ch4 review

acquire to gain or obtain for yourself analogical representation mental pictures that have a direct relationship to the actual object you are thinking about. category a grouping of concepts chunking grouping items into smaller segments classical conditioning learning new associations by pairing two stimuli concept an idea or thought conception your personal interpretation of your senses or thoughts consciousness awareness of your existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings decode to figure out or unscramble hidden meaning deprivation lacking; going without encoding the process of placing information into the mind false memory a recovered memory that is not true hierarchy a ranking system hippocampus part of the brain that aids long-term memory incidental learning learning that occurs without intention insomnia inability to fall or stay asleep intentional learning deliberately placing information into your mind interference anything that inhibits your brain's ability to remember interpretation your personal meaning given to places, events, situations, and people latent content the hidden aspects of a dream that you must figure out learning relatively permanent changes of behavior resulting from experience long-term memory permanent storage of information manifest content the aspects of a dream or fantasy that you remember modeling patterning your behavior after someone else morpheme a meaningful unit of language (words) observational learning learning by watching other people operant conditioning repeating behaviors based on outcome perception understanding something through your mind or the senses performance carrying out or acting on an expectation or duty phoneme the basic unit of meaning (letters and sounds) punishment event that creates likelihood that a behavior will be stopped recovered memory remembering long-forgotten memories with someone's help rehearsal a form of practice to keep information in the memory reinforcement an event that encourages behavior to happen again REM rapid eye moment; stage of sleep during which a person dreams repression moving difficult information from the conscious to the unconscious mind retrograde amnesia inability to remember events that happened prior to the brain injury rote from memory sensory memory momentary storage of information shaping giving reinforcement to the smaller behaviors that eventually make up the new behavior short-term memory temporary storage of information stimulus anything that causes a response symbolic representation mental pictures that have no direct relationship to the actual object you are thinking about vicarious learning through the experience of others without actually doing the action

Basic Elements that Make a Thought Before ever speaking a whole sentence or knowing that several words are paired together to make a whole meaning, young children see and think about the world in very basic terms. Those basic building blocks for seeing the world—whether it's speaking or thinking—lay the foundation for advancing your thoughts. At a very basic level, thinking involves mental images—pictures in your mind. Mental images help you understand and make sense of your surroundings. They can be either symbolic or analogical. Symbolic Representations. Symbolic representations are mental pictures that have no direct relationship to the actual object you are thinking about. Instead, these mental pictures are connected by themes that are meaningful to you. Analogical Representations. Analogical representations are mental pictures that have a direct relationship to the actual object you are thinking about. Do cows have their ears on the top or side of their heads? Rather than thinking symbolically about a cow and his ears (tiny, smelly, leather), analogical representations of the cow's ears involve thinking of an actual cow. SHOW TRANSCRIPT Concepts and Categories What's a category and what's a concept ? A concept is a big idea. A category is a way to group those big ideas. If your mom handed you a pile of old family shoes and said, "Please categorize them," you likely would have many options for how to group those shoes. All the shoes that are similar in one specific way must be grouped together. You can separate the women's shoes from the men's. Or you can categorize the shoes by which ones have shoelaces and which don't. Concept Category shifting continental plates earthquakes, temblors, aftershocks, Richter Scale ratings book binding hardback, paperback, spiral-bound, three-hole-punched running races, relays, marathons, sprints, long-distance swimming strokes, pool sizes, swimsuits literature fiction, nonfiction, autobiographies, short stories, poems, epics Language Is Organized in a Hierarchical Structure Language is orderly and develops in a hierarchy. That means that language has some basic elements that combine and gradually get added upon until you have the statements that you speak out loud with familiarity. The most basic unit of language is a phoneme, individual units of sound (letters) that have meaning. You know that a, c, s, t, and k all have a specific sound. In fact, every letter of the alphabet has a specific sound which you memorized as a little kid, probably around kindergarten or even earlier. Think back to the ABC song, and realize that as you learned those letters, you were building your basic foundation for creating words, phrases, and sentences. Once you know what a phoneme is, you'll understand that they can be combined to make a morpheme, a basic unit (word) of meaning that is created by placing phonemes together. The phonemes (letters) a, c, s, t, and k can combine together to form the word stack, tack, cat, sat, or sack. From five little phonemes, you are now able to have five morphemes, or words that have very specific meaning to you. A cat is a furry animal; a tack is a sharp metal pin, etc. Now that you know what morphemes are, you can combine them to make words. The example of kids and talked are words combined from a couple of morphemes. Some words are just one morpheme, such as animal or cat. Nonetheless, you can take these words and place them together to create phrases. Examples of some phrases are ran away, crossed the street, shopped around, she will, the animals, and so on. Last of all, you can combine phrases together to create a sentence. This is what you're most likely familiar with. Sentences are created by placing phrases together. When a Child Doesn't Learn to Speak Think about what would happen if a baby or young toddler were never taught to speak. Is it possible for this to happen, and can a child learn language in later life? These questions have been of interest to many psychologists. Two examples in particular have been noted as people study language development. One, which occurred in 1797, involved a young boy who was found wandering in the forests in France. The boy was captured twice and escaped once, but was taken care of once he stayed and didn't run off. This boy was named Victor, often called the Wild Boy of Aveyron. He couldn't speak and apparently had lived in the wild and survived on his own for many years. Victor was about twelve years old when he was found, and Jean Marc Gaspard Itard attempted to teach this boy how to speak. He was sure this boy was not animal-like at all, just a child in need of help and training. After all, Victor was a human being. Itard worked a lot with Victor, who made progress in behavior and social skills and grew to understand what people meant when they spoke to him. However, in the end, Victor only could speak a couple of words himself. This observation led researchers to conclude that language must be learned during a certain critical period of time in a young person's life. Animals and Language Psychologists and language experts have dedicated a lot of time to studying communication among chimps and other monkeys. Although it seems that monkeys can talk just as humans do (through sign language), it's been determined that these primates don't ever reach a level of communication or acquire a language that is equal to humans. Honeybees are other creatures that communicate with each other in elaborate ways, considering they are simple insects. Honeybee scouts will find food and come back to the hive and communicate their findings to the forager bees. If food is less than seventy-five meters away, the scout bee will dance a "round" dance. If the food is farther away than seventy-five meters, the scout bee will dance a "waggle" dance. Then the forager bees fly off to find the food, and they don't need the scout bee to come along and show them where to look. This is yet another example of how animals and insects have their own way of communicating in a language that makes sense to them.

LET'S REVIEW! Before going on to the unit test, make sure that you understand the main points of this lesson. Learning is a relatively permanent change of behaviors resulting from experience. Learning is different from performance, which is the execution (carrying out) of the behavior that you have learned. Learning requires the use of our neurons and axon connections in the brain. Learning involves watching people, making conscious decisions, letting people teach us, and communicating. Anyone can attempt to learn in one of three main ways: rote, informal, and formal. Three very notable psychologists from the past and present have contributed to our knowledge on learning. They are Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura. Repeating behaviors based on outcome is called operant conditioning. Edward Thorndike experimented with cats to show how operant conditioning worked. Reinforcement is the concept that an event increases behavior to happen again. Reinforcement has two specific types: positive and negative reinforcement. Both involve the likelihood of increasing behavior. Positive reinforcement increases a behavior by giving you something. Negative reinforcement increases a behavior by taking away something. Punishment makes a person very likely to stop doing some behavior. Punishment is more than just being sent to your room. Anything can be considered punishment if it makes you stop doing a behavior. Observational behavior is how people learn through observing the actions of other people. You can choose to repeat those actions (modeling) or choose not to repeat actions (vicarious learning) but still understand. Encoding is the process of bringing information into your mind. Psychologists have determined that you'll remember information better depending on how well you learn it the first time you come into contact with something you need to know. Specifically choosing to learn information is called intentional learning. Incidental learning occurs without any intention or effort. Surface processing involves learning superficial characteristics, and deep processing involves learning the deeper meaning of materials. Every person has three memory systems. These systems are sensory memory, short-term memory (sometimes called working memory), and long-term memory. The sensory memory is responsible for the momentary storage of information. Short-term memory is the temporary storage of information in your brain. Long-term memory is the place where information is permanently stored. Long-term memory has a great capacity to hold all sorts of information. The brain has two structures that are important for memory: the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions, like decisions and conscious control. The hippocampus helps your long-term memory. Thinking is an action of the brain that allows you to make sense of and understand your surroundings. All the concepts or ideas that you learn are automatically categorized in the brain. Storing information in an orderly way, such as categories, allows the brain to work with greater efficiency. Language is hierarchical and composed of phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences. The basic unit of meaning is a phoneme. Phonemes combine to create morphemes, or words. Phrases combine to create sentences. Consciousness is your wakeful alertness to the world around you. When you sleep, you are nonconscious. Memories that are easily remembered come from the preconscious, according to Freud. Restorative sleep theories believe that people rest so their bodies can heal and repair. Adaptive sleep theories believe that sleep is a function of survival and energy conservation. The Core-Optional sleep theory believes that only a certain amount of sleep is necessary, and the remainder of your night's rest is optional. The sleep cycle has five stages. The first two stages are light sleeping, the second two stages are deep sleeping, and the fifth stage is REM sleep, where dreaming occurs. Dreams occur during REM sleep. Everyone dreams, but not everyone remembers their dreams.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SLEEP Consciousness means you are awake and alert to your surroundings. If you were asleep, could you smell the delicious aroma of your favorite pizza in the air? You probably could, but the smell of tomato sauce, oregano, pepperoni, cheese, or sausage wouldn't register the same way as if you were awake. Why Do We Sleep? Restorative sleep theories. The restorative theories of sleep believe that the body heals itself during your slumber. When people or animals are asleep, it gives the body the chance to make physiological and biochemical changes. Infections are fought, wounds healed, brain processes cleared. Sleep is needed for recovery, and the more rest you get while sick, the better and more quickly your health will improve. Adaptive sleep theories. Adaptive theories of sleep are based in evolution and believe that sleep has a survival value to it. These theories say that sleep is useful because it saves energy and keeps a person or animal out of danger and away from predators. Sleep occurs during the time of day when one is likely to be less competent. Core-Optional sleep theory. The Core-Optional theory of sleep says that sleep has two parts: option and core sleep. The core sleep is needed for an organism to repair and restore brain tissue. But the optional sleep is not needed, and an organism can go without it. The Sleep Cycle Your sleep occurs in five stages that make up the sleep cycle. REM (rapid eye movement) is the fifth and last stage of sleep, where you dream and your eyes move rapidly under the eyelids as though you were awake, yet you are not. About 25 percent of your time sleeping is spent in the REM sleep stage. The other four stages (called non-REM or NREM) make up the other 75 percent of the time you're asleep. Stage N1 Light sleep begins. Muscles relax, and your consciousness of your surroundings diminishes. Stage N2 Light sleep continues. Complete consciousness of the external world disappears. Stage N3 Deep sleep begins. This is the stage where sleepwalking, sleeptalking, bedwetting, and night terrors occur. Stage N4 Deep sleep continues. Stage 5 REM sleep. The brain is active and dreaming. Your eyes move rapidly under the eyelids. Muscles are paralyzed so you don't act out your dreams. Sleep Deprivation Don't do it if you can help it. Get adequate sleep. It's the healthiest gift you can give your body and mind. Sleep deprivation will make a person moody, irritable, forgetful, and more susceptible to getting sick. It shows its signs through dark circles under the eyes. Sleep deprivation can give you headaches, make you hyperactive, and lead to dizziness, fainting, and even depression. There are so many disadvantages to being sleep-deprived, and yet Americans push the limit. Sleep Disorders Insomnia. Insomnia is the inability to fall or stay asleep. This sleeping abnormality results from many different triggers; some are emotional and some are physical. Here are some things you can do on your own to try to overcome insomnia: Go to bed at the same time each night. Wake up at the same time each morning. Use your bedroom for sleeping only. Read, play, use the computer, or do homework in other rooms of your house. Keep your bedroom slightly cool, dark, and quiet. Don't drink caffeine (sodas, energy drinks, tea) in the evening or just before your bedtime. Don't eat a heavy meal, greasy or spicy foods, or sugary sweets before going to sleep. Exercise, but not before your bedtime. (Exercising stimulates your body awake.) Narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a sleeping disorder where people suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to fall asleep during the daytime hours. People with this disorder take lots of naps, may find it unsafe to drive, and also may find themselves falling asleep without choice during the day at work or school. Although narcolepsy isn't the most common sleeping disorder that you'll find in people, about seven percent of Americans have it. Scientists think that it may have a genetic basis. Narcolepsy can be treated with stimulants and antidepressants to help a person sleep at the appropriate times and get better rest. This sleeping disorder still needs more research to determine how to help people overcome it. Sleep Apnea. People with sleep apnea stop breathing for a minute or so, and then startle semi-awake, gasping for air before going right back to sleep again. This can repeat itself throughout the night. No wonder someone with sleep apnea doesn't feel rested when the morning comes! Would you feel rested if you woke up several times throughout the night because you couldn't breathe? That's a reason for concern, too. People with sleep apnea really need to get medical attention to preserve their health—and possibly even their life.

Learning is a relatively permanent change of behaviors resulting from experience. Learning is different from performance, which is the execution (carrying out) of the behavior that you have learned. You must first learn before you can act. Even the very simplest of actions and behaviors require prior learning before we have the ability to—or even know how to—act on it. Learning, therefore, at its very basis, involves the brain and the way the mind takes in information and processes it. Learning requires many things to happen in order for knowledge to go into your brain successfully.

Learning requires: using our neurons and axon connections in the brain awareness of our surroundings to use our five senses to perceive our world thinking, which of course couldn't happen without brain functions or your senses watching others and learning from their examples making conscious choices and exercising our ability to think to decide what actions we see others do and want to do ourselves having other people teach us directly how to act communication—either talking to yourself or coaching yourself along the way Ways of Learning Anyone can attempt to learn in one of three main ways: rote, informational, and formal. Rote learning is simply memorizing information. Informal learning happens as you live your everyday life and notice your surroundings. Formal learning occurs in a school system or when you have someone directly teaching you—such as a mentor to a student. Formal learning is organized and purposeful. You are very aware of your actions and thoughts when you are formally learning. Psychologists Who Influenced What We Know About Learning Three very notable psychologists have contributed to our knowledge about learning. They are Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura. Pavlov was a behaviorist who discovered the technique we call classical conditioning. He taught that animals could learn new associations by conditioning them to respond to cues that trigger the senses. Skinner was a behaviorist who developed the concept of operant conditioning. He taught that animals and people could learn to do new behaviors depending on whether their actions were encouraged or stamped out. Bandura is called the father of social learning theory. He believes that people learn as they play and interact with people and the world around themselves. Operant Conditioning The concept of repeating behaviors based on desired outcomes is called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning applies to much more than just trying to get what you want. At the turn of the twentieth century, a man named Edward Thorndike from Harvard University began experimenting with cats in his basement. Cats were placed in cages called puzzle boxes. Thorndike wanted to see if the cats would learn how to get out of the boxes if they made the right action. Eventually, the cats did learn to hit the pole in the boxes that would give them their freedom. These cats learned a new behavior of desirable outcome and were operantly conditioned in the process. Reinforcement is the concept that an event increases behavior to happen again. Reinforcement has two specific types: positive and negative reinforcement. Both involve the likelihood of increasing behavior. Here are the differences between the two. Positive reinforcement increases a behavior by giving you something. For example: Because you finished all of your homework early, you can watch an hour of TV. Because you were on your best behavior this week, your mom and dad take you out for pizza. Negative reinforcement increases a behavior by taking away something. For example: You have a splitting headache, so you take pain reliever medicine and now your head feels much better. You want to enjoy your beach trip so you apply sunscreen because you know it will take away the chance of getting a nasty sunburn. Punishment makes a person very likely to stop doing some behavior. Punishment is more than just being sent to your room. Anything can be considered punishment if it makes you stop doing a behavior. Negative punishment is similar to regular punishment, but the difference is that if you quit your behavior, your reward will still be present. Classical Conditioning Ivan Pavlov demonstrated that he could control animals to act in a new way by pairing two stimuli together. Pavlov described his findings in terms of conditioned stimuli and responses and unconditioned stimuli and responses. For example, if a bell was rung in front of a dog, the dog wouldn't drool. But, if you wanted to make a dog drool at the sound of a bell, then you would ring the bell (conditioned stimulus), show the dog a juicy steak (unconditioned stimulus), and watch the dog start drooling (unconditioned response) at the sight of the steak.