Psychology Exam 2 Flashcards
Learning is:
the process of acquiring through experience, new and relatively enduring information or behaviors
Associative learning is:
learning that certain events occur together
Who thought of Classical Conditioning?
Ivan Pavlov
Stimulus is:
is any event or situation that evokes a response
Neutral Stimulus:
a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning
Unconditioned Stimulus:
a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response
Conditioned Stimulus:
originally irrelevant stimulus after association with an unconditioned stimulus triggers a conditioned response
Acquisition:
neutral stimulus + unconditioned stimulus = conditioned response
Extinction:
diminishing of a conditioned response US does not follow a CS
Spontaneous Recovery:
reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished CR
Generalization:
tendency, once a response has been conditioned, to elicit similar responses
Discrimination:
learned ability to distinguish between a CS and other irrelevant stimuli
Who works with Operant Conditioning?
B.F. Skinner
Operant Conditioning
a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer, or diminished if followed by a punisher
Reinforcement:
strengthens a response making it more likely to occur
Punishment:
weakens a response making it less likely to occur
Positive Reinforcement
adding something pleasant to increase a behavior
Negative Reinforcement
removing something to increase behavior
Positive punishment
add something negative that decreases behavior (speeding ticket)
Negative Punishment
take something positive away that decreases behavior (taking phone away)
Primary Reinforcements
satisfy an intrinsic unlearned biological need; food, water, sex
Secondary reinforcements
not intrinsic and value is learned; money, praise, attention
Fixed Ratio
every so many; reinforcement after every nth behavior
Fixed interval
every so often; reinforcement for behavior after a fixed time
Variable Ratio
after an unpredictable number
Variable Interval
unpredictably often for behavior after a random amount of time
Side effects of punishment
increase aggression, passive aggressive behavior, avoidance, modeling
Mirroring neurons
frontal lobe neurons that fire similarly when both performing a behavior and watching another perform the behavior
Why is observational learning important?
avoids danger, how to think and feel, and how to interact socially.
What is Memory?
the persistence of learning over time through storage and retrieval of information
What are 3 measures of memory?
- Recall-Retrieve
- Recognition-Identify
- Relearning-Time saved
Iconic Memory
visual representation
Echoic memory
auditory representation
Automatic Processing
visual and auditory representation
Effortful processing
space, time, and frequency
Encoding
information in
Storage
hang onto information
Retrieval
get information back out
Sensory memory
immediate
Short-term memory
few items, relays between sensory and long term memory or forgotten
Long-tern memory
information is processed meaningfully
Atkinson-shiffrin model
external events > sensory memory > encoding > short term memory > retrieving > long term memory
Explicit Memory
declarative; effort, information, facts
Implicit Memory
nondeclartive; automatic/unconscious
Automatic memory is processed where?
cerebellum and basal ganglia
Effortful memory is processed where?
hippocampus and frontal lobes
Semantic Memory
facts and general knowledge
Episodic Memory
personally experienced events
Declarative Memory
things you know that you can tell others; includes episodic and semantic
Non declarative Memory
things you know that you can show by doing; includes skill learning, priming, and conditioning
Frontal Lobe
explicit memories
Hippocampus
Save button
Cerebellum
implicit conditioned
Basal Ganglia
implicit procedural
Amygdala
emotions
Chunking
organizing items into familiar or manageable things
Mnemonics
memory aides, pictures, acronym
Hierarchies
dividing and subdividing concepts
Massed practice is NOT effective True or False
True
emotions release stress hormones that impact memory
True
Priming-Activation
smells, taste, sights, etc
Context Dependent
memory better when tested in the same context
State-Dependent
recall better in the same state; good or bad events become retrieval cues
Mood-congruent memory
the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with ones current good or bad mood
Recency Effect
remember last item best right away, but if attention is shifted too soon it will not encode into long term
Primacy effect
remember first items the best in a list
Anterograde Amnesia
cannot form new memories
Retrograde Amnesia
cannot recall past memories
what kind of memory do people with amnesia lose?
they lose explicit memory but not implicit
Why do we forget?
encoding failure, storage decay, retrieval failure
Proactive Interference
old learning disrupts new
Retroactive Interference
new learning disrupts old
Motivated Forgetting
repression of neutral events successful, but rarely emotional events
Misinformation effect-misleading
information can mislead our memories
source amnesia
inaccurately recall how we learned something
false memories
fill in gaps, influenced by questions or stories
Cognition
all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Concepts
help to simplify thinking through mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Prototype
placing an item in a category, memory gradually shifts it toward a category
Algorithm
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees a solution to a problem
Heuristic
a simpler strategy that is usually speedier than an algorithm but is also more error prone
Insight
sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem
Confirmation Bias
predisposes us to verify rather than challenge our preconceptions
Fixation
mental set, may prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would lead to a solution
Availability Heuristics
can distort judgment by estimating event likelihood based on memory availability
Why we fear the wrong things?
ancestral history has prepared us to fear, what we cannot control, what is immediate, and what is most readily available in memory
Overconfidence
the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgment
Belief Perseverance
when we cling to beliefs and ignore evidence that proves these are wrong
Framing
the way we present an issue, sways our decisions and judgments
What is intuition?
analysis, adaptive, enables quick reactions, flows from unconscious processing
Creativity
is the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
What is creativity supported by?
Aptitude, intelligence, working memory
Divergent Thinking
expands the number of possible problem solutions
Convergent thinking
narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution
Who is Robert Sternberg
5 components of creativity,
1. expertise
2. imaginative thinking skills
3. intrinsic motivation
4. a venturesome personally
5. a creative environment
Language
our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning
Phonemes
small distinctive sound units in language
Morphemes
smallest language units that carry meaning
Grammar
system of rules that enables humans to communicate with one another
Semantics
how we derive meaning from sounds
Syntax
how we order words into sentences
Receptive Language
Infants’ ability to understand what is sald to them begins around 4 months.
Productive Language
Infants’ ability lo produce words begins around 10 months.
Childhood
seems to represent a critical period for mastering certain aspects of language
Intelligence
the potential to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new solutions
Charles Spearmen
humans have one general intelligence that is at the heart of everything a person doe
Gardners Eight Multiple Intelligences
Intelligence consists of multiple abilities that come in different packages.
Sternberg’s Three Intelligences
Analytical, Creative, and Practical
Analytical intelligence
(school smarts: traditional academic problem solving)
Creative intelligence
(trailblazing smarts: ability to generate novel ideas)
Practical intelligence
(street smarts: skill at handling everyday tasks)
Emotional intelligence
The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
Aphasia
an impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area
Damage to Broca’s area impairs?
speaking
Damage to Wernicks area impairs?
understanding
Intelligence test
method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others using numerical scores
Aptitude tests
designed to predict a persons future performance
Achievement tests
designed to assess what a person has learned
Alfred Binet
predicting school achievement, measured each child’s mental age and tested how they succeed
standardization
defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group
reliability
extent to which a test yields consistent results
Validity
extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
content validity
extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
predictive validity
success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict
