Cognitive Aspects of Behavior Flashcards
Reinforcement
• An Operant Conditioning term that refers to a process by which the likelihood of a behavior occurring is increased either by giving a pleasant stimulus (positive reinforcement) or removing an unpleasant stimulus (negative reinforcement).
• BF Skinner
• Thorndike (before skinner) Rats and Cats
• Tolman
• Primary and Secondary Reinforcers
o Primary reinforcers are biological. Food, drink, and pleasure are the principal examples of primary reinforcers. But most human reinforcers are secondary, or conditioned. Examples include money, grades in schools, and tokens.
o Secondary reinforcers acquire their power via a history of association with primary reinforcers or other secondary reinforcers. For example, if I told you that dollars were no longer going to be used as money, then dollars would lose their power as a secondary reinforcer.
• Positive reinforcement (Add reward)
o You do a good action you get a treat
• Negative reinforcement
o Response is strengthened by removing the discomfort (bad)
• Punishment
o Positive (add discomfort, add discomfort)
o Negative (remove reward, take away video games)
Rewards
• Any behavior followed by consequences which is likely to be repeated
• A reward is an appetitive stimulus given to a human or some other animal to alter its behavior.
• Rewards typically serve as reinforcers.
• A reinforcer is something that, when presented after a behavior, causes the probability of that behavior’s occurrence to increase.
o Note that, just because something is labelled as a reward, it does not necessarily imply that it is a reinforcer.
• A reward can be defined as reinforcer only if its delivery increases the probability of a behavior
Types of learning
There are three main types of learning: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning. Both classical and operant conditioning are forms of associative learning, in which associations are made between events that occur together. Observational learning is just as it sounds: learning by observing others.
• Classical conditioning
• Operant/Instrumental conditioning
• Observational Learning
Interference
- a phenomenon of human memory involving the learning of new material where the learning of new information or behavior interacts with “old learning” or memories, thoughts and behaviors that come from past learning, and interferes with the acquisition or comprehension of the new information.
- For instance, if a person acquires bad habits playing a sport as a child, they will probably have a difficult time “unlearning” those bad habits as an adult and replacing them with proper habits
Proactive interference
o the reverse direction of interference to retroactive interference. This is when old information prevents the recall of newer information. This could, for example, occur with telephone numbers.
o Trying to learn the new DSM-5 to replace the DSM-IV
Retroactive interference
o when more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information. An example would be calling your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend by your new boyfriend/girlfriend’s name
Output interference
o When retrieving something interferes with the retrieval of the actual information needed
Cryptomnesia
o occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original.
Source Amnesia
o the inability to remember where, when or how previously learned information has been acquired, while retaining the factual knowledge.
Classical Conditioning
- a process by which we learn to associate events, or stimuli, that frequently happen together; as a result of this, we learn to anticipate events.
- Ivan Pavlov conducted a famous study involving dogs in which he trained (or conditioned) the dogs to associate the sound of a bell with the presence of a piece of meat.
- The conditioning is achieved when the sound of the bell on its own makes the dog salivate in anticipation for the meat.
Operant Conditioning
- is the learning process by which behaviors are reinforced or punished, thus strengthening or extinguishing a response.
- Edward Thorndike coined the term “law of effect,” in which behaviors that are followed by consequences that are satisfying to the organism are more likely to be repeated, and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.
- B. F. Skinner conducted experiments with rats in what he called a “Skinner box.”
- Over time, the rats learned that stepping on the lever directly caused the release of food, demonstrating that behavior can be influenced by rewards or punishments. He differentiated between positive and negative reinforcement, and also explored the concept of extinction.
Sensory Memory
o the shortest-term element of memory.
o It is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have ended. It acts as a kind of buffer for stimuli received through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, which are retained accurately, but very briefly.
Short Term Memory (Working Memory)
o a kind of “scratch-pad” for temporary recall of the information which is being processed at any point in time, and has been referred to as “the brain’s Post-it note”.
o It can be thought of as the ability to remember and process information at the same time.
o It holds a small amount of information (typically around 7 items or even less) in mind in an active, readily-available state for a short period of time (typically from 10 to 15 seconds, or sometimes up to a minute).
Long Term Memory
intended for storage of information over a long period of time. Despite our everyday impressions of forgetting, it seems likely that long-term memory actually decays very little over time and can store a seemingly unlimited amount of information almost indefinitely.
Explicit Memory (conscious)
a type of long-term memory in which we store memories of fact. In addition, explicit memory is divided further into semantic and episodic memories (please look those up for complete definitions)
