Cognitive Aspects of Behavior Flashcards
(33 cards)
Reinforcement
• An Operant Conditioning term that refers to a process by which the likelihood of a behavior occurring is increased either by giving a pleasant stimulus (positive reinforcement) or removing an unpleasant stimulus (negative reinforcement).
• BF Skinner
• Thorndike (before skinner) Rats and Cats
• Tolman
• Primary and Secondary Reinforcers
o Primary reinforcers are biological. Food, drink, and pleasure are the principal examples of primary reinforcers. But most human reinforcers are secondary, or conditioned. Examples include money, grades in schools, and tokens.
o Secondary reinforcers acquire their power via a history of association with primary reinforcers or other secondary reinforcers. For example, if I told you that dollars were no longer going to be used as money, then dollars would lose their power as a secondary reinforcer.
• Positive reinforcement (Add reward)
o You do a good action you get a treat
• Negative reinforcement
o Response is strengthened by removing the discomfort (bad)
• Punishment
o Positive (add discomfort, add discomfort)
o Negative (remove reward, take away video games)
Rewards
• Any behavior followed by consequences which is likely to be repeated
• A reward is an appetitive stimulus given to a human or some other animal to alter its behavior.
• Rewards typically serve as reinforcers.
• A reinforcer is something that, when presented after a behavior, causes the probability of that behavior’s occurrence to increase.
o Note that, just because something is labelled as a reward, it does not necessarily imply that it is a reinforcer.
• A reward can be defined as reinforcer only if its delivery increases the probability of a behavior
Types of learning
There are three main types of learning: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning. Both classical and operant conditioning are forms of associative learning, in which associations are made between events that occur together. Observational learning is just as it sounds: learning by observing others.
• Classical conditioning
• Operant/Instrumental conditioning
• Observational Learning
Interference
- a phenomenon of human memory involving the learning of new material where the learning of new information or behavior interacts with “old learning” or memories, thoughts and behaviors that come from past learning, and interferes with the acquisition or comprehension of the new information.
- For instance, if a person acquires bad habits playing a sport as a child, they will probably have a difficult time “unlearning” those bad habits as an adult and replacing them with proper habits
Proactive interference
o the reverse direction of interference to retroactive interference. This is when old information prevents the recall of newer information. This could, for example, occur with telephone numbers.
o Trying to learn the new DSM-5 to replace the DSM-IV
Retroactive interference
o when more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information. An example would be calling your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend by your new boyfriend/girlfriend’s name
Output interference
o When retrieving something interferes with the retrieval of the actual information needed
Cryptomnesia
o occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original.
Source Amnesia
o the inability to remember where, when or how previously learned information has been acquired, while retaining the factual knowledge.
Classical Conditioning
- a process by which we learn to associate events, or stimuli, that frequently happen together; as a result of this, we learn to anticipate events.
- Ivan Pavlov conducted a famous study involving dogs in which he trained (or conditioned) the dogs to associate the sound of a bell with the presence of a piece of meat.
- The conditioning is achieved when the sound of the bell on its own makes the dog salivate in anticipation for the meat.
Operant Conditioning
- is the learning process by which behaviors are reinforced or punished, thus strengthening or extinguishing a response.
- Edward Thorndike coined the term “law of effect,” in which behaviors that are followed by consequences that are satisfying to the organism are more likely to be repeated, and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.
- B. F. Skinner conducted experiments with rats in what he called a “Skinner box.”
- Over time, the rats learned that stepping on the lever directly caused the release of food, demonstrating that behavior can be influenced by rewards or punishments. He differentiated between positive and negative reinforcement, and also explored the concept of extinction.
Sensory Memory
o the shortest-term element of memory.
o It is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have ended. It acts as a kind of buffer for stimuli received through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, which are retained accurately, but very briefly.
Short Term Memory (Working Memory)
o a kind of “scratch-pad” for temporary recall of the information which is being processed at any point in time, and has been referred to as “the brain’s Post-it note”.
o It can be thought of as the ability to remember and process information at the same time.
o It holds a small amount of information (typically around 7 items or even less) in mind in an active, readily-available state for a short period of time (typically from 10 to 15 seconds, or sometimes up to a minute).
Long Term Memory
intended for storage of information over a long period of time. Despite our everyday impressions of forgetting, it seems likely that long-term memory actually decays very little over time and can store a seemingly unlimited amount of information almost indefinitely.
Explicit Memory (conscious)
a type of long-term memory in which we store memories of fact. In addition, explicit memory is divided further into semantic and episodic memories (please look those up for complete definitions)
Declarative Memory
(“knowing what”) is memory of facts and events and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled (or “declared”).
Episodic Memory
represents our memory of experiences and specific events in time in a serial form, from which we can reconstruct the actual events that took place at any given point in our lives. It is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions and other contextual knowledge) that can be explicitly state
Semantic Memory
structured record of facts, meanings, concepts and knowledge about the external world that we have acquired. It refers to general factual knowledge, shared with others and independent of personal experience and of the spatial/temporal context in which it was acquired. Semantic memories may once have had a personal context, but now stand alone as simple knowledge. It therefore includes such things as types of food, capital cities, social customs, functions of objects, vocabulary, understanding of mathematics, etc.
Implicit Memory
These types of memories are formed and used unconsciously, and they affect both our thought and behaviors. The primary form of implicit memories are procedural memories which are important for performing repetitive everyday tasks without the need for conscious thought (riding a bike, driving a car, etc.)
Procedural Memory
(“knowing how”) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things, particularly the use of objects or movements of the body, such as tying a shoelace, playing a guitar or riding a bike. These memories are typically acquired through repetition and practice and are composed of automatic sensorimotor behaviors that are so deeply embedded that we are no longer aware of them.
Premack Principle
- a principle of operant conditioning originally identified by David Premack in 1965. According to this principle, some behavior that happens reliably (or without interference by a researcher), can be used as a reinforcer for a behavior that occurs less reliably.
- For example, most children like to watch television–this is a behavior that happens reliably (they learn to like TV all on their own and it is something they will do willingly without any interference from their parents) –and parents often use this behavior to reinforce something children like to do less such as washing dishes. So, some parents might condition children to wash dishes by rewarding dish washing with watching television.
- Ex: if you eat your veggies you get ice cream
- Pairing a preferred activity with a non-preferred activity
Shaping
• a behavioral term that refers to gradually molding or training an organism to perform a specific response (behavior) by reinforcing any responses that are similar to the desired response.
• For example, a researcher can use shaping to train a rat to press a lever during an experiment (since rats are not born with the instinct to press a lever in a cage during an experiment)
-Chaining: Linking simple behaviors together, adding links to the chain
Types of exposure
- Flooding — this type of Exposure Therapy involves rapid exposure to feared situations.
- Systematic Desensitization, also known as Progressive Exposure — this involves gradual exposure coupled with relaxation exercises when anxiety levels become too great.
- In vivo: real in the moment
- In vitro: pictures not real life
Flooding
this type of Exposure Therapy involves rapid exposure to feared situations.
