Chapter 3: learning and memory

Question 1

habituation

Answer 1

repeated exposure to same stimulus leads to decreased response

Question 2

dishabituation

Answer 2

recovery of a response after habituation has occurred, often when a second stimulus is presented which disrupts the habituation process and causes increase to original stimulus; temporary and always refers to the original stimulus, not the new one

Question 3

associative learning

Answer 3

creation of a pairing between two stimuli or between a behavior and a response; classical and operant conditioning

Question 4

classical conditioning

Answer 4

works because some stimuli cause a reflexive physiological response (ex. salivation); process of using an unconditioned stimulus to turn a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus

Question 5

extinction

Answer 5

occurs when conditioned stimulus is presented without the conditioned stimulus enough times, organism becomes habituated to conditioned stimulus, not always permanent

Question 6

spontaneous recovery

Answer 6

if an extinct conditioned stimulus is presented again, a weak conditioned response can sometimes be exhibited

Question 7

generalization

Answer 7

stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus can produce the conditioned response

Question 8

discrimination

Answer 8

organism learns to distinguish between two similar stimuli; ex. dogs can be conditioned to discriminate between bells of different tones by pairing one with meat and the other with no meat

Question 9

reinforcers

Answer 9

increase a behavior by either adding a positive consequence or removing something unpleasant

Question 10

escape learning

Answer 10

negative reinforcer; role of the behavior is to reduce the unpleasantness of something that already exists; ex taking aspirin to reduce headache

Question 11

avoidance learning

Answer 11

negative reinforcer that seeks to prevent the unpleasantness of something that has yet to happen

Question 12

primary reinforcer

Answer 12

a reward that one responds to naturally; ex. giving fish to dolphins as a treat

Question 13

conditioned/secondary reinforcer

Answer 13

unconditioned reinforcer that was previously paired with a reward to condition a response

Question 14

positive punishment

Answer 14

adds an unpleasant consequence

Question 15

negative punishment

Answer 15

removing something that is desired, like taking away TV privileges; reduction of behavior when a stimulus is removed

Question 16

fixed ratio schedule

Answer 16

reinforce behavior after specific number of performance of that behavior; continuous reinforcement is subtype: behavior reinforced every time; brief period of no responses after rat gets treat

Question 17

variable ratio schedule

Answer 17

reinforce behavior after varying number of performances of behavior, but average number of performances to get reward is relatively constant; works the fastest for conditioning and hardest to extinguish; kind of like playing the lottery, rat keeps pressing lever in hopes that it will be the one that gets treat

Question 18

fixed interval schedule

Answer 18

reinforce the first instance of a behavior after a specified time has elapsed; ex. the first lever press after 60s gets food but then has to wait 60s before lever presses will earn more food; brief period of no responses after rat gets treat

Question 19

variable interval schedule

Answer 19

reinforces the behavior the first time it is performed after varying amount of time

Question 20

shaping

Answer 20

process of rewarding increasingly specific behaviors

Question 21

latent learning

Answer 21

learning that occurs without a reward

Question 22

problem solving

Answer 22

testing behaviors until they yield a reward

Question 23

preparedness

Answer 23

animals are most able to learn behaviors that coincide with their natural behaviors

Question 24

instinctive drift

Answer 24

difficulty in animals overcoming instinctive behaviors

Question 25

observational learning

Answer 25

learning new behaviors by watching others; Bobo doll experiment where adults punched inflatable clown while children were watching and then exhibited the same behaviors; observational learning through modeling

Question 26

mirror neurons

Answer 26

fire when an individual performs an action and when the individual observes someone else performing the action

Question 27

encoding

Answer 27

process of putting new information into memory; most external info is gained without effort: automatic processing

Question 28

controlled (effortful) processing

Answer 28

active memorization

Question 29

ways of encoding info through controlled processing

Answer 29

weakest-visual encoding(visualizing info), acoustic encoding (store the way it sounds), or semantic encoding (put it into a meaningful context)-strongest

Question 30

self reference effect

Answer 30

tend to recall info better if we can put it into the context of our own lives

Question 31

maintenance rehearsal

Answer 31

repetition of a piece of information to try to remember it

Question 32

mnemonics

Answer 32

acronyms or rhyming phrases that provide vivid organization of the info we are trying to remember

Question 33

method of loci

Answer 33

associating each item in a list with a location along a route that has already been memorized

Question 34

peg-word system

Answer 34

associates numbers with items that rhyme with or resemble the numbers

Question 35

chunking/clustering

Answer 35

memory trick where you group together individual elements of a list that have related meaning

Question 36

sensory memory

Answer 36

most fleeting type of memory storage; involves both iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) memory; fades quickly if not immediately attended to

Question 37

short-term memory

Answer 37

fades quickly without rehearsal; 7+- 2 rule; limited in capacity to about 7 items; housed in hippocampus which consolidates into long term memory

Question 38

working memory

Answer 38

enables us to keep a few pieces of info in our consciousness simultaneously and to manipulate that info; allows us to do simple math in our head for example

Question 39

long term memory

Answer 39

enters through elaborate rehearsal which is the association of information to knowledge already stored in long term memory; controlled by hippocampus and memories are eventually moved to cerebral cortex

Question 40

implicit long term memory

Answer 40

non declarative or procedural memory, consists of our skills and conditioned responses

Question 41

explicit long term memory

Answer 41

declarative memory; requires conscious recall; semantic memory (facts we know) or episodic memory (our experiences)

Question 42

spacing effect

Answer 42

the longer the amount of time between sessions of relearning material, the greater the retention of the info later on; why cramming is not as effective as spacing out studying

Question 43

semantic network

Answer 43

brain organizes ideas into network where concepts are linked together based on similar meanings; when one node of network is activated, other linked concepts are also activated (spreading interaction)

Question 44

priming

Answer 44

due to spreading interaction; recall is aided by first being presented with word or phrase that is close to desired semantic memory

Question 45

context effects

Answer 45

memory aided by being in same physical location as where encoding took place; score better on exam in classroom

Question 46

state-dependent memory

Answer 46

being in the same mental/emotional state as when you encoded info aids memory

Question 47

serial position effect

Answer 47

much greater recall for first few and last few items on a list

Question 48

Alzheimer’s disease

Answer 48

loss of acetylcholine in neurons that link to hippocampus; dementia; loss of recent memories first; neurofibrillary tangles and B-amyloid plaques

Question 49

Korsakoff’s syndrome

Answer 49

thiamine deficiency in the brain leads to retrograde amnesia (loss of old memories) and anterograde amnesia (inability to form new memories)

Question 50

confabulation

Answer 50

process of creating vivid but fabricated memories to fill in the gaps in memories

Question 51

agnosia

Answer 51

loss of ability to recognize objects, people, or sounds

Question 52

proactive interference

Answer 52

old info interferes with retrieval of new information

Question 53

retroactive interference

Answer 53

new information causes forgetting of old information

Question 54

prospective memory

Answer 54

remembering to perform a task in the future

Question 55

misinformation effect

Answer 55

memories are altered by misleading information at the time of encoding or recall; experiment where subjects asked how far cars were moving when they “collided” or “crashed”

Question 56

source-monitoring error

Answer 56

person remembers details of an event but confuses the context under where the details took place

Question 57

synaptic pruning

Answer 57

weak neural connections are broken and strong ones are kept, increases efficiency of processing information

Question 58

long-term potentiation

Answer 58

basis of long term memory; repeating of same stimuli/info causes stimulated neurons to become more efficient and allows info to be deeper encoded in brain