Chapter 3 - Learning and Memory

Question 1

Stimulus

Answer 1

• Anything to which an organism can respond

Question 2

Habituation vs. Dishabituation

Answer 2

• Habituation: repeated exposure to the same stimulus causing a decrease in response
• Dishabituation: the recovery of a response to a stimulus after habituation has occurred.
  
  • Usually a second stimulus is presented, which interrupts the habituation process and thereby causes an increase in response to the original stimulus.

Question 3

Associative Learning

Answer 3

• Creation of a pairing, or association, either between two stimuli or between a behavior and a response
• Operant conditioning and classical conditioning

Question 4

Classical Conditioning

Answer 4

• Associative learning//create associations between two unrelated stimuli//Pavlov and dogs
• Some stimuli causes innate response (ex: salivating when we smell food)
• Any stimulus that brings about such a reflexive response is an unconditioned stimulus, and the innate or reflexive response is called an unconditioned response. Many stimuli do not produce a reflexive response and are known as neutral stimuli. Neutral stimuli can be referred to as signaling stimuli if they have the potential to be used as a conditioning stimulus. Pavlov turned a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus: a normally neutral stimulus that, through association, now causes a reflexive response called a conditioned response.

Question 5

Pavlov’s Experiment

Answer 5

• Unconditioned stimulus was meat, which would cause the dogs to salivate reflexively, and the neutral stimulus was a ringing bell.
• Pavlov would ring the bell before placing met in the dogs mouths. Initially, dogs did not react to bell without receiving meat. After procedure was repeated several times, the dogs began to salivate when they heard the bell.

Question 6

Extinction

Answer 6

• If the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus enough times, the organism can become habituated to the conditioned stimulus
• If the bell rings often enough without the dog getting meat, the dog may stop salivating when the bell sounds

Question 7

Spontaneous Recovery

Answer 7

• Even this extinction of a response is not always permanent; after some time, if an extinct conditioned stimulus is presented again, a weak conditioned response can sometimes be exhibited

Question 8

Generalization vs. Discrimination

Answer 8

• Generalization: Broadening effect by which a stimulus similar enough to the conditioned stimulus can also produce the conditioned response.
• Discrimination: an organism learns to distinguish between two similar stimuli. Opposite of generalization.

Question 9

Operant Conditioning

Answer 9

• Links voluntary behaviors with consequences in an effort to alter the frequency of those behaviors
• B.F. Skinner (Behaviorism - the theory that all behaviors are conditioned)

Question 10

Relationships between stimulus and behavior of Operant Conditioning

Answer 10

• Reinforcement = the process of increasing the likelihood that an individual will perform a behavior.
  
  • Positive Reinforcers: increase a behavior by adding a positive consequence or incentive following the desired behavior (ex: money)
  • Negative Reinforcers: increase the frequency of a behavior by removing something unpleasant (ex: taking aspirin to reduce headache)
• Punishment = uses conditioning to reduce the occurrence of a behavior
  
  • Positive Punishment: adds an unpleasant consequence in response to a behavior to reduce that behavior (ex: getting flogged for stealing)
  • Negative Punishment: the reduction of a behavior when a stimulus is removed (ex: removal of TV for bad behavior)

Question 11

Escape Learning

Answer 11

• The role of the behavior is to reduce the unpleasantness of something that already exists
• Ex: Taking aspirin for an existing headache

Question 12

Avoidance Learning

Answer 12

• Meant to prevent the unpleasantness of something that has yet to happen

Question 13

Fixed-Ratio (FR) Schedules vs. Variable-Ratio (VR) Schedules

Answer 13

• FR: reinforce a behavior after a specific number of performances of that behavior.
  
  • Ex: Researchers might reward a rat with food every 3rd time it presses a bar.
  • Continuous reinforcement is FR where rewarded every time
• VR: reinforce a behavior after a varying number of performances of the behavior, but such that the average number of performances to receive a reward is relatively constant.
  
  • Ex: Researchers might reward a rat after 2 button presses, then 8, then 4, then finally 6.
  • Works the fastest for learning new behavior and most resistant to extinction!

Question 14

Fixed-Interval (FI) Schedules vs. Variable-Interval (VI) Schedules

Answer 14

• FI: reinforce the first instance of a behavior after a specified time period has elapsed.
  
  • Ex: once rat gets food, it has to wait 60 seconds before it can get food again.
• VI: reinforce a behavior the first time that behavior is performed after a varying interval of time.
  
  • Ex: Instead of waiting exactly 60 seconds, the rat might have to wait 90 seconds, then 30 seconds, then 3 minutes.

Question 15

3 Major Processes in the Formation of Memories

Answer 15

1. Encoding: refers to the process of putting new infor into memory
2. Storage: following encoding, information must be stored if it is to be remembered. Several types.
3. Retrieval: the process of demonstrating that something that has been learned has been retained.

Question 16

Method of Loci vs. Peg-Word vs. Chunking/Clustering

Answer 16

• Method of Loci: It’s based on the assumption that you can best remember places that you are familiar with, so if you can link something you need to remember with a place that you know very well, the location will serve as a clue that will help you to remember.
• Peg-Word: system associates numbers with items that rhyme with or resemble the numbers.
• Chunking/Clustering: memory trick that involves taking individual elements of a large list and grouping them together into groups of elements with related meaning.

Question 17

Sensory Memory

Answer 17

• Consists of both iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) memory
• Lasts a very short time (generally under 1 second)
• Sensory memory fades very quickly, and unless the information is attended to, it will be lost.

Question 18

Short-Term Memory

Answer 18

• Fades quickly, over the course of about 30 seconds without rehearsal
• Limited in capacity to approximately 7 items, usually stated as the 7 +/- 2 rule
• The capacity of short-term memory can be increased by clustering information, and the duration can be extended using maintenance rehearsal
• Housed primarily in the hippocampus, which is also responsible for the consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory

Question 19

Working Memory

Answer 19

• Closely related to short-term memory and is similarly supported by the hippocampus
• Enables us to keep a few pieces of information in our consciousness simultaneously and to manipulate that information
• To do this, one must integrate short-term memory, attention, and executive function; accordingly, the frontal and parietal lobes are also involved

Question 20

Long-Term Memory

Answer 20

• Primarily controlled by the hippocampus
• 2 Types:​
  
  • Implicit (nondeclarative or procedural) memory__​
    
    • consists of our skills and conditioned responses
  • Explicit (declarative) Memory
    
    • _​​_consists of those memories that require conscious recall
    • 2 Types:
      
      • Semantic Memory: facts we know
      • Episodic Memory: our experiences

Question 21

Types of Memory Chart

Answer 21

Question 22

Serial Position Effect

Answer 22

• A retrieval cue that appears while learning lists
• When researchers give participants a list of items to memorize, the participants have much higher recall for both the first few and last few items on the list. The tendency to remember early and late items is known as the primacy and recency effect

Question 23

Alzheimer’s Disease

Answer 23

• A degenerative brain disorder thought to be linked to a loss of acetylcholine in neurons that link to the hippocampus
• Marked by progressive dementia (a loss of cognitive function) and memory loss, with atrophy of the brain
• Microscopic findings include neurofibrillary tangles and B-amyloid plaques

Question 24

Korsakoff’s Syndrome

Answer 24

• Memory loss caused by thiamine deficiency in the brain (often from prolonged ingestion of alcohol)
• Disorder is marked by both retrograde amnesia (the loss of previously formed memories) and anterograde amnesia (the inability to form new memories)
• Another common symptom is confabulation, 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.

Question 25

Agnosia

Answer 25

• The loss of the ability to recognize objects, people, or sounds, though usually only 1 of the 3
• Usually caused by physical damage to the brain

Question 26

Interference

Answer 26

• Common reason for memory loss, a retrieval error caused by the existence of other, usually similar, information.
• Proactive Interference: old information is interfering with new learning
• Retroactive Interference: when new information causes forgetting of old information

Question 27

Source-Monitoring Error

Answer 27

• 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.

Question 28

3 Modes in which information can be encoded, from strongest to weakest

Answer 28

1. Semantic
2. Acoustic
3. Visual

Question 29

Maintenance Rehearsal vs. Elaborative Rehearsal

Answer 29

• Maintenance Rehearsal is the repetition of information to keep it within short-term memory for near immediate use
• Elaborative Rehearsal is the association of information to other stored knowledge, and is a more effective way to move information from short-term to long-term memory

Question 30

Neuroplasticity

Answer 30

• The ability of the brain to form new connections rapidly
• The brain is most plastic in young children, and plasticity quickly drops off after childhood

Question 31

Pruning vs. Long-Term Potentiation

Answer 31

• Pruning: removal of weak neural connections
• Long-term potentiation: the strengthening of memory connections through increased neurotransmitter release and receptor density