Chapter 1: Fundamental Themes in Learning and Memory

Question 1

Define Learning.

Answer 1

The process by which changes in behavior arise as a result of experience interacting with the world.

Question 2

Define memory.

Answer 2

The record of our past experiences, which are acquired through learning.

Question 3

Describe the case of Clive and his life without memory. What can he do/cannot do?

Answer 3

1. Clive could take care of himself (brush his teeth, shave)
2. Clive can perform, sing, play piano (automatic to him), he also remembers his feelings for his wife (her name),
3. Cannot learn anything new (apart for the 30s he is aware)

Question 4

How did Aristotle posit that we gain ideas from experience? (the name of the rule)

Answer 4

Aristotle proposed that ideas are built by rules of association

Question 5

What are the three rules of association?

Answer 5

1. Experiences near each other in space and time are joined together
2. Things that are often repeated are connected more strongly
3. Experiences similar to one another are connected

Question 6

Differentiate temporal and spatial contiguity.

Answer 6

When two items are related to each other because they occur simultaneously vs items that are related to each other because they occur close in space.

Question 7

What did William James think about how we learn new habits

and acquire new memories?

Answer 7

He thought that experiences linked ideas in the mind. For example, remembering one idea would spread along links, retrieving a complex episode. These links are physically represented in the brain.

Question 8

What was Pavlov’s view on learning?

Answer 8

Describe conditioning studies. Neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus after multiple iterations of pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus.

Question 9

Describe the laws of association in the context of Pavlov’s conditioning experiments.

Answer 9

1. Frequency: repeated bell-food pairings increase the strength of association with a characteristic learning curve
2. Contiguity: the association is extinguished (eventually) when the bell is presented alone (ending contiguity)
3. Similarity: salivation responses will generalize to stimuli similar to the bell (though, the less similar the less effective)

Question 10

What was Thorndike’s experiment with cats?

Answer 10

Cats placed in “puzzle box”, cats would eventually figure out how to get out, after subsequent placements in the box, they will “learn” to avoid the random motions and get out faster

Question 11

Define the Law of Effect.

Answer 11

behaviours with positive effects are repeated; behaviour with negative effects are not

Question 12

Describe operant conditioning. Be sure to mention positive vs negative, punishment vs reinforcement

Answer 12

Positive punishment = adding something to reduce behavior
Negative punishment = taking away something to reduce behavior
Positive reinforcement = adding something to increase behavior
Negative reinforcement = taking something away to increase behavior

Question 13

What did nativists believe?

Answer 13

Humans are shaped primarily by their nature.

Question 14

What did Plato believe about learning/skill?

Answer 14

we are born with innate differences in skill and talent

Question 15

What did Descartes believe about knowledge?

Answer 15

Most of our knowledge is innate, we must just tap into it, innate animal spirits carry information throughout the body (animal spirits = modern neurons)

Question 16

Define a reflex arc.

Answer 16

Pathway in which a sensory stimulus takes in the body until it finishes as the motor behavior expressed

Question 17

What did empiricists believe?

Answer 17

Humans are shaped primarily by their experiences

Question 18

What did Aristotle believe about how we come to learn things?

Answer 18

Proposed that knowledge and talent are matters of training and experience

Question 19

What did Locke believe about how we learn things?

Answer 19

We are born tabula rasa, completely equal and without innate knowledge; all our habit and skills are due to experience.

Question 20

Who was Locke inspired by that guided his motivations for the theory of how we learn things?

Answer 20

Inspired by Newton that learning can also be broken down into components (i.e., the strawberry is associated with the color red and sweetness)

Question 21

Who was Thomas Jefferson inspired by that led to the First Amendment?

Answer 21

Locke in turn inspired Thomas Jefferson in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence where it said “All men are created equal”

Question 22

Who first said that we are shaped by both nature and nurture.

Answer 22

Leibniz

Question 23

What did the Freudian psychoanalysis school believe about the nature of our behaviour?

Answer 23

Our behavior is driven by unconscious drives

Question 24

Who was the father of Behaviorism and what did he famously say/believe about predicting animal behavior?

Answer 24

J.B Watson believed that animals are like machines that have predictable reactions, almost like computers we can take apart. Famously said:
“Give me any child and I’ll make anyone you wish out of him”

Question 25

What did B.F Skinner believe about Free Will? And what is this school of thought called?

Answer 25

Skinner believed that free will was an illusion, our behavior is driven by learned responses to environmental stimuli (radical behaviorism)

Question 26

What are the four principles of behaviorism?

Answer 26

1. Behavior is observable, objective and quantifiable.
2. Evolutionary Perspective: humans are the same as any other animals; what works by a rat will work for a human
3. Quantitative: Try to identify basic mathematical laws that generalize many behaviors
4. Law of Effect: Our behavior is not shaped by the subconscious but by past experience (lack of free will)

Question 27

What was the greatest flaw of behaviorism?

Answer 27

Behaviorists couldn’t study ideological concepts like “love”, they will have to study behavior that is a proxy for “love”

Question 28

What did Tolman discover about behaviorism?

Answer 28

By experiment showed that given training, rats can find novel ways to the goal when encountering an obstacle (no prior association). Meaning that animals are able to operate purposefully to achieve desired goals.

Question 29

What is Darwin’s theory about natural selection? 3 main points.

Answer 29

Species evolve when they possess a trait that meets 3 conditions: trait is inheritable, the trait must vary (having a range of forms among individual members of the species, third the trait must make the individual more fit.

Question 30

Describe the experiment that proved that rats form a cognitive map absent of rewards.

Answer 30

He
allowed some rats to freely explore a maze with no food in it, for several days. Later, when
he placed these rats in the maze with a food reward at one
location (“goal box”), they learned to find the food much
faster than rats not previously exposed to the maze and
almost as fast as rats that had been explicitly trained to find
the food in the goal box

Question 31

Define latent learning

Answer 31

Learning takes places even when there is no specific motivation to obtain or avoid a consequence. Is a natural part of everyday life of rats and humans.

Question 32

Define evolution. first proposed by Erasmus Darwin.

Answer 32

The theory that species can change over time, and that existing species are descendants of common ancestors

Question 33

Define natural selection.

Answer 33

The notion that heritable traits that provide reproductive advantage become more common in a population, leading over time to changes explaining speciation.

Question 34

Which famous psychologist studied memory in a modern and scientific way?

Answer 34

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909). Empirically collected data, manipulated an IV, observed a DV.

Question 35

What was Ebbinghauses study design? 4 stages.

Answer 35

Study Design (has 4 stages):

• Learn the list (form new memory)
• Delay (30 seconds - days)
• Test for memory
• Relearn the same list

Question 36

Define time savings.

Answer 36

How much faster he was able to learn the list of words. Time savings % = score difference between 1st and 2nd attempts/time to learn first attempt

Question 37

Define the forgetting curve/retention curve.

Answer 37

Exponential curve rapid initial forgetting, but progressively less forgetting with time

Question 38

What was the independent variables in Ebbinhauses’ design.

Answer 38

Practice (# of session) and delay (time between sessions)

Question 39

What was Miller’s information theory?

Answer 39

Message depends on the information in the message and the prior knowledge of the receiver (i.e., lifeguard needs half the message of “I’m drowning” to realize what the messenger is trying to say

Question 40

How many pieces of knowledge can we manipulate at once?

Answer 40

7 (applies to discriminating/rating/digits)

Question 41

What is the progression of the retention curve?

Answer 41

at 100 hours of delay, the savings declines to about 27%. 25% after 200 hours.

Question 42

Define forgetting

Answer 42

The loss or deterioration of memory over time.

Question 43

What was Clark Hull’s contribution?

Answer 43

Tried to quantify effects of learning into a mathematical equation that would predict animal behaviour.

Question 44

What was Estes contribution?

Answer 44

Established a new subdiscipline of psychology, mathematical psychology, which used mathematical equations to
describe the laws of learning and memory, built on Hull, and strayed from Skinner because he tried to predict unobservable events.

Question 45

What was David Rumelhart’s contribution?

Answer 45

revived William James’s connectionist
network models of memory but translated them into
mathematical models of learning.

Question 46

Define distributed representation.

Answer 46

A representation in which information is coded as a pattern of activation
distributed across many different nodes. (i.e., apple and orange have something in common because they are both fruits)