Cognitive [Learning, Language, Memory, Thinking] (Psychology Subject)

Question 1

Learning

Answer 1

*the relatively permanent or stable change in behavior as the result of experience

Question 2

Classical conditioning (associative learning)

Answer 2

• Ivan Pavlov; Pavlovian conditioning
• pairing a neutral stimulus with a not-so-neutral stimulus; this creates a relationship between the two

Question 3

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

Answer 3

*not-so-neutral stimulus
- in Pavlov’s dog experiments, the UCS is the food
— without conditioning, the stimulus elicits the response of salivating
- unconditioned because they don’t have to be learned
— reflexive or instinctual behaviors

Question 4

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

Answer 4

*naturally occurring response to the UCS
- in Pavlov’s dog experiment, it was salivation in response to the food
- unconditioned because they don’t have to be learned
— reflexive or instinctual behaviors

Question 5

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

Answer 5

*a stimulus that doesn’t produce a specific response on its own
- In Pavlov’s dog experiment, this was the light/bell before he conditioned a response to it

Question 6

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

Answer 6

*the neutral stimulus once it’s been paired with the UCS
- has no naturally occurring response, but it’s conditioned through pairings with a UCS
- in Pavlov’s dog experiment, the CS (the light) is paired with the UCS (food), so that the CS alone will produce a response

Question 7

Conditioned Response (CR)

Answer 7

*the response that the CS elicits after conditioning
- the UCR and the CR are the same (i.e., salivating to food or a light)

Question 8

Simultaneous Conditioning

Answer 8

*the UCS and NS are presented at the same time

Question 9

Higher-order conditioning/second-order conditioning

Answer 9

*a conditioning technique in which a previous CS now acts as a UCS
- in Pavlov’s dog experiment, the experimenter would use the light as a UCS after the light reliably elicited saliva in the dogs; food is no longer used; light could be paired with a bell (CS) until the bell alone elicited saliva in the dogs

Question 10

Forward conditioning

Answer 10

*pairing of the NS and the UCS in which the NS is presented before thee UCS
- two types:
— delayed conditioning
— trace conditioning

Question 11

Delayed conditioning

Answer 11

*the presentation of the NS begins before that of the UCS and lasts until the UCS is presented

Question 12

Trace conditioning

Answer 12

*the NS is presented and terminated before the UCS is presented

Question 13

Backward conditioning

Answer 13

*the NS is presented after the UCS is presented
- in Pavlov’s dog experiment, they would have been presented with the food and then with the light
- proven ineffective
- only accomplishes inhibitory conditioning (later the dogs would have a harder time pairing the light and food even if they were presented in a forward fashion)

Question 14

Taste aversion learning

Answer 14

*occurs when food or drink becomes associated with an aversive stimulus (nausea, vomiting), even if the food or drink itself didn’t actually cause the nausea/vomiting
- type of classical conditioning but differs in:
— the response usually takes one pairing vs. longer acquisition
— the response takes a long time to extinguish vs. beginning when you remove the UCS
- evolutionarily adaptive so human/animal doesn’t eat poisonous food and die

Question 15

Law of effect

Answer 15

*a cause-and-effect chain of behavior revolving around reinforcement
- E. L. Thorndike
- precursor of operant conditioning
- “connectionism” because learning occurs through formation of connections between stimuli and responses
- “Puzzle Box” experiment (cats learning complex tasks through trial and error)

Question 16

Theory of association

Answer 16

*grouping things together based on the fact that they occur together in time and space
— organisms associate certain behaviors with certain rewards and certain cues with certain situations
- Kurt Lewin
- forerunner of behaviorism

Question 17

School of behaviorism

Answer 17

• John B. Watson
• everything could be explained by stimulus-response chains
  — conditioning was key factor in developing these chains
• only objective and observable elements were of importance to organisms and psychology

Question 18

Hypothetico-deductive model

Answer 18

*designed to dry and deduce logically all the rules that govern behavior
- Clark Hull
— created equation involving input variables leading to output variables; included intervening variables in between that’d change the outcomes

Question 19

Radical behaviorism

Answer 19

*school of thought where it’s believed that all behavior, animal, and human, can be explained in terms of stimuli and responses, or reinforcements and punishments
- no allowances for how thoughts/feeling might factor into the equation

Question 20

Operant conditioning (associative learning)

Answer 20

*aims to influence a response through various reinforcement strategies
- B. F. Skinner
- Skinner Box (rats repeated behaviors that won rewards and gave up on behaviors that didn’t)
— shaping (differential reinforcement of successive approximations) process rewarded rats with food pellets when near the lever and after touching lever
- also known as instrumental conditioning

Question 21

Primary reinforcement

Answer 21

*a natural reinforcement; reinforcing on its own without the requirement of learning
- i.e., food

Question 22

Secondary reinforcement

Answer 22

*a learned reinforcer
- i.e., money, prestige, verbal praise, awards
- often learned through society
- instrumental in token economies

Question 23

Positive reinforcement

Answer 23

*adding something desirable to increase likelihood of a particular response
- some subjects are not motivated by rewards because they don’t believe/understand that the rewards will be given

Question 24

Negative reinforcement

Answer 24

*reinforcement through the removal of a negative event
- i.e., taking away something undesirable to increase the likelihood of a particular behavior
- NOT punishment/delivery of a negative consequence

Question 25

Continuous reinforcement schedule

Answer 25

*every correct response is met with some form of reinforcement
- facilitates the quickest learning, but also the most fragile learning; as soon as rewards halt, the animal stops performing

Question 26

Partial reinforcement schedules

Answer 26

*not all correct responses are reinforced
- may require longer learning time, but once learned, behaviors are more resistant to extinction
- types:
— fixed ratio schedule
— variable ratio schedule
— fixed interval schedule
— variable interval schedule

Question 27

Partial reinforcement schedules

Answer 27

*not all correct responses are reinforced
- may require longer learning time, but once learned, behaviors are more resistant to extinction
- types:
— fixed ratio schedule
— variable ratio schedule
— fixed interval schedule
— variable interval schedule

Question 28

Fixed ratio schedule

Answer 28

*reinforcement delivered after a consistent # of responses
- ratio of 6:1 –> every 6 correct responses = 1 reward

Question 29

Variable ratio schedule

Answer 29

*reinforcements delivered after different #s of correct responses
- ratio can’t be predicted
- learning less likely to become extinguished
- one performs a behavior not because it’s been rewarded but rather cause it COULD be rewarded on the next try

Question 30

Fixed interval schedule

Answer 30

*rewards come after the passage of a certain period of time rather than the # of behaviors
- i.e., if fixed interval is 5 minutes, then rat will be rewarded the first time it presses the lever after a 5-minute period has elapsed, regardless of what it did during the preceding 5 minutes

Question 31

Variable interval schedule

Answer 31

*rewards are delivered after differing time periods
- second most effective strategy in maintaining behavior; length of time varies, so one never knows when the reinforcement is just around the corner
- slow and steady learning

Question 32

Token economy

Answer 32

*artificial mini-economy usually found in prisons, rehabilitation centers, or mental hospitals
- individuals in the environment are motivated by secondary reinforcers (tokens)
- desirable behaviors reinforced with tokens, which can be cashed in for more desirable reinforcers (i.e., candy, books, privileges, cigarettes)

Question 33

Stimulus

Answer 33

*any event that an organism reacts to
- first link in a stimulus-response chain

Question 34

Stimulus discrimination

Answer 34

*the ability to discriminate between different but similar stimuli
- i.e., doorbell ringing vs. phone ringing

Question 35

Stimulus generalization

Answer 35

*make the same response to a group of similar stimuli; opposite of stimulus discrimination
- i.e., not all fire alarms sound alike, but they all require the same response

Question 36

Stimulus generalization

Answer 36

*make the same response to a group of similar stimuli; opposite of stimulus discrimination
- i.e., not all fire alarms sound alike, but they all require the same response

Question 37

Undergeneralization

Answer 37

*failure to generalize a stimulus

Question 38

Response learning

Answer 38

*form of learning in which one links together chains of stimuli and responses
- one learns what to do in response to particular triggers
- i.e., leaving a building in response to a fire alarm

Question 39

Response learning

Answer 39

*form of learning in which one links together chains of stimuli and responses
- one learns what to do in response to particular triggers
- i.e., leaving a building in response to a fire alarm

Question 40

Aversive conditioning

Answer 40

*uses punishment to decrease the likelihood of a behavior
- i.e., drug antabuse used to treat alcoholism

Question 41

Avoidance conditioning

Answer 41

*occurs when you avoid a predictable, unpleasant stimulus
- teaches an animal how to avoid something the animal doesn’t want

Question 42

Escape conditioning

Answer 42

*occurs when you have to escape an unpredictable, unpleasant stimulus
- teaches an animal to perform a desired behavior to get away from a negative stimulus

Question 43

Punishment

Answer 43

• promotes extinction of an undesirable behavior; after unwanted behavior is performed, punishment is presented
• acts as a negative stimulus, which should decrease the likelihood that the earlier behavior will be repeated
• positive punishment: addition of something undesirable to the situation to discourage a particular behavior
• negative punishment: taking away something desirable to discourage a particular behavior
• primary punishment: most species don’t have to learn about its unpleasant consequences
• secondary punishment: one must come to understand as a negative consequence
• Skinner preferred to extinguish behavior by stopping reinforcement as opposed to applying a punishment

Question 44

Autonomic conditioning

Answer 44

*evoking responses of the autonomic nervous system through training

Question 45

Extinction

Answer 45

*reversal of conditioning; goal to encourage an organism to stop doing a particular behavior
- accomplished by repeatedly withholding reinforcement for a behavior or by disassociating the behavior from a particular cue
- in classical conditioning, extinction begins the moment the UCS and NS are no longer paired
- in operant conditioning, one might see an extinction burst (behavior initially increases before it begins to diminish)

Question 46

Spontaneous recovery

Answer 46

*reappearance of an extinguished response, even in the absence of further conditioning or training

Question 47

Superstitious behavior

Answer 47

*occurs when someone “learns” that a specific action causes an event, when in reality the two are unrelated
- i.e., a football fan wearing the shirt during a game that they happen to wear every time their team wins

Question 48

Chaining

Answer 48

*act of linking together a series of behaviors that ultimately result in reinforcement
- one behavior triggers the next, and so on
- i.e., learning the alphabet

Question 49

Autoshaping

Answer 49

*an apparatus allows an animal to control its reinforcements through behaviors
- i.e., bar pressing or key pecking
- animal is shaping its own behavior

Question 50

Overshadowing

Answer 50

*an animal’s inability to infer a relationship between a particular stimulus and response due to the presence of a more prominent stimulus
- a classical conditioning concept

Question 51

John Garcia

Answer 51

• discovered that animals are programmed through evolution to make certain connections
• preparedness: certain associations are learned more easily than others
• studied “conditioned nausea” with rats and found that invariably nausea was perceived to be connected with food or drink
  — unable to condition a relationship between nausea and a NS (i.e., a light)
• Garcia effect
  — explains why humans can become sick only one time from eating a particular food and are never able to eat that food again
  — connection is automatic, needs little conditioning

Question 52

Habituation (nonassociative learning)

Answer 52

*decreased responsiveness to a stimulus as a result of increasing familiarity with the stimulus
- i.e., entering a room with a buzzing light; you’re constantly aware of the noise until after a while, you stop noticing it

Question 53

Dishabituation (nonassociative learning)

Answer 53

*when you remove the stimulus to which the organism had become habituated
- if you reintroduce the stimulus, the organism will start noticing it again

Question 54

Sensitization (nonassociative learning)

Answer 54

*increasing sensitivity to the environment following the presentation of a strong stimulus

Question 55

Desensitization (nonassociative learning)

Answer 55

*decreasing sensitivity to the environment following the presentation of a strong stimulus
- often used as a behavioral treatment to counter phobias

Question 56

Social learning theory; social cognitive theory (observational learning)

Answer 56

*individuals learn through their culture; what’s acceptable/unacceptable
- Albert Bandura
- developed to explain how we learn by modeling; we don’t need reinforcements/associations/practice to learn
- Bobo doll study (children mirroring adults taking out their frustrations on a clown doll)

Question 57

Vicarious reinforcement (observational learning)

Answer 57

*a person witnesses someone else being rewarded for a particular behavior so that encourages them to do the same

Question 58

Vicarious punishment (observational learning)

Answer 58

*a person witnesses someone being punished for a behavior, and that discourages the likelihood of the witness engaging in that behavior

Question 59

Insight learning

Answer 59

*when the solution to a problem appears all at once rather than building up to a solution
- Wolfgang Kohler’s chimpanzee and banana experiment (used boxes to reach banana)
- key element in Gestalt psychology because a person can perceive the relationships between all the important elements in a situation and finding a solution greater than the sum of its parts
— Gestalt psychology describes how people organize elements in a situation and think about them in relation to one another

Question 60

Latent learning

Answer 60

*learning that happens but does not demonstrate itself until it’s needed later on
- i.e., watching someone play chess many times and playing chess later, realizing you’ve learned some new tricks
- Edward C. Tolman and three rat groups experiment (quickly learning to run at the end of maze for food)

Question 61

Incidental learning

Answer 61

*unrelated items are grouped together
- like accidental learning
- i.e., pets associating cars with vets
- opposite of intentional learning

Question 62

Donald Hebb

Answer 62

• created an early model of how learning happens in the brain, through formation of sets of neurons that learn to fire together

Question 63

Perceptual/concept learning

Answer 63

*learning about something in general rather than learning-specific stimulus-response chains
- individual learns about something (i.e., history) rather than any particular response
- Tolman’s experiments with animals forming cognitive maps of mazes rather than simple escape routes; blocked routes led to internal sense of where the end was (purposive behavior)

Question 64

Harry Harlow

Answer 64

• demonstrated that monkeys became better at learning tasks as they acquired different learning experiences
• eventually, monkeys could learn after only one trial
• “learning to learn”

Question 65

Motivation and performance

Answer 65

*an animal must be motivated in order to learn and to act
- individuals are at times motivated by primary or instinctual drives (hunger or thirst); other times motivated by secondary or acquired drives (money, other learned reinforcers)
- exploratory drive may exist

Question 66

Fritz Heider’s balance theory, Charles Osgood & Percy Tannenbaum’s congruity theory, Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 66

• all agree that what drives people is a desire to be balanced with respect to their feelings, ideas, or behaviors
• along with Clark Hull’s drive-reduction theory, these theories are called into question by the fact that individuals often seek out stimulation, novel experience, or self-destruction

Question 67

Hull’s performance = drive x habitat

Answer 67

*individuals are first motivated by drive, and then act according to old successful habits
- they’ll do what has worked previously to satisfy the drive

Question 68

Edward Tolman’s performance = expectation x value

Answer 68

*people are motivated by goals that they think they might actually meet
- another factor is how important the goal is
- also the expectancy-value theory
- Victor Vroom applied this theory to individual behavior in large organizations; those lowest on totem pole don’t expect to receive company incentives, therefore they do little to motivate them

Question 69

Henry Murray and later David McClelland’s Need for achievement (nAch)

Answer 69

• may be manifested through a need to pursue success or a need to avoid failure; either way, the goal is to feel successful
• John Atkinson suggested a theory of motivation in which people who set realistic goals with intermediate risk sets feel pride with accomplishment and want to succeed more than they fear failure
• because success is so important, people are unlikely to set unrealistic/risky goals or to persist when success is unlikely

Question 70

Neil Miller’s approach-avoidance conflict

Answer 70

*the state one feels when a certain goal has both pros and cons
- the further one is from the goal, the more one focuses on the pros or the reasons to approach the goal
- the closer one is to the goal, the more one focuses on the cons or the reasons to avoid the goal

Question 71

Hedonism

Answer 71

*theory that individuals are motivated solely by what brings the most pleasure and the least pain

Question 72

The Premack principle

Answer 72

*idea that people are motivated to do what they do not want to do by rewarding themselves afterward with something they like to do
- i.e., child rewarded with dessert after they eat spinach

Question 73

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Answer 73

*demonstrates physiological needs take precedence
- once those are satisfied, a person will work to satisfy safety needs, followed by love and belonging needs, self-esteem needs, and finally the need to self-actualize

Question 74

M. E. Olds

Answer 74

• performed experiments in which electrical stimulation of pleasure centers in the brain were used as positive reinforcement
  — animals would perform behaviors to receive stimulation
• viewed as evidence against the drive-reduction theory

Question 75

Arousal

Answer 75

*part of motivation; an individual must be adequately aroused to learn/perform
- Donald Hebb postulated that a medium amount of arousal is best for performance
— too little/too much could hamper performance of tasks
- for simple tasks, optimal level of arousal is towards high end
- for complex tasks, optimal level of arousal is towards low end
- optimal arousal for any type of task is never at the extremes
- Yerkes-Dodson effect
- on a graph, optimal arousal appears as an inverted U-curve, with lowest performance at the extremes of arousal

Question 76

State dependent learning

Answer 76

*concept that what a person learns in one state is best recalled in that state

Question 77

Continuous and discrete motor tasks

Answer 77

• continuous is easier to learn than discrete
• continuous task—riding a bicycle; one continuous motion that, once started, continues naturally
• discrete task—setting up a chessboard; one that’s divided into different parts that don’t facilitate the recall of each other; placing pieces in proper positions involves different bits of information; not one unbroken task

Question 78

Positive transfer

Answer 78

*previous learning that makes it easier to learn another task later
- negative transfer: previous learning that makes it more difficult to learn a new task

Question 79

Age

Answer 79

• affects learning
• humans primed to learn between 3 and 20
• 20 to 50, ability to learn remains fairly constant
• 50+, ability to learn drops

Question 80

Learning curve

Answer 80

*when learning something new, the rate of learning changes over time
- i.e., when learning a language someone may learn a bunch of vocabulary and basic sentence structure, but as they try to learn more complex grammatical constructions, rate of learning may decrease
- Hermann Ebbinghaus
- positively accelerated curve: rate of learning is increasing
- negatively accelerated curve: rate of learning is decreasing

Question 81

Educational psychology

Answer 81

*concerned with how people learn in educational settings
- examine things like student and teacher attributes and instructional processes in the classroom
- educational psychologists employed frequently by schools and help when students have academic/behavioral problems
- Thorndike wrote first educational psychology textbook in 1903; developed methods to assess students’ skills and teaching effectiveness

Question 82

Aptitude

Answer 82

*a set of characteristics that are indicative of a person’s ability to learn

Question 83

Cooperative learning

Answer 83

*involves students working on a project together in small groups

Question 84

Lev Vygotsky

Answer 84

• described learning through zone of proximal development; a lower achieving student in a particular subject is placed with someone who is just a bit more advanced; lower-achieving student thus raises their game through the interaction
• scaffolding learning: occurs when a teacher encourages the student to learn independently and provides assistance only with topics/concepts that are beyond the student’s capability
  — as student continues to learn, the teacher aids with less to encourage independence
• Vygotsky’s theories on education are used in classrooms worldwide

Question 85

Language

Answer 85

*the meaningful arrangement of sounds

Question 86

Psycholinguistics

Answer 86

*the study of the psychology of language

Question 87

Phonemes

Answer 87

*discrete sounds that make up words but carry no meaning
- i.e., ee, p, or sh
- infants first make these sounds when learning language
- phonics is learning to read by sounding out the phonemes
- all words in a language are created from basic phonological rules of sound combinations

Question 88

Morphemes

Answer 88

*made up of phonemes; smallest units of meaning in language
- words/parts of words that have meaning are morphemes
- i.e., the word boy and the suffix -ing

Question 89

Phrase

Answer 89

*a group of words that when put together function as a single syntactic part of a sentence
- i.e., “walking the dog” is a noun phrase that could function as the subject of a sentence if it were followed by a verb

Question 90

Syntax

Answer 90

*the arrangement of words into sentences as prescribed by a particular language

Question 91

Grammar

Answer 91

*the overall rules of the interrelationship between morphemes and syntax that make up a certain language

Question 92

Morphology or morphological rules

Answer 92

*grammar rules; how to group morphemes

Question 93

Prosody

Answer 93

*tone inflections, accents, and other aspects of pronunciation that carry meaning
- is the icing on the cake of grammar and meaning
- infants can more easily differentiate between completely different sounds than between different expressions of the same sound

Question 94

Phonology

Answer 94

*the study of sound patterns in languages

Question 95

Semantics

Answer 95

*the study of how signs and symbols are interpreted to make meaning