Lecture 20: Learning across the lifespan

Question 1

By about 6 weeks of ____ ____ (time since conception), the fetus starts making simple, stereotyped movements that allow it to feel the space around it and sense the action of its body, meanwhile the brain is also learning to process and respond to ____ stimuli. By about 25 week the brain and sense organs are sufficiently developed for the fetus to start perceiving and learning about ____; ____ and ____ are possible before birth.

Answer 1

Gestational age; sensory; sound; habituation; recognition

Question 2

Sound I and II are played in sequence, and with repeated presentations of Sound I, fewer fetuses respond - same happened for Sound II. After that, ____ ____ is observed when sound I is presented again to the fetuses, followed by rapid ____

Answer 2

Spontaneous recovery; habituation

Question 3

____ ____ is a technique for assessing memories in preverbal infants in which they are shown an action and tested for their ability to mimic this action later. During the first few months of age, children begin to imitate the ____ sounds they hear, and by about 1 to 2 years of age, babies learn and use individual ____, usually acquiring a vocabulary of several hundred words.

Answer 3

Elicited imitation; speech; words

Question 4

The ____ and ____ ____, which are critical for encoding and recall of episodic memories, are immature in humans at birth and continue to develop throughout childhood. This is why ____ memory matures more slowly than ____ memory. For example, infants younger than 16 months do not show ____-recognition behavior, but children older than 24 months do.

Answer 4

Hippocampus; prefrontal cortex; episodic; semantic; mirror

Question 5

4 year olds perform ____ than 3 year olds in all ____ recall tests. While they perform equally on the ____ question in the behavioral test, 3 year olds are significantly lacking on the ____ question than 4 year olds, which demonstrates that they were still impaired at remembering the ____ order.

Answer 5

Better; verbal; where; when; temporal

Question 6

____ ____ is a time window, usually early in life, during which a certain kind of learning occurs most easily and is most effective.

Answer 6

Sensitive period

Question 7

____ refers to the way that animals of many species, including birds, are especially likely to form an attachment to the first individual they see after birth

Answer 7

Imprinting

Question 8

Some researchers suggest that human language learning also has a ____ ____, which ends by about age 12 months (or earlier). In an experiment, they found that older infants have ____ ability to distinguish sounds from other languages.

Answer 8

Sensitive period; declining

Question 9

The template model of song learning consists of 3 basic phases of learning:

Answer 9

1. Song memorization
2. Song practices
3. Song utilization

Question 10

___ is the process of physical change during which the body transitions to sexual maturity, and occurs at different ages in different species. ____on the other hand is defined as the transitional stage between the onset of the previous one and entry into adulthood.

Answer 10

Puberty; adolescence

Question 11

During adolescence, learning and memory abilities continue to rise, specifically in ____ memory and ____ ____

Answer 11

Working; executive function

Question 12

The Seattle Longitudinal Study revealed that most cognitive abilities, including ____ memory, showed little different in participants. Some forms of memory, such as ____ memory, can start to decline in humans as young as the mid-thirties. Others, such as ____ knowledge and ____ ability, tend to remain strong well into old age

Answer 12

Verbal; working; semantic; verbal

Question 13

____ is the reduction in the strength of a memory due to overlap with the content of other memories. ____ ____ = disruption of learning new things by previously stored info, while ____ ____ = disruption of old info by more recent learning

Answer 13

Interference; proactive interference; retrospective interference

Question 14

In general, learning by conditioning and skill learning ____ with age. However, even though the learning of ____ associations and skills is slowed, highly ____ skilled tend to be maintained well.

Answer 14

Declines; new; practiced

Question 15

Younger adults can do ____ ____ better than elderly adults.

Answer 15

Directed forgetting

Question 17

While young adults showed the expected tendency to recall ____ material on both ends better than neutral ones, older adults remembered many more ____ than ____ (or neutral) items.

Answer 17

Emotional; positive; negative

Question 18

____-____ ____ ____ (BDNF) is a protein needed for neuron health and function. People carrying 2 copies of the Met allele show ____ performance on a test of memory recall than people carrying the other form and heterozygote individuals.

Answer 18

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor; worse

Question 20

In selective breeding studies on maze learning, it was shown that maze-bright offspring performed ____ than maze-dull offspring, and differences ____ with successive generations. This argues for a major role of ____ (nature)

Answer 20

Better; increased; genetics

Question 21

____ is the production of new neurons. ____ is natural neuron death when it is deprived of neurotrophic factors. In childhood, the latter may cull as many as 1/_ of all the neurons produced prenatally.

Answer 21

Neurogenesis; apoptosis; 3

Question 22

____ is the creation of new synapses, and begins in the human brain a early as 5 months after conception. The vast majority of synapses on cortical neurons occur on ____, tiny protrusions from dendrites where axons form synapses.

Answer 22

Synaptogenesis; spines

Question 23

Sensitive periods in learning may reflect sensitive periods in ____ development, when environmental inputs can easily alter brain organization by changing local ____ connectivity.

Answer 23

Neuronal; cortical

Question 24

Starting in puberty, there is a dramatic increase in the release of sex hormones, primarily ____ in mature females and ____, particularly ____, in adult males. These hormonal differences occur at about the same scale as sex differences in learning and memory, suggesting that the hormones are responsible for many of the behavioral effects.

Answer 24

Estrogen; androgen; testosterone

Question 25

____ ____ ____ (DTI) suggests that male brains typically have more ____ connectivity (within hemispheres), while female brains typically have more ____ connectivity (between hemispheres)

Answer 25

Diffusion tensor imaging; intrahemispheric; interhemispheric

Question 26

Older adults tend to have ____ volume in the ____ prefrontal cortex, but this is not true for all cortical regions. For example, the volume for the ____ ____ cortex appears to decline very little with age. The ____ may shrink in overall volume but does not appear to show much age-related neuron loss in humans.

Answer 26

Smaller; lateral; primary visual; hippocampus

Question 28

Although the total number of ____ neurons and synapses does not decline appreciably with aging, there are changes in neuronal ____, including reduced ability to maintain changes in synapse strength — ____ ____ required for LTP may become less stable, meaning that new learning may not survive for long. Also, reduced and disrupted ____-____ ___ (SWS) may be another factor imparting the ability of the aged ____ to encode and consolidate new memories.

Answer 28

Hippocampal; function; neuronal plasticity; slow-wave sleep; hippocampus