Task 5 - Emotional learning and memory Flashcards
Emotion
s a cluster of three distinct but interrelated phenomena: physiological responses, overt behaviours, and conscious feelings – produced in response to an affecting situation
Fear response
A cluster of physiological, motor, and conscious reactions that accompany the emotion of fear. In the laboratory, these physiological changes and motor behaviors are often taken to imply presence of fear whether or not the accompanying conscious experience of fear can be documented
small set of universal emotions, hardwired in humans from birth
this set includes happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise
Arousal
a collection of bodily responses (including increased blood flow to muscles, increased respiration, and depressed digestion and immune function) that prepare the body to face a threat; also known as the fight-or-flight response
Fight-or-flight response
A collection of bodily responses (including increased blood flow to muscles, increased respiration, and depressed digestion and immune function) that prepare the body to face a threat; also known as arousal
Autonomic nervous system (ANS)
A collection of nerves and structures that control internal organs and glands
- When the brain senses a challenge or threat, the ANS sends a signal to the adrenal glands, which release stress hormones
Stress hormones
hormones that act throughout the body to turn the fight-or- flight response on and off – examples include norepinephrine and the glucocorticoids
Stress
Any stimulus or event that causes bodily arousal and release of stress hormones
James-Lange theory of emotion
The theory that conscious feelings of emotion occur when the mind senses the physiological responses associated with fear or some other kind of arousal
Somatic theories of emotion
(basically the same as James-Lange theory of emotion) all based on this central premise that physiological responses to stimuli come first, and these determine or induce emotions
- one prediction of somatic theories of emotion is that researchers should be able to evoke a given emotion in a person just by inducing the corresponding bodily responses
Cannon-Bard theory of emotion
The theory that conscious emotions stimulate appropriate behaviors and physiological responses
- Criticism against the somatic theories
Two-factor theory of emotion
which posits that a combination of cognitive appraisal and perception of biological changes together determine our experience of emotion
- Famous experiment supporting this is the “High Bridge” study
Piloerection
a fear response in mammals in which body hair stands on end, making the animal look bigger and more threatening than it is
Conditioned escape
an experimental design in which animals learn to make particular responses in order to escape from or terminate an aversive stimulus
- Escape learning is a form of operant conditioning
Conditioned avoidance
animals learn to make particular responses to avoid or prevent arrival of an aversive stimulus
Two-factor theory of avoidance learning
avoidance learning involves an interaction between classical and operant conditioning
Problem:
one major difficulty is that these theories assume that avoidance learning is based on conditioned fear of the warning signal – (avoidance learning is often extremely resistant to extinction)
Learned helplessness
exposure to an uncontrollable punisher teaches an expectation that responses are ineffectual, which in turn reduces the motivation to attempt new avoidance responses
- -> Understanding this phenomenon may provide clues for how to promote resilience or resistance to negative emotions and even to depression
- Depression - a psychiatric condition that involves sadness as well as a general loss of initiative and activity
Mood congruency of memory
it is easier to retrieve memories that match our current mood or emotional state