - conditioned stimulus CR - conditioned response

Draw a diagram of memory

Plus: Automatic (sensory to long term) Working memory (short term)

retrival cues

cues associated with the original learning that facilitate the retrieval of memories

When a US no longer follows the CS, and the CR becomes weakened, this is called ______________

extinction

infantile amnesia

reactions and skills learned during our first four years continue into our adult lives, though we cannot consciously remember learning these associations and skills

operant conditioning

- a process of associative learning - learning to associate behaviour with its consequence, behaviour is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher - respond with operant behaviour (behaviour that operates on the environment, producing consequences) EX: a seal associating doing "tricks" (clapping and barking) with a treat

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list

anterograde amnesia vs retrograde amnesia

Can't remember new stuff AFTER the head injury vs Can't remember stuff BEFORE head injury

convergent and divergent thinking

Divergent (expanding): A cognitive process (a mode of critical thinking) in which a person generates many unique, creative responses to a single question or problem Convergent (narrowing): A cognitive process (a mode of critical thinking) in which a person attempts to find a single, correct answer to a problem.

implicit memory

Retention of: procedural/learned skills - how to ride a bike classically conditioned associations (independent of conscious recollection) - automatically tensing up at a dog barking because you had a bad experience w dog

How does sensory memory work?

Sensory memory feeds some information into working memory for active processing there. 1) Iconic memory (EYEconic) - a brief memory of visual stimuli 2) Echoic memory - brief memory of auditory stimuli

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new long-term declarative/explicit memories ** can still form implicit memories (skills)

retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past caused by: - head injury or emotional trauma, often temporary - severe brain damage

Shaping

an operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior

Reinforcement

in operant conditioning, increasing the behaviour whether a negative or positive reinforcement

Salivating in response to a tone paired with food is a(n) __________ behavior; pressing a bar to obtain food is a(n) __________ behavior.

respondent, operant

You will experience less _______ (proactive/retroactive) interference if you learn new material in the hour before sleep than you will if you learn it before turning to another subject

retroactive

positive punishment

the administration of a stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior's recurring EX: spraying water on a barking dog or giving someone a ticket for speeding

Which brain area responds to stress hormones by helping to create stronger memories?

the amygdala

Extinction (classical and operant conditioning)

the diminishing of a conditioned response - occurs in classical conditioning, if the CS appears repeatedly by itself without the US - occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced

encoding specificity principle

the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it

automatic processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information Such as: a) space - recalling you left your phone on the bookshelf b) time - recalling timeline leading up to when you lost your phone c) frequency - recalling you ran into "Amy" three times today

What cognitive strategies assist our problem-solving?

Strategy Based: 1) Trial and Error 2) Algorithm: is a step by step strategy for solving a problem, methodically leading to a specific solution ex: decoding an anagram (SPLOYOCHYG) by trying out all 907,200 possible sequences 3) Heuristic: a simply thinking strategy/principle which generates a solution quickly but possibly in error ex: decoding an anagram buy grouping letters that you know can be next to each other -> CH and GY, and knowing what can't be grouped together -> YY Non-Strategy Based: 1) Insight: a sudden realization of a problem's solution

What are the two basic functions of working memory?

- Active processing of incoming visual and auditory informations - Focusing our spotlight of attention

What are the basic types of reinforcers?

- Primary reinforcers (such as receiving food when hungry or having nausea end during an illness) are innately satisfying—no learning is required. - Conditioned (or secondary) reinforcers (such as cash) are satisfying because we have learned to associate them with more basic rewards (such as the food or medicine we buy with them). - Immediate reinforcers (such as a purchased treat) offer immediate payback - Delayed reinforcers (such as a paycheck) require the ability to delay gratification.

What brain areas are involved in language processing and speech?

1) Broca's area: left frontal lobe, damage leads to difficulty in putting words together in sentences or even speaking single words (can sing a song) 2) Wernicke's area: left temporal lobe, damage leads to difficulty comprehending speech, producing coherent speech

effortful processing strategies

1) Chunking - organizing items into familiar manageable units (often automatic) 2) Mnemonics - memory aids, technique of using vivid imagery and organizational devices (such as acronyms) 3) Hierarchies - arranging ideas/info in hierarchie 4) Spacing effect - distributed practice sessions 5) Testing effect - finding and consciously retrieving info rather than rereading info, enhances memory

What processes are involved in information-processing models?

1) Encoding - getting info to brain 2) Storage - retain info 3) Retrieval - later get info back out

What are the three ways we forget, and how does each of these happen?

1) Encoding Failure: normal forgetting, unattended info never entered(encoded) into the memory system - age and attention contribute to encoding failure 2) Storage Decay: info fades from memory 3) Retrieval Failure: cannot access stored info accurately, sometimes due to interference or motivated forgetting

What obstacles hinder our problem solving?

1) Fixation: tendency to get stuck in one way of thinking, an inability to see a problem from a new perspective - Mental Set: tendency to approach problems using a mindset (procedures and methods) that has worked previously 2) Confirmation Bias: a tendency to search for info that supports and ignore info that doesn't support our biases

What are the structural components of a language?

1) Phonemes are a language's basic units of sound ex: cats has 4 phonemes -> c, a, t, s 2) Morphemes are the elementary units of meaning ex: cats has 2 morphemes -> cat, s 3) Grammar—the system of rules that enables us to communicate—includes semantics (rules for deriving meaning) and syntax (rules for ordering words into sentences).

How does punishment affect behavior?

1) Punishment can have undesirable side effects, such as suppressing rather than changing unwanted behaviours 2) encouraging discrimination (so that the undesirable behaviour appears when the punisher is not present) 3) teaching aggression 4) fostering depression and feelings of helplessness. 5) creating fear

When do we learn language? and what are the stages?

1) Receptive language: Infant ability to understand what is said to them around 4 months 2) Production language: Infant's ability to produce words begins around 10 months.

1) People who send spam are reinforced by which schedule? 2) Home bakers checking the oven to see if the cookies are done are on which schedule? 3) Sandwich shops that offer a free sandwich after every 10 sandwiches purchased are using which reinforcement schedule?

1) Variable-ratio schedule 2) Fixed-interval schedule 3) Fixed-ratio schedule

Match the examples (1-5) to the appropriate underlying learning principle (a-e): a. Classical conditioning b. Operant conditioning c. Latent learning d. Observational learning e. Biological predispositions 1. Knowing the way from your bed to the bathroom in the dark 2. Your little brothers getting in a fight after watching a violent action movie 3. Salivating when you smell brownies in the oven 4. Disliking the taste of chili after being violently sick a few hours after eating chili 5. Your dog racing to greet you on your arrival home

1) c 2) d 3) a 4) e 5) b

The first step of classical conditioning, when an NS becomes a CS, is called _____________

Acquisition

what are some basic forms of learning?

Associative learning - we learn that certain events occur together. Classical conditioning - we learn to associate two or more stimuli. Automatically responding to stimuli we do not control is called respondent behavior. Operant conditioning - we learn to associate a response and its consequences. These associations produce operant behaviors. Cognitive learning - we acquire mental information that guides our behavior. For example, in observational learning, we learn new behaviors by observing events and watching others.

What is the difference between automatic and effortful processing and what are some examples of each?

Automatic processing occurs unconsciously for things like sequence and frequency of a day's events, and reading and comprehending words in our own languages Effortful processing requires attention and awareness and happens, for example, when we work hard to learn new material in class or new lines for a play

how can the availability and representative heuristics influence our decisions and judgments?

Availability Heuristics: we judge the likelihood of things based on how readily they come to mind Ex: I can think of more words that start with the letter r rather than have the letter r as the third letter in the word, therefore there are more words that start with the letter r (not true) Ex 2: we fear sharks more than heart disease even though heart disease kills 800k times more people each year Representative Heuristics: the likelihood of events based on how well they match a memory of a prototype, stereotype or average Ex: is Tommy a psychology major or engineering major? Most guess engineering major because of a stereotype but there are way more psychology majors and therefore a greater likelihood for Tommy to be a psych major

What is the impact of prosocial modeling and of antisocial modeling?

Children tend to imitate what a model does and says, whether the behavior being modeled is prosocial (positive, constructive, and helpful) or antisocial. If a model's actions and words are inconsistent, children may imitate the hypocrisy they observe.

How did Pavlov's experiment show the components of classical conditioning?

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism comes to associate stimuli and anticipate events. A UR is an event that occurs naturally (such as salivation), in response to some stimulus. A US is something that naturally and automatically (without learning) triggers the unlearned response (as food in the mouth triggers salivation). A CS is originally an NS (neutral stimulus, such as a tone) that, after association with a US (such as food) comes to trigger a CR. A CR is the learned response (salivating) to the originally neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus.

what are concepts and what are their function?

Concepts are the mental grouping of similar things Ex: a chair can include -> recliner, a stool, a baby's high chair etc We build concepts around prototypes: the mental image we have that best represents a category Ex: easier to see that a crow is a better prototype for a bird than a penguin

What do we know about thinking in other species?

Evidence from studies of various species shows that many other animals use: - concepts - numbers - tools - transmit learning from one generation to the next (cultural transmission) Like humans, some other species show insight, self- awareness, altruism, cooperation, and grief.

Why are habits, such as having something sweet with that cup of coffee, so hard to break?

Habits form when we repeat behaviours in a given context, as a result learn associations (often with or without awareness). For example, we may have eaten a sweet pastry with a cup of coffee often enough to associate the flavour of coffee with the treat, so that the coffee alone just doesn't seem right anymore

How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

Human brain processes information on dual tracks, consciously and unconsciously. Explicit (declarative) memories—our conscious memories of facts and experiences—form through effortful processing, which requires conscious effort and attention. Implicit (nondeclarative) memories—of skills and classically conditioned associations—happen without our awareness, through automatic processing.

How do cognitive processes affect classical and operant conditioning?

In classical conditioning, animals may learn when to expect a US and may be aware of the link between stimuli and responses. In operant conditioning, cognitive mapping and latent learning research demonstrate the importance of cognitive processes in learning. Other research shows that excessive rewards (driving extrinsic motivation) can undermine intrinsic motivation.

acquisition

In classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.

How do changes at the synapse level affect our memory processing?

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is the neural basis of learning. In LTP, neurons become more efficient at releasing and sensing the presence of neurotransmitters, and more connections develop between neurons.

How does operant conditioning differ from classical conditioning?

In operant conditioning, an organism learns associations between its own behavior and resulting events; this form of conditioning involves operant behavior (behavior that operates on the environment, producing rewarding or punishing consequences). In classical conditioning, the organism forms associations between stimuli—events it does not control; this form of conditioning involves respondent behavior (automatic responses to some stimulus).

negative reinforcement

Increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. (Note: negative reinforcement is not punishment.) EX: fastening a seat beat to end loud beeping

Posistive reinforcement

Increasing behaviours by presenting positive reinforcers. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengths the response EX: giving a treat to a dog after he does a trick

What was behaviorism's view of learning?

Ivan Pavlov's work gave the foundation for behaviourism. the view that psychology: 1) should be an objective science that 2) studies behaviour without reference to mental processes - believed that the basic laws of learning are the same for all species, including humans

Explicit memories (declarative memories)

Retention and declaration of: 1) Semantic memory - facts and general knowledge 2) Episodic memory - personally experienced events

misinformation effect & imagination effect

Misinformation Effect: when misleading information has corrupted one's memory of an event Imagination Effect: repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories

An experimenter sounds a tone just before delivering an air puff to your blinking eye. After several repetitions, you blink to the tone alone. What is the NS? The US? The UR? The CS? The CR?

NS - tone before conditioning US - air puff UR - blinking to air puff CS - tone after conditioning CR - blinking to tone

How does observational learning differ from associative learning?

Observational learning involves learning by watching and imitating, rather than learning associations between different events. We learn to anticipate a behavior's consequences because we experience vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment.

How may observational learning be enabled by neural mirroring?

Our brain's frontal lobes have a demonstrated ability to mirror the activity of another's brain, which some psychologists believe is enabled by mirror neurons; others argue it may be more due to the brain's distributed brain networks.

What is the capacity of long-term memory? Are our long-term memories processed and stored in specific locations?

Our long-term memory capacity is essentially unlimited. Memories are not stored intact in the brain in single spots. Many parts of the brain interact as we encode, store, and retrieve memories.

How are our decisions and judgments affected by overconfidence, belief perseverance, and framing?

Overconfidence: lead us to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs Belief Perseverance: cause us to cling to our beliefs, even if they have been discredited Framing: the way a question or statement is presented. Subtle differences in presentation can dramatically alter our responses

Why does Pavlov's work remain so important?

Pavlov taught us that significant psychological phenomena can be studied objectively, and that classical conditioning is a basic form of learning that applies to all species.

How does punishment differ from negative reinforcement?

Punishment administers an undesirable consequence (such as spanking) or withdraws something desirable (such as taking away a favorite toy) to decrease the frequency of a behavior (a child's disobedience). Negative reinforcement (taking an aspirin) removes an aversive stimulus (a headache). This desired consequence (freedom from pain) increases the likelihood that the behavior (taking aspirin to end pain) will be repeated.

If you want to be sure to remember what you're learning for an upcoming test, would it be better to use recall or recognition to check your memory?

Recall is better because it is harder than recognizing it.

How do positive and negative reinforcement differ?

Reinforcement is any consequence that strengthens behavior. Positive reinforcement adds a desirable stimulus to increase the frequency of a behavior. Negative reinforcement reduces or removes an aversive stimulus to increase the frequency of a behavior.

What is our short-term memory capacity?

Short-term memory capacity is about seven items, plus or minus two, but this information disappears from memory quickly without rehearsal. Our working memory capacity for active processing varies, depending on age, intelligence level, and other factors.

extrinsic motivation

a desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment

How did Garcia and Koelling's taste-aversion studies help disprove Gregory Kimble's early claim that "just about any activity of which the organism is capable can be conditioned . . . to any stimulus that the organism can perceive"?

They demonstrated that rats may learn an aversion to tastes, on which their survival depends, but not to sights our sounds

law of effect

Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely

How is memory measured?

Three measures of retention: 1) recall - retrieving info that was learned earlier on (fill in the blank test) 2) recognition - identifying items previously learned (multiple-choice test) 3) relearning - learning something more quickly the second time or later on (picking up piano again, already learnt it)

In Watson and Rayner's experiment, "Little Albert" learned to fear a white rat after repeatedly experiencing a loud noise as the rat was presented. In these experiments, what was the US, UR, NS, CS and CR?

US - loud noise UR - fear response to the noise NS - rat before it was paired with the noise CS - the rat after th pairing CR - the fear of the rat

If the aroma of a baking cake sets your mouth to watering, what is the US, the CS and the CR?

US - the cake, including taste CS - the associated arome CR - salivation to the aroma

cognitive map

a mental representation of the layout of one's environment. EX: after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it.

How does the working memory concept update the classic Atkinson-Shiffrin three-stage information-processing model?

Working memory emphasizes the active processing that we now know takes place in Atkinson-Shiffrin's short term memory stage. Working memory place a huge role in processing new info and connecting it o previously stored info.

Preparedness

a biological predisposition to learn associations, such as between taste and nausea, that have survival value

flashbulb memory

a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

intrinsic motivation

a desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake

higher-order conditioning

a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus. EX: an animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone. (Also called second-order conditioning.) EX: we associate a guard dog with a previous dog bite. if something else like the sound of a barking dog brings the guard dog to mind then the bark alone may make us feel afraid

reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thoughts we often use instead of systematic reasoning

punishment

an event that decreases the behavior that it follows

respondant behavior

automatic response to a stimulus

operant behavior

behaviour that operates on the environment, producing consequences

What is retrieval failure (memory loss) and how are the two ways it can happen?

cannot access stored info accurately, sometimes due to: 1) Interference - Proactive: older memory makes it more difficult to remember new information ex: old combination lock password interfere with learning a new combo lock password - Retroactive: new learning disrupts memory for older information ex: someone singing new lyrics to old tune -> interfere with trying to remember old lyrics 2) Motivated Forgetting - Freud believed memory can be purposefully repressed to protect oneself - Today, more likely that we can forget neutral info better than emotional info

fixed-interval schedule

in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed (every so often) EX: tuesday discount prices

What roles do the frontal lobes and hippocampus play in memory processing?

dedicated to explicit memory formation. Many brain regions send information to the frontal lobes for processing. The hippocampus, registers and temporarily holds elements of explicit memories (semantic or episodic) before moving them to other brain regions for long-term storage. The neural storage of long-term memories is called memory consolidation.

What roles do the cerebellum and basal ganglia play in memory processing?

dedicated to implicit memory formation. Cerebellum is important for storing classically conditioned memories. Basal ganglia are involved in motor movement and help form procedural memories for skills.

shallow processing

encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words

deep processing (semantic encoding)

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention

effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

source amnesia

faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined (mis-recalling how we learned about something) Source amnesia can help to explain deja vu

mirror neurons

frontal lobe neurons that some scientists believe fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy

aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding). Ex: - the ability to speak but not read - to produce words in a song but not in conversation - speak but not repeat - producing words in jumbled order

neural stimulus (NS)

in classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning

unconditioned stimulus (US)

in classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers an unconditioned response (UR)

conditioned stimulus

in classical conditioning, an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR)

unconditioned response (UR)

in classical conditioning, an unlearned, naturally occurring response (such as salivation) to an unconditioned stimulus (US) (such as food in the mouth)

conditioned response

in classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS)

variable-ratio schedule

in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses (after unpredictable number of times) EX: slot machine

variable-interval schedule

in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals (unpredictably often) EX: checking our phone for a message

fixed-ratio schedule

in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses (every so many) EX: buy 10 coffees, get one free

Generalization

is the tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to a CS the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses (in operant conditioning, generalization occurs when responses learned in one situation occur in other similar situations) EX: dog drooling when rubbed would also drool a bit when scratched

associative learning

learning that certain events occur together, the processes of associative learning is called conditioning and takes two forms: 1) Classical conditioning (PRIOR) - associating two stimuli to anticipate events, responding with respondent behaviour 2) Operant conditioning (POST) - learn to associate our behaviour with a consequence, produce operant behaviours

latent learning

learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it

prosocial behavior

positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior

Multiple-choice questions test our _________. Fill-in-the-blank questions test our __________.

recognition; recall

vicarious reinforcement/punishment

reinforcement or punishment experienced by models that affect the willingness of others to perform the behaviours they learned by observing those models

The three processing stages in the Atkinson-Shiffrin model

sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

cognitive learning

the acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language

Priming (w/ example)

the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory Ex: after seeing the word rabbit, when we hear "hair/hare" we are more likely to spell hare, even if we don't recall seeing the word rabbit

discriminaiton

the learned ability to distinguish between a CS and other irrelevant stimuli In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus In operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced

memory consolidation

the neural storage of a long-term memory

How do we define learning?

the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors

Modeling

the process of observing and imitating a behavior

spontaneous recovery

the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response

negative punishment

the removal of a stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior's recurring EX: taking away a disobeying teen's phone privileges

instinctive drift

the tendency of learned behavior to gradually revert to biologically predisposed patterns

moon congruent memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood