Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
Cognitive Psychology Part of GRE Subject Test
Learning
Relatively permanent/stable change in behavior as a result of experience
Types of Learning
1) Classical Conditioning
2) Instrumental Conditioning (Operant)
3) Observational Learning/Modeling
E.L. Thorndike - Law of Effect
Individuals do what rewards them and stop doing what doesn’t bring them a reward
Kurt Lewin - Association
Grouping things together based on the fact they occur together in time and space (i.e. certain cues -> certain behaviors -> certain rewards)
Pavlov - Classical Conditioning
Unconditioned Stimulus –> Unconditioned Response
Conditioned Stimulus –> Conditioned Response
Simultaneous Conditioning
UCS and CS are presented at the same time
Higher Order/2nd Order Conditioning
Previous CS becomes the UCS and a new stimulus becomes the new CS
Delay Conditioning
Present a CS (light) before the UCS (food) and the CS is present until the UCS appears (purpose is to learn to control the conditioned response)
Operant Conditioning
Influencing responses through various reinforcement strategies (we do what rewards us and do not do what doesn’t)
Shaping
Rewarding behaviors that bring you closer to the actual behavior you want to succeed at (i.e. walking to the front of the room freshman year in PYSC101)
Positive Reinforcement
Rewarding to increase likelihood of behavior
Negative Reinforcement
Taking away something negative from the situation to encourage and increase likelihood of behavior
Punishment
Introducing a negative event to stop someone behaving in a particular way
Continuous Reinforcement Schedule
Every correct response is given some sort of reinforcement; quickest learning but most fragile (i.e. giving autistic kid snack when he gets a correct answer)
Partial Reinforcement Schedule
Not all correct responses are met with reinforcement; more resistant to extinction
1) Fixed ratio schedule (ex. after every 3 correct)
2) Variable ratio schedule (ex. after every 2 correct, then 5, then 3)
3) Fixed interval schedule (ex. after every 2 minutes)
4) Variable interval schedule (ex. after every 2 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 3 minutes)
State Dependent Learning
What a person learns in one state will be best recalled in that state
Extinction
The need to disassociate behavior from a particular cue or withhold reinforcement for a behavior
Language
Meaningful arrangements of sounds
Phonemes
Discrete sounds that make up words but carry no meaning (ee, p, sh)
Morphemes
Made up of phonemes; smallest unit of meaning in language (-ing or boy)
Phrases
Groups of words that, when put together, function as a single syntactic part of a sentence
Syntax
Arrangements of words into sentences as prescribed by a particular language
Conntations
Implied meanings
Telegraphic speech
Speech without articles or extras (“me go”)
Holophrastic speech
Child uses one word to convey whole sentence (“me” = “give that to me”
Memory
How things are remembered and why things are forgotten
Types of Memory
1) Sensory
2) Working
3) Long Term
Sensory Memory
Lasts for only a few seconds; people can see more than they can remember
Working Memory
Temporary memory that is needed to perform the task being worked on in the moment
Proactive Interference
Old information prevents new information from being remembered
Retroactive Interference
New information prevents old information from being remembered
Long Term Memory
Permanent retention; 3 phases
1) Recognition -> recognize things learned in past
2) Recall -> free and cued; need to generate info on their own
3) Savings -> how much info about a topic remains in LTM by assessing how long it take to learn something the 2nd time as opposed to the first
Encoding Specificity Principle
Material is more likely to be remembered if retrieved in some context it was stored in
Episodic Memory
details, events, episodes
Semantic Memory
general knowledge
Procedural Memory
“how to” do something
Declarative Memory
Knowing a fact
Explicit Memory
Consciously aware of knowing something
Implicit Memory
Knowing something without being aware of knowing it
