Chapter 3: Learning and Memory Flashcards
To a psychologist, ___________ refers specifically to the way in which we acquire new behaviours.
Learning
A ____________ can be defined as anything to which an organism can respond, including all of the sensory inputs.
Stimulus
Repeated exposure to the same stimulus can cause a decrease in response called _______________.
Habituation
A stimulus that is too weak to elicit a response is called _______________ stimulus.
Subthreshold stimulus
_______________ is defined as the recovery of a response to a stimulus after habituation has occurred.
Dishabituation
_______________ is the recovery of a response to a stimulus, usually after a different stimulus has been presented.
Dishabituation
_________________ is the creation of a pairing, or association, either between two stimuli or between a behaviour and a response.
Associative learning
There are two types of associative learning: ________________ and ________________.
- Classical conditioning
- Operant conditioning
_________________ is a type of associative learning that takes advantage of biological, instinctual responses to create associations between two unrelated stimuli.
Classical conditioning
Any stimulus that brings about such a reflexive response is called an _________________.
Unconditioned stimulus
Any stimulus that brings about such an innate or reflexive response is called an ________________.
Unconditioned response
Many stimuli do not produce a reflexive response and are known as ________________.
Neutral stimuli
Ivan Pavlov turned a neutral stimulus into a ________________: a normally neutral stimulus that, through association, now causes a reflexive response called a __________________.
- Conditioned stimulus
- Conditioned response
The process of using a reflexive, unconditioned stimulus to turn a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus is termed ________________.
Acquisition
______________ refers to the loss of a conditioned response, and can occur if the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.
Extinction
The extinction of a response is not always permanent; after some time, presenting subjects again with an extinct conditioned stimulus will sometimes produce a weak conditioned response, a phenomenon called __________________.
Spontaneous recovery
_______________ is a broadening effect by which a stimulus similar enough to the conditioned stimulus can also produce the conditioned response.
Generalization
In __________________ (sometimes referred to as just ________________), an organism learns to distinguish between similar stimuli.
- Stimuli discrimination
- Discrimination
The study of _________________ examines the ways in which consequences of voluntary behaviours change the frequency of those behaviours.
Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning is associated with B. F. Skinner, who is considered one of the founders of ________________, the theory that all behaviours are conditioned.
Behaviourism
_______________ is the process of increasing the likelihood that an animal will perform a behaviour.
Reinforcement
________________ increase the frequency of a behaviour by adding a positive consequence or incentive following the desire behaviour.
Positive reinforcers
_______________ act similarly in that they increase the frequency of a behaviour, but they do so by removing something unpleasant.
Negative reinforcers
______________ describes a situation where the animal experiences the unpleasant stimulus and, in response, displays the desired behaviour in order to trigger the removal of the stimulus.
Escape learning
______________ occurs when the animal displays the desired behaviour in anticipation of the unpleasant stimulus, thereby avoiding the unpleasant stimulus.
Avoidance learning
The meat can be said to be a ________________ because the meat is a treat that the dog responds to naturally.
Primary reinforcer
The dog may even associate the presence of the trainer with the possibility of reward, making the presence of the trainer a __________________.
Discriminative stimulus
In contrast to reinforcement, ______________ uses conditioning to reduce the occurrence of a behaviour.
Punishment
________________ adds an unpleasant consequence ion response to a behaviour to reduce that behaviour; for example, receiving a ticket and having to pay a fine for parking illegally.
Positive punishment
Because positive punishment involves using something unpleasant too discourage a behaviour, it is sometimes referred to as ________________.
Aversive conditioning
________________ is removing a stimulus in order to cause reduction of a behaviour.
Negative punishment
A parent or guardian may forbid a child from watching television as a consequence for bad behaviour, with the goal of preventing the behaviour from happening again. This is an example of _________________.
Negative punishment
_________________ is the removal of a bothersome stimulus to encourage a behaviour.
Negative punishment
________________ is the addition of a bothersome stimulus to reduce a behaviour.
Positive punishment
The rate at which desired behaviours are acquired is also affected by the ___________________ being used to deliver the stimuli.
Reinforcement schedule
____________ (_____) ____________ reinforce a behaviour after a specific number of performances of that behaviour.
Fixed-ratio (FR) schedules
In a typical operant conditioning experiment, researchers might reward a rat with a food pellet every their time it presses a bar in its cage. This is an example of ___________________.
Fixed-ratio schedule
________________ is a fixed-ratio schedule in which the behaviour is rewarded every time it is performed.
Continuous reinforcement
______________ (______) ____________ reinforces a behaviour after a varying number of performances to receive a reward is relatively constant.
Variable-ratio (VR) schedules
Researchers might reward a rate first after two button presses, then eight, then four, then finally six. This is an example of _________________.
Variable-ratio schedules
_______________ (______) _____________ reinforce the first instance of a behaviour after a specified time period has elapsed.
Fixed-interval (FI) schedules
Once the rat gets a pellet, it has to wait 60 seconds before it gets another pellet. The first lever press after 60 seconds gets a pellet, but subsequent presses during those 60 seconds accomplish nothing. This is an example of _____________________.
Fixed-interval schedule
_______________ (_____) _____________ reinforce a behaviour the first time that behaviour is performed after a varying interval of time.
Variable-interval (VI) schedules
Instead of waiting exactly 60 seconds, our rat might have to wait 90 seconds, then 30 seconds, then three minutes. In each case, once the interval elapses, the next press gets the rat a pellet. This is an example of ________________.
Variable-interval schedule
____________, associated with operant conditioning, is the process of rewarding increasingly specific behaviours that become closer to a desired response.
Shaping
Many organisms undergo _______________, which is learning that occurs without a reward but that is spontaneously demonstrated once a reward is introduced.
Latent learning
_______________ is another method of learning that steps outside the standard behaviourist approach.
Problem solving
When animals revert to an instinctive behaviour after learning a new behaviour that is similar, the animal has undergone _______________ (or _______________).
Instinctive drift (or instinctual drift)
________________ is the process of learning a new behaviour or gaining information by watching others.
Observational learning
Like associative learning, there a few neurological factors that affect observational learning. The most important of these are ________________.
Mirror neurons
Research suggests that observational learning through _____________ is an important factor in determining people’s behaviour throughout their lifetime.
Modeling
The formation of memories can be divided into three major processes: ____________, ___________, and _____________.
- Encoding
- Storage
- Retrieval
_____________ refers to the process of putting new information into memory.
Encoding
Information gained without any effort is the result of _________________.
Automatic processing
Active memorization that we must actively work to gain information is known as ______________ (_____________) ______________.
Controlled (effortful) processing
When controlled processing is required, we can visualize information (________________), store the way it sounds (________________), link it to knowledge that is already in memory (_________________), or put it into a meaningful context (________________).
- Visual encoding
- Acoustic encoding
- Elaborative encoding
- Semantic encoding
We tend to recall information best when we can put it into the context of our own lives, a phenomenon called the __________________.
Self-reference effect
________________ is the repetition of a piece of information to either keep it within working memory (to prevent forgetting) or to store it in short-term and eventually long-term memory.
Maintenance rehearsal
_____________ are another common way to memorize information, particularly lists. They are often acronyms or rhyming phrases that provide a vivid organization of the information we are trying to remember.
Mnemonics
The _________________ involves associating each item in a list with a location along a route through a building that has already been memorized.
Method of loci
The ________________ associates numbers with items that rhyme with or resemble the numbers.
Peg-word system
_____________ (sometimes referred to as ______________) is a memory trick that involves taking individual elements of a large list and grouping them together into groups of elements with related meaning.
- Chunking
- Clustering
The most fleeting kind of memory storage is ______________, which preserves information in its original sensory form (auditory, visual, etc.) with high accuracy and lasts only a very short time, generally less than one second.
Sensory memory
Sensory memory consists of both ______________ (fast-decaying memory of visual stimuli) and ______________ (fast-decaying memory of auditory stimuli).
- Iconic memory
- Echoic memory
When asked to list the letters in the array, the participant is able to correctly identify three or four letters out of the three-by-three array of letter (a procedure known as ________________)
Whole-report
When asked to list the letters of a particular row immediately after the presentation of the stimulus (known as _________________), the participant can do so with 100 percent accuracy, no matter which row is chosen.
Partial-report
We do pay attention to some of the information that we are exposed to, and that information enters our _________________.
Short-term memory
The number of items we can hold in our short-term memory at any given time, our ________________, is limited to approximately seven items, usually stated as the 7 +- 2 rule.
Memory capacity
Short-term memory is housed primarily in the ________________, which is also responsible for the consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory.
Hippocampus
________________ is closely related to short-term memory and is similarly supported by the hippocampus. It enables us to keep pieces of information in our consciousness simultaneously and to manipulate that information.
Working memory
This is the form of memory that allows us to do simple math in our heads.
Working memory
With enough rehearsal, information moves from short-term to ________________, an essentially limitless warehouse for knowledge that we are then able to recall on demand, sometimes for the rest of our lives.
Long-term memory
One of the ways that information is consolidated into long-term memory is ___________________.
Elaborative rehearsal
__________________ is the association of the information to knowledge already stored in long-term memory.
Elaborative rehearsal
While long-term memory is primarily controlled by the hippocampus, it should be noted that memories are moved, over time, back to the _______________.
Cerebral cortex
There are two types of long-term memory: _____________ memory and _____________ memory.
- Implicit memory
- Explicit memory
_______________ (also called __________________) consists of our skills, habits, and conditioned responses, none of which need to be consciously recalled.
- Implicit memory
- Nondeclarative memory
Implicit memory includes _________________, which relates to our unconscious memory of the skills required to complete procedural tasks, and _____________, which involves the presentation of one stimulus affecting perception of a second.
- Procedural memory
- Priming
______________ occurs when exposure to the first stimulus improves processing of the second stimulus, as demonstrated by measures such as decreased response time or decreased error rate.
Positive priming
In ______________ the first stimulus interferes with the processing of the second stimulus, resulting in slower response times and more errors.
Negative priming
_______________ (also called _________________) consists of those memories that require conscious recall.
- Explicit memory
- Declarative memory
Explicit memory can be further divided into ______________ memory and ____________ memory.
- Episodic memory
- Semantic memory
_______________ refers to our recollection of life experiences.
Episodic memory
________________ refers to ideas, concepts, or facts that we know, but are not tied to specific life experiences.
Semantic memory
____________________ is the name given to our explicit memories about our lives and ourselves, and includes all of your episodic memories about our own life experiences, but also includes semantic memories that relate to our personal traits and characteristics.
Autobiographical memory
_____________ is the name given to the process of demonstrating that something that has been learned has been retained.
Retrieval
Most people think about retrieval in terms of ____________, or the retrieval and statement of previously learned information, but learning can be additionally demonstrated by recognizing or quickly relearning information.
Recall
______________, the process of merely identifying a piece of information that was previously learned, is far easier than recall.
Recognition
______________ is another way of demonstrating that information has been stored in long-term memory. Ebbinghaus found that the longer the amount of time between sessions of relearning, the greater the retention of this information later on.
Relearning
Ebbinghaus found that the longer the amount of time between sessions of relearning, the greater the retention of this information later on. This phenomenon is called the ________________.
Spacing effect
The brain organizes ideas into a ________________, in which concepts are linked together based on similar meaning, not unlike an Internet encyclopedia wherein each page includes links for similar topics.
Semantic network
When one node of our semantic network is activated, such as seeing the word red on a sign, the other linked concepts around it are also unconsciously activated, a process known as __________________.
Spreading activation
Spreading activation is at the heart of the previously mentioned positive priming, as recall is aided by first being presented with a word or phrase, a _____________, that is close to the desired semantic memory.
Recall cue
Another common retrieval cue is _______________, where memory is aided by being in the physical location where encoding took place.
Context effect
_______________ is a part of the retrieval process that involves determining the origin of memories, and whether they are factual (real and accurate) or fictional (from a dream, novel, or movie).
Source monitoring
________________, alternatively referred to as a _________________, is a retrieval of cue based on performing better when in the same mental state as when the information was learned.
- State-dependent memory
- State-dependent effect
Studies on list memorization have indicated that an item’s position in the list affects participants’ ability to recall, which Ebbinghaus termed the __________________.
Serial-position effect
The tendency to remember early and late items in the list is known as the _____________ and ______________, respectively.
- Primacy effect
- Recency effect
Unfortunately, even long-term memory is not always permanent. Several phenomena can result in _____________, a significant loss of memorized information.
Amnesia
The inability to remember where, when, or how one has obtained knowledge is called _______________.
Source amnesia
There are several disorders that can lead to decline in memory. The most common is _________________, which is a degenerative brain disorder thought to be linked to a loss of acetylcholine in neurons that link to the hippocampus, although its exact causes are not well understood.
Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s is marked by progressive ______________ (a loss of cognitive function) and memory loss, with atrophy in the brain.
Dementia
Microscopic findings of Alzheimer’s include __________________ and _______________.
- Neurofibrillary tangles
- Beta-amyloid plagues
One common phenomenon that occurs in individuals with middle- to late-stage Alzheimer’s is _______________, an increase in dysfunction in the late afternoon or evening.
Sundowning
The _________________ of Alzheimer’s disease are incorrectly folded copies of the amyloid precursor protein, in which insoluble beta-pleated sheets form and then deposit in the brain.
Beta-amyloid plagues
_________________ is another form of memory loss caused by thiamine deficiency in the brain.
Korsakoff’s syndrome
Korsakoff’s syndrome is marked by both ________________ (the loss of previously formed memories) and _________________ (the inability to form new memories).
- Retrograde amnesia
- Anterograde amnesia
Another common symptom of Korsakoff’s syndrome is ________________, or the process of creating vivid but fabricated memories, typically thought to be an attempt made by the brain to fill in the gaps of missing memories.
Confabulation
_____________ is the loss of the ability to recognize objects, people, or sounds, though usually only one of the three.
Agnosia
Through a process known as ____________, memories are simply lost naturally over time as the neurochemical trace of a short-term memory fades.
Decay
In his word memorization experiment, Ebbinghaus noted what he called a “curve of forgetting,” formally called the ________________. For a day or two after learning the list, recall fell sharply but then levelled off.
Retention function
Another common reason for memory loss is ________________ (also referred to as an ___________________), a retrieval error caused by the existence of other, usually similar, information.
- Interference
- Interference effect
When we experience ________________, old information is interfering with new learning.
Proactive interference
________________ is when new information causes forgetting of old information.
Retroactive interference
________________ (remembering to perform a task at some point in the future) remains mostly intact when it is event-based - that is, primed by a tigger event, such as remembering to buy milk when walking past the grocery store.
Prospective memory
We often think of memory as a record of our experiences or a kind of video recording that is stored to be accessed later; this accurate recall of past events is defined as __________________.
Reproductive memory
__________________ is a theory of memory recall in which cognitive processes such as imagination, semantic memory, and perception affect the act of remembering.
Reconstructive memory
A memory that incorrectly recall actual events or recall events that never occurred is known as a ______________.
False memory
Some psychologists believe repressed memories can be brought back into our conscious mind either spontaneously or through psychotherapy. Such memories are called ________________.
Recovered memories
_________________ is where a person’s recall of an event become less accurate due to the injection of outside information into the memory.
Misinformation effect
_______________ refers to false memories that have included a false detail into a particular memory.
Intrusion errors
_________________ involves confusion between semantic and episodic memory: a person remembers the details of an event, but confuses the context under which those details were gained.
Source-monitoring error
__________________ often manifests when a person hears a story of something that happened to someone else, and later recalls the story as a personal memory.
Source-monitoring error
As our brains develop, neural connections form rapidly in response to stimuli via a phenomenon called ________________ (also known as ________________).
- Neuroplasticity
- Neural plasticity
As we grow older, weak neural connections are broken while strong ones are bolstered, increasing the efficiency of our brains’ ability to process information. This process is called _______________.
Synaptic pruning
The strengthening of neural connections through repeated use is known as ___________________, and is believed to be the neurophysiological basis of long-term memory.
Long-term potentiation
