Ch 3 - Learning and Memory Flashcards
What is habituation?
the process of becoming used to a stimulus
What is dehabituation?
can occur when a second stimulus intervenes, causing a resensitization to the original stimulus
What is associative learning?
a way of pairing together stimuli and responses, or behaviors and consequences
- 2 types: classical and operant conditioning
What is classical conditioning?
- an unconditioned stimulus that produces an instinctive, unconditioned response is paired with a neutral stimulus
- with repetition, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus that produces a conditional response
What is operant conditioning?
behavior is changed through the use of consequences
How does reinforcement affect behavior? What is the difference between positive and negative?
increases the likelihood of behavior
- pos: increase behavior by adding a positive consequence following desired behavior
- neg: increase behavior by removing something unpleasant
How does punishment affect behavior? What is the difference between positive and negative?
decreases the likelihood of a behavior
- pos: adds an unpleasant consequnce in response to a behavior to reduce that behavior
- neg: the reduction of a behavior when a stimulus is removed
How do schedules affect the outcome in operant conditioning?
- the schedule of reinforcement affects the rate at which the behavior is performed
- schedules can be based either on a ratio of behavior to reward or on an interval amount of time and can be either fixed or variable
- behaviors learned through variable-ratio schedules are the hardest to extinguish
What is observational learning?
- modeling
- the acquisition of behavior by watching others
- affected mostly by mirror neurons
What is encoding and how is it divided?
- the process of putting new information into memory
- can be automatic or controlled (active memorization)
Which is the strongest type of encoding?
- semantic encoding is strongest (put into meaningful context)
- acoustic
- visual (weakest)
What are short term memory and sensory memory and what are they based on
they are transient and based on neurotransmitter activity
- sensory: most fleeting using all senses (iconic - visual, echoic - auditory), but lasts only a short time (under 1 second)
- short term: fades after about 30 seconds, limited to 7 items, housed primarily in hippocampus
What is working memory and what does it require?
- enables us to keep few pieces of information in our consciousness simultaneously and to manipulate that information (allows simple math in head)
- requires short term memory, attention, and executive function to manipulate information
What is long term memory and what does it require?
- elaborative rehearsal and is the result of increased neuronal connectivity
- primarily hippocampus but move to cerebral cortex overtime
What are the types of long term memory?
- implicit (nondeclarative): stores skills and conditioning effects
- explicit (declarative): stores facts and stories
- -> semantic (facts that we know)
- -> episodic (experiences)
How are facts stored?
via semantic netoworks
Which is stronger between recognition and recall?
recognition
What is retrieval of information based on?
priming interconnected nodes of the semantic network
How can memories be lost?
- through disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Korsakoff’s syndrome, or agnosia;
- decay;
- interference
What influences memories?
highly subject to influence by outside information and mood both at the time of encoding and at recall
What do learning and memory rely on?
- changes in brain chemistry and physiology, the extent of which depends on neuroplasticity, which decreases with age
What is long term potentiation?
- responsible for the conversion of short term to longer term memory
- the strengthening of neuronal connections resulting from increased neurotransmitter release and adding of receptor sites
What is learning?
the way in which we acquire new behaviors
What is a stimulus?
anything to which an organism can respond
Difference between conditioned and unconditioned stimulus and responses?
- unconditioned stimulus: brings about a reflexive response
- neutral stimulus: do not produce reflexive response, can be converted to conditioned stimulus
What is acquisition and extinction?
- a: creating a conditioned stimulus/response
- e: removal of a conditioned stimulus/response
What is generalization and discrimination?
- g: a broadening effect by which a stimulus similar enough to the conditioned stimulus can also produce the conditioned response
- d: learns to distinguish between 2 similar stimuli (discriminative stimulus indicates potential reward)
What are the 2 types of negative reinforcement?
- escape learning: role of behavior is to reduce the unpleasantness of something that already exists
- avoidance learning: prevent the unpleasantness of something that has yet to happen
What are the type of reinforcement schedules and which works fastest?
- fixed-ratio: reinforce a behavior after a specific number of performances of that behavior
- variable ratio (fastest): reinforce a behavior after a varying number of performances of the behavior, but such that the average number of performances to receive an award is relatively constant (rat press bar quickly hoping next press will be the right one)
- fixed interval: reinforce the first instance of a behavior after a specified time period has elapsed
- variable interval: reinforce a behavior the first time that behavior is performed after a varying interval of time
- fixed schedules have brief moment of no response (rat stops hitting lever until it wants another pellet, once behavior determined for pellet)
What is latent learning?
occurs without a reward but that is spontaneously demonstrated once a reward is introduced
What is indistinctive drift?
difficulty to overcome instinctual behavior
Maintenance rehearsal?
the repetition of a piece of information to either keep it within working memory or to store it in shore term and eventually long term memory
Method of loci?
associating each item in a list with a location along a route through a building that has already been memorized
Peg work system?
associated numbers with the items that rhyme with or resemble the numbers
Chunking?
- clustering
- taking individual elements of a large list and grouping them together into groups of elements with related meaning
What are the different types of retrieval cues?
- spreading activation: thinking one word unconsciously activates related words
- context effect: taking test in room you studied
- state dependent memory: emotion while studying
- serial position effect: remembering first and last items best on list
Pruning?
removing weak neural connections
What do elderly individuals have the most trouble recalling?
- most trouble with time based prospective memory, remembering to do an activity at a particular time
- other forms of memory are generally preserved
