13.1 Learning, Memory, Amnesia, And Brain Functioning

Question 0

Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov pioneered the investigation of what we now call ____ ____, in which pairing two stimuli changes the response to one of them.

Answer 0

classical conditioning

Question 1

Life without memory means no sense of existing across time, your memory is almost synonymous with your sense of “____”.

Answer 1

self

Question 2

The experiment starts by presenting a ____ ____ (CS), which initially elicits no response of note, and then presents the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), which automatically elicits the unconditioned response (UCR).

Answer 2

conditioned stimulus

Question 3

After some pairings of the CS and the UCS the individual begins making a new, learned response to the CS, called a ____ ____ (CR).

Answer 3

conditioned response

Question 4

In his original experiments, Pavlov presented a ___ with a sound (CS) followed by meat (UCS), which stimulated the dog to salivate (UCR).

Answer 4

dog

Question 5

In ____ ____ (aka operant conditioning), an individuals response leads to a reinforcer or punishment.

Answer 5

instrumental conditioning

Question 6

A ____ is any event that increases the future probability of the response.

Answer 6

reinforcer

Question 7

A ____ is an event that suppresses the frequency of the response.

Answer 7

punishment

Question 8

The primary ____ between classical and instrumental conditioning is that in instrumental conditioning the individuals response determines the outcome (reinforcer or punishment), whereas in classical conditioning the CS and the UCS occur at certain times regardless of the individual’s behaviour.

Answer 8

difference

Question 9

Pavlov proposed that classical conditioning reflects a strengthened connection between a CS centre and a UCS centre in the brain. That strengthened connection lets any excitation of the CS centre flow to the UCS centre, evoking the ____ ____.

Answer 9

unconditioned response

Question 10

Carl Lashley set out to test this hypothesis. Lashley was searching for the ____ – the physical representation of what has been learned. (A connection between two brain areas would be a possible example of an engram.)

Answer 10

engram

Question 11

Lashley reasoned that if learning depends on new or strengthened connections between two brain areas, a ____ ___ somewhere in the brain should interrupted that connection and abolish the learned response.

Answer 11

knife cut

Question 12

Lashley also tested whether any portion of the ____ ____ is more important than others for learning.

Answer 12

cerebral cortex

Question 13

Learning and memory apparently did not rely on a single cortical area. Lashley therefore proposed two principles about the ____ ____: equipotentiality, and mass action.

Answer 13

nervous system

Question 14

In _____, all parts of the cortex contribute equally to complex behaviours such as learning, and any part of the cortex can substitute for any other.

Answer 14

equipotentiality

Question 15

In ____ ____, the cortex works as a whole, and more cortex is better.

Answer 15

mass action

Question 16

Eventually researchers found that Lashley’s conclusions rested on two ____ assumptions: (A) that the cerebrum cortex is the best or only place to search for an engram, and (B) that all kinds of memory are physiologically the same.

Answer 16

unnecessary

Question 17

Donald head (1949) reasoned that no one mechanism could account for all the phenomena of ____. You can immediately repeat something you just heard, so it is clear that some memories respond quickly. Old people can recall events from childhood, so we also see that some memories last a lifetime.

Answer 17

learning

Question 18

Hebb could not imagine a ____ ____ that is fast enough to account for immediate memory yet stable enough to provide permanent memory.

Answer 18

chemical process

Question 19

Hebb therefore proposed a distinction between ____ memory of events that have just occurred and ____ memory of events from further back.

Answer 19

short-term : long-term

Question 20

Based on these distinctions, researchers proposed that all information initially entered a short-term storage, where it stayed until the brain had time to ____ it into long-term memory.

Answer 20

consolidate

Question 21

If anything interrupted the ____ before consolidate took place, the information was simply lost.

Answer 21

rehearsal

Question 22

Consolidation isn’t what we used to think it was. The original idea was it the brain held onto something in ____ ____ for whatever time it needed to do what it had to do in order to establish a long-term memory – mainly, synthesising new proteins.

Answer 22

short-term storage

Question 23

Once formed, the long-term memory was supposed to be ____. This idea failed in two ways. First, o do with timing and, second, to do with reconsolidation.

Answer 23

permanent

Question 24

To replace the concept of short-term memory, Baddeley and Hitch, introduced the term ____ ____ to refer to the way we store information while we are working with it.

Answer 24

working memory