Psychology Learning and Memory Terms
Terms
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- Any enduring change in the way an organism responds based on its experience.
- LEARNING
- A behavior that is elicited automatically by an environmental stimulus.
- REFLEX
- Something in the environment that elicits a response.
- STIMULUS
- The decreasing strength of a response after repeated presentations of the stimulus.
- HABITUATION
- Conditions under which one thought becomes connected, or associated, with another.
- LAWS OF ASSOCIATION
- Proposes that 2 events will be connected in the mind if they're experienced close together in time.
- LAW OF CONTIGUITY
- The first type of learning to be studied systematically.
- CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
- A reflex that occurs naturally, without prior learning.
- UNCONDITIONED REFLEX
- The stimulus that produces the response in an unconditioned reflex.
- UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS
- A response that does not have to be learned.
- UNCONDITIONED RESPONSE
- A stimulus that through learning, has come to evoke a conditioned response.
- CONDITIONED RESPONSE
- A learned aversion to a taste associated with an unpleasant feeling.
- CONDITIONED TASTE AVERSION
- When a formerly neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that evokes an emotional response.
- CONDITIONED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
- Irrational fears of specific objects or situations.
- PHOBIAS
- Once an organism has learned to associate a CS with a UCS, it may respond to stimuli that resemble the CS with a similar response.
- STIMULUS GENERALIZATION
- The learned tendency to respond to a restricted range of stimuli or only the stimulus used during
- STIMULUS DISCRIMINATION
- The process by which a CR is weakened by the presentation of the CS without the UCS.
- EXTINCTION
- The reemergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response.
- SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY
- The time between presentation of the CS and the UCS.
- INTERSTIMULUS INTERVAL
- The evolved tendency of some associations to be learned more readily than others.
- PREPARED LEARNING
- The tendency of a group of neurons to fire more readily after consistent stimulation from other neurons.
- LONG TERM POTENTIATION
- Learning to operate on the environment to produce a consequence.
- OPERANT CONDITIONING
- Behaviors that are spontaneously produced rather than elicited by the environment.
- OPERANTS
- Increases the probability that a response will occur.
- REINFORCEMENT
- Diminishes the likelihood that a response will occur.
- PUNISHMENT
- Process whereby presentation of a stimulus after a behavior makes the behavior more likely to occur again.
- POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
- Process whereby termination of an aversive stimulus make a behavior more likely to occur.
- NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
- stored memories of muscle movements
- Motoric Representations
- store information in a sensory mode (dog barking or image of a city skyline)
- Sensory Representations
- information stored in words
- Verbal Representations
- immediate memory for information momentarily held in consciousness (telephone number)
- Primary Memory
- the vast store of information that is unconscious except when called back into primary memory
- Seconday Memory
- hold information about a perceived stimulus for a fraction of a secod after the stimulus disappears
- Sensory Registers
- momentary memory for visual information
- Iconic Storage
- momentary memory for auditory information
- Echoic Storage
- a memory store that holds a small amount of information in consciousness for roughly 20-30 seconds; it has limited capacity
- Short-term Memory
- repeating the information over andover in your mind
- Rehearsal
- metal repetition in order to maintain information in short-term memory
- Maintenance Rehearsal
- actively thinking about the information while rehearsing
- Elaborative Rehearsal
- representations of facts, images, thoughts, feelings, skills, and experiences may reside for as long as a lifetime
- Long-term Memory
- recovering information from long-term memory
- Retrieval
- a tendency to remember information toward the beginnning and the end of a list rather than the middle
- Serial Position Effect
- discrete but interdependent processing units responsible for different kinds of remembering
- Modules
- the temporary storage and processing of information that can be used to solve problems to repsond to environmental demands, or to achieve goals
- Working Memory
- a memory technique that uses knowledge stored in LTM to group information in larger units than single words or digits
- Chunking
- memory for facts and events
- Declarative Memory
- "how to" knowledge of procedures or skills (skill or habit memory)
- Procedural Memory
- general world knowledge or facts
- Semantic Memory
- memories of particular events
- Episodic Memory
- conscious recollection
- Explicit Memory
- memory that's expressed in behavior but does not require conscious recollection
- Implicit Memory
- the spontaneous conscious recollection of information from long-term memory
- Recall
- the person knows the information is "in there" but is not quite able to retrieve it
- Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
- the explicit sense or recollection that something currently perceived has been previously encountered or learned
- Recognition
- prior exposure to a stimulus facilitates or inhibits the processing of new information
- Priming Effects
- memory as it occurs in everyday life
- Everyday as it occurs in everyday life
- memory for things from the past
- Retrospective Memory
- memory for things that need to be done in the future
- Prospective Memory
- manipulating mental representations for a purpose
- Thinking
- visual representations
- Mental images
- representations that describe, explain, or predict they way things work
- Mental models
- groupings based on common properties
- Categories
- mental representation of a category
- Concept
- process of identifying an object as an instance of a category; recogizing similarities and dissimilarities
- Categorization
- qualities that are essential, or necessarily present, in order to classify the object as a member of a category
- Defining Features
- concepts that have properties clearly setting them apart from other concepts
- Well-defined concepts
- an abstraction across many instances of a category
- Prototype
- broadest, most inclusve level of categorization; objects share common attributes that are distinctive of the concept
- Basic level of categorization
- below basic level in which more specific attributes are shared by members of category
- Subordinate level of categorization
- process by which people generate and evaluate arguments and beliefs
- Reasoning
- reasoning from specific observations to more general propostitions
- Inductive reasoning
- logical reasoning that draws a conclusion from a set of assumptions and premises
- Deductive reasoning
- two premises that lead to a logical conlusion
- Syllogism
- the process by which people understand a novel situation in terms of a familiar one
- Analogical reasoning
- the process of transforming one situatio into another to meet a goal
- Problem solving
- the initial state, goal state, and operators are easily determined
- Well-defined problems
- unsatisfactory state
- Initial state
- state in which the problem is resolved
- Goal state
- both the information need to solve the problem and the criteria for determining when the goal has been met are vague
- Ill-defined problems
- minigoals on the way to achieving a broader goal
- Subgoals
- techniques that serve as guides for solving a problem
- Problem-solving strategies
- systematic procedures that inevitably produce a solution
- Algorithms
- imagining the steps involved in solving a problem mentally before actually undertaking them
- Mental stimulation
- the tendency for people to ignore other possible functions of an object when they have a fixed function in mind
- Functional fixedness
- the tendency for people to search for confirmation of what they already believe
- Confirmation bias
- the process by which an individual weighs the pros and cons of different alternatives in order to make a choice
- Decision making
- combined measure of the importance of an attribute and the extent to which a given option satissfies it
- Weighted utility value
- combined judgment of the weighted utility and the expected probability of obtaining that outcome
- Expected utility
- cognition that involves conscious manipulation of representations
- Explicit cognition
- cognitive shortcuts for selecting among alternatives without carefully considering each one
- Heuristics
- people categorize by matching the similarity of an object to a prototype but ignore information about its probability of occurring
- Representativeness Heuristic
- people infer the frequency of something on the basis of how readily it comes to mind
- Availability Heuristic
- people are rational within the bounds imposed by their environment, goals, and abilities
- Bounded rationality
- cognition outside of awareness
- Implicit cognition
- asserts that most cognitive processes occur simultaneously through the action of multiple activated networks
- Connectionism (PDP)
- the tendency to settle on a cognitive solution that satisfies as many constraints as possible in order to achieve the best fit to data
- Constraint satisfaction
- plays central role in working memory and explicit manipulations of representation
- Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
- helps people use their emotional reactions to guide decision making and behavior
- Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex
- the system of symbols, sounds, meanings, and rules for their combination that constitutes the primary mode of communication among humans
- Language
- idea that language shapes thoughts
- Whorfian hyothesis of linguistic relativity
- smallest units of sound that constitute speech
- Phonemes
- smallest units of meaning in laguage
- Morphemes
- groups of words that act as a unit can convey meaning
- Phrases
- organized sequence of words that expires a thought or intention
- Sentences
- rules that govern the placement of words and phrases in a sentence
- Syntax
- a system for generating acceptable language utterances and identifying unacceptable ones
- Grammar
- the rules that govern the meanings of morphemes, words, phrases and sentences
- Semantics
- the way language is used and understood in everyday life
- Pragmatics
- the way people ordinarily, speak, hear, read and write in interconnected sentences
- Discourse
- a variety of signals: body language, gestures, touch, physical distance, facial expressions, and nonverbal vocalizations
- Nonverbal communication