Week 4 Flashcards
What is a teacher removing marks for late assignments doing
Giving less reinforcement for a behaviour is not negative punishment. It is just less effective form of positive reinforcement.
What is an important aspect of negative punishment
Negative punishment requires the removal of a reinforcing stimulus the organism is already in possession of or has access to.
Semantic Memory
- our knowledge of facts about the world
- Also referred to as “declarative memory”
For example, knowing that the capital of France is Paris, understanding the concept of gravity, or recognizing that a cat is a type of animal are all examples of semantic memory.
Episodic memory
- recollection of events in our lives
Explicit memory
- memories we recall intentionally and of which we have conscious awareness
For instance, if someone asks you to recall the name of your best friend, you can access the explicit memory of that information and verbally tell them the name.
Implicit memory
- memories we don’t deliberately remember or reflect on consciously
Once you have learned how to ride a bicycle, your brain stores the motor skills and sequence of movements necessary to ride a bike.
Procedural Memory
- memory for how to do things, including motor skills and habits
Priming
The activation of one concept by another.
For example, if someone is shown a picture of a dog, they may be more likely to recognize the word “puppy” on a list of words than if they had not been primed with the dog picture.
Three-component Model
The three-component model is a psychological model that explains attitudes as having three parts: feelings, actions, and thoughts towards something or someone. When these three parts are aligned, attitudes are stronger.
Sensory Memory
Brief storage of perceptual information before it is passed to short-term memory.
Two branches of Sensory Memory
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Iconic Store / Iconic Memory:
Visual sensory memory that only lasts about a second.
George Sperling: Method of Partial Report.
ex. When you glance at a person walking by quickly, your visual sensory memory of them as they pass is an example of iconic memory -
Echoic Store / Echoic Memory:
Auditory sensory memory that only lasts 5-10 seconds.
ex. When you’re listening to a lecture and your mind briefly wanders, but you’re able to recall the last few words the professor said when you refocus, that’s an example of echoic memory
Short-Term / Working Memory:
- Memory system that retains information for limited durations.
- Encompasses information currently being attended to, thought about, or “processing” in some way.
Trying to remember a phone number that someone just told you, so you repeat it to yourself over and over until you have a chance to write it down. In this case, your working memory is holding the phone number temporarily while you manipulate and rehearse the information to help you remember it
Why is short term memory short
- Decay: fading of information from memory over time.
- Interference: loss of information from memory because of competition from additional incoming information.
Two types of interference
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Retroactive Interference: Interference with retention of old information due to acquisition of new information.
ex. example could be when you learn a new password for a website and later find yourself unable to recall the old password you had been using before. -
Proactive Interference: Interference with acquisition of new information due to previous learning of information.
ex. A person who has learned to play the guitar using a certain technique finds it difficult to learn a new technique that contradicts the muscle memory they have developed from the previous technique.
Magic Number
the assumed span of short-term memory: seven plus or minus two pieces of information.
Researchers are not unanimous on this point.
