Learning Flashcards
What is learning?
The process by which experiences of the world produce relatively sustained changes in behaviour of an organism
What is habituation?
The suppression of a reflexive response
What theory is Ivan Pavlov known for?
Classical conditioning
What is classical conditioning?
Learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus
What does a reflex involve the pairing of?
Stimulus and response
How does a neutral stimulus become a conditioned stimulus?
By presenting a presenting a neutral stimulus prior to unconditioned stimulus over time the organism will respond to the neutral stimulus thus becoming the conditioned stimulus
I.e ring bell (neutral stimulus) before food (unconditioned stimulus) eventually ringing bell will induce salivating (conditioned response)
What is acquisition?
Exposure/trials to neutral
Stimulus and unconditioned stimulus together and learning how to perform them ourselves
What is single trial learning?
Based off one experience you now have a conditioned response
What is generalisation?
Similar stimuli produce a conditioned response
What is extinction in classical conditioning?
Unlearning a conditioned stimulus
What is spontaneous recovery
Extinction doesn’t go away perfectly - conditioned stimulus returns after a week of being away
What does spontaneous recovery and extinction highlight
That you need to keep pairing unconditioned stimulus with conditioned stimulus
What is systematic desensitisation
Expose only to slightly scary things in exposure therapy
What is flooding?
Exposing someone to the conditioned stimulus until
Their reaction is extinguished
What does classical conditioning rely on?
The behaviours that already exist in response to a stimulus
What is law of effect?
Positive consequences of a behaviour make it more likely and negative consequences of a behaviour make it less likely
Operating conditioning
The likelihood of non reflexive behaviours occurring due to their consequences
What are operants?
Non reflexive behaviour. They occur not in response to any particular stimuli
How are operant behaviours achieved?
Through reinforcement and punishment
What is positive punishment or positive reinforcement?
Giving something I.e smack or cuddle
What is negative reinforcement or punishment?
Taking something away
What is continuous reinforcement?
Every time a behaviour is performed it is pos or negatively reinforced
What is an example fixed interval reinforcement schedule?
Getting payed hourly to do your job
Variable interval reinforcement example?
Boss checking randomly to check you’re doing your job properly
What is ratio reinforcement?
Based on performance of behaviour rather than time
What is a fixed ratio example?
Getting a free coffee after every 6
What is a variable ratio example?
Gambling. Relies on number of performances of good behaviour but is not a constant number. You don’t get s reward every time you gamble but you have to gamble
In order to get a reward.
Why are variable ratio reinforcement schedules effective and more resistant to extinction?
If a reward come intermittently and then stops it will take longer to notice it has stopped hence conditioned stimulus remains
What is secondary conditioning?
Pairing a now conditioned stimulus with a new neutral stimulus to condition and elicit a response I.e celebrity advertise product
What is shaping?
Slowly making reward condition more specific. Complex behaviour so made up of simple behaviour so rewarding simple behaviour will get you closer to ideal behaviour
What is successive approximation?
Behaviours that are increasingly close to the target behaviour
What is vicarious learning?
Learning through watching others
What is attention?
Focus and processing of information from the vast amount of information that is available to you through your senses, memory and cognitive process
What is selective or focused attention?
Allows us to attend to only one Stosur of info while ignoring others
What is the dichotic listening task?
Listening to one channel on one ear phone a d ignoring the other channel
What is the cocktail part effect?
Even if people are listening to one channel they can still notice changes in the unattended channel
What is serial processing?
In order to process several stimuli at the same time we need to go through each target one at a time to find the one with both features we are looking for
What is executive control?
Mechanism that sets goals a priorities and directs the function of many of our cognitive processes
Why aren’t memories very detailed?
We need to extract the general idea of them to apply to multiple situations - memories have to be flexible
What is the purpose of working memory?
It’s temporarily holds information so you can continue with a sentence/maths equation etc
What’s are the 4 components of working memory?
Phonological loop
Visuospatial sketchpad
Episodic buffer
Central executive
Phonological loop
Briefly stores sound information
Visuospatial sketchpad
Stores visual and spatial information
Episodic buffer
Provides a temporary space where information from subsystem (phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad) and long term memory can be integrated and manipulated
Central executive
Directs the action - controls sequence of actions that need to be performed in the other subsystems
What is the serial
Position effect?
U-shaped curve that demonstrates the memory of people at the beginning of a lost and end of a list
What is primacy effect? And what does it give evidence for?
Good memory for words at the beginning of the list - evidence for long term memeroy due to rehearsal effect
What is the recency effect? And what does it give evidence for?
Good memory for words at end of list. Evidence for working memory, able to access words due to them still being your working memory
What do the primacy and recency effect give evidence for?
There are seperate memory systems
What does maintenance rehearsal do?
Rote repetitions can shift information from working memory to long term memory
What is elaborate rehearsal?
Focus on meaning of information and elaborate on it to remember it
Explicit memory
Intentionally retrieve memory
What does Implicit memory do?
Influences behaviour without conscious awareness
What are two explicit memory tests?
Recall test and recognition test
What is a recall test?
Give people a list of words and ask them to recall those words
What is a recognition test?
Decide which stimulus or option is the best or most familiar
What is anterograde amnesia?
After an accident unable to recalls things from explicit memory but have an intact implicit memory. Can retain information but can’t consciously access it
Which area of the brain becomes active in working memory?
Frontal lobes
Which areas of the brain are most important for encoding long term memory?
Hippocampus, thalamus and amygdala
What is memory consolidation
Turning working memory into long term memory
What is the main brain region that turn working memory into long term memory
Hippocampus
Can can damage to the thalamus cause?
Impairs encoding of new memories and retrieval of old memories. Can also cause anterograde and retrograde amnesia
Role of the amygdala
Encodes emotionally arpusing aspects of stimuli and also helps form long term memories or emotional event s
4 reasons for forgetting information
- Only entered working memory
- Retrieval failure - info stores in long term memory but retrieval cues are strong enough to retrieve it
- Decay - information stores but not used and over time decays
- Interface theory
What are the two types of interface theory?
Proactive and retroactive interface
What is proactive interface?
Material learnt in the past interferes with recall of newer material I.e can’t recall new phone number because you still remember old one
Retroactive interface?
New material interferes with recalls of past material
What is content reinstatement?
Make retrieval context as similar as possible to the encoding context
What is encoding context?
Place where you do the learning
What is retrieval context?
Place where you do the remembering?
