Final Flashcards
What is memory and how does it operate?
- Persistence of learning over time
- Operates through storage and retrieval of information and skills
What are the processes of memory?
- Encode: information gets into brains in a way that allows it to be stored
- Long term potentiation: increase strength of neural signals between nerve cells that fire together
- Cellular consolidation: when neurons fire together a lot, synapses change so presynaptic cell is more likely to stimulate specific postsynaptic cell
- Store: information is held in a way that allows it to be retrieved
Retrieve: produce information in a form similar to what was encoded
- Recognition: identify stimuli that matches stored information when it is presented
- Recall: retrieve information when asked about it, prompted by retrieval cues
- Relearn: measure of how much less work it takes for you to learn information you have previously learned
What is the Atkinson-Shriffin model?
Effortful processing, involve stores and control processes which shift information
- External event makes its way through attention bottleneck to sensory organs
- Transduction occurs; from sensation into neural impulses (perception) - Sensory memory stores limitless amounts of information for short period of time
- Iconic memory (visual) = ½ to 1 second
- Echoic memory (auditory, hearing) = 5 seconds
- Waiting for attention to be placed to move to short-term memory
- Change blindness: fail to notice difference between photos if not centre of attention - Encode this memory through rehearsal into short term memory
- Short term memory can hold about 7 accurate pieces of information for 20 seconds (has limits to what it can store)
- Some information is forgotten forever - More encoding allows information to enter long term memory
- Use visualization, grouping, and distribution/processing techniques - Long term memory can be retrieved back into short term memory
- Depends of quality of original encoding and strategies used to retrieve information
What are the types of rehearsal?
- Maintenance rehearsal: prolonging exposure to information by repeating it, does little to facilitate encoding that leads to formation of LTM
- Elaborative rehearsal: prolonging exposure to information by thinking about its meaning, improves encoding
What is the serial position effect and why does it occur?
- Serial position effect: people recall items from beginning and end
- Proactive interference: process in which information learned occupies memory, leaving less room for new information
- Retroactive interference: recently learned information overshadows older memories
What are the techniques to encode memories into LTM?
- Spacing effect: distribute studying, don’t drop flashcards as soon as you think you’ve earned it
- Testing: answer questions increases memory
- Deep/semantic processing: think about item’s meaning
- Shallow processing: involves superficial properties of stimulus
- Self reference effect: think of information as how it is useful to you
- Survival processing: relate to survival
- Chunking: create groups within information
- Hierarchies: divide complex information into sub-groups
- Visual cues: link visuals to information
- Method of Loci: use memory palace
- Acronyms: words whose initials represent phrase
- First-letter technique: sentence’s first letters represent information
- Dual coding: information stored in more than 1 form
- Desirable difficulties: harder studying techniques are better
What are the types of memories?
- Implicit: the ones we aren’t aware of and uses automatic/low-track pathway to encode event straight into long-term memory
- Procedural: learned motor skills
- Conditioned association: learned through conditioning
- Information about space, time, and frequency - Explicit “declarative” memory: the ones we are aware of, uses effortful/high track pathway to encode/recall
- Semantic: general knowledge/facts
- Episodic: specific events
Includes flashbulb memories which are burned in due to emotional state
- Emotions can lead to stronger memory formation even if information is not directly related to emotional event
- Emotions have no influence over accuracy though
What are the encoding and retrieval processes for different memories?
- Explicit memories
- Encode: hippocampus, sleep (consolidation)
- Retrieval: working memory, frontal lobes - Implicit memories
- Basal ganglia: procedural memory
- Cerebellum: conditioned responses
- Hippocampus: spatial memories
How is the working memory model different from the other models?
- Holds information not just to rehearse but to process
- Simultaneously moving information using attention, encoding, and retrieval
- Stimuli are encoded in different ways (with vision and then hearing)
What are the components of working memory?
- Central executive: coordinates attention and exchange of information between storage components
- Phenological loop: stores information as sounds
- Word-length effect: people remember shorter words
- Repeating a phone number again and again (rehearsal) - Visuospatial sketchpad: maintains visual images and spatial layouts
- Feature binding: combining visual features into single unit
- Can retain 4 whole objects
- Eg. can’t read Korean, goes here, if you can understand Korean it may go in the phonological loop - Episodic buffer: combines images and sounds to form story
- 7-10 pieces of information
What is the encoding specificity principle? List related principles.
- Encoding specificity principle: retrieval is most effective when occurs in same context as encoding
- Context-dependent forgetting: change in environment makes us forget
- Context reinstatement effect: return to original location and memory comes back, strongest for explicit memory
- State-dependent learning: retrieval is more effective when internal state matches state you were in during encoding
- State-dependent memory: stronger for explicit memory
- Mood-dependent learning: if type of mood for encoding and retrieval matched, memory was superior
What are the types of amnesia? How do they occur?
- Anterograde: inability to form new memories for events occurring after a brain injury
- Eg. removal of temporal lobes and hippocampus cured seizures but caused this - Retrograde: condition in which memory for the events preceding trauma or injury is lost
What are the perils of memory and how do we avoid it? Why do they occur?
- Misinformation effect: incorporating misleading information into memory of event (thinking the crash is violent because of the police’s wording)
- Source amnesia: assign details of memory to wrong source (forgot the reason you thought the crash was violent was because of the police)
- False memories: confusion about an event; occurs if you thought of event often and it is easy to imagine, bringing attention to emotional reaction rather than facts
- False memory syndrome: condition in which identity and relationships of person rest on memories that are traumatic but are false
- Reinconsolidation: hippocampus updates and modifies existing long term memories
- Due to cognitive biases, we believe we have control over the information we encode but we do not
- To prevent this, filter the information you expose yourself to
What is associative learning?
Process by which behaviour changes as a result of experience
What is classical conditioning?
- Link 2 stimuli in a way that helps us anticipate an event to which we have a reaction; occurs due to firing of neurons together
- Neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus to elicit conditioned response when paired with unconditioned stimulus
What are the processes of classical conditioning?
- Acquisition: occurs when neutral stimulus is paired with unconditioned stimulus, becomes conditioned stimulus
- Neutral stimulus needs to consistently appear before unconditioned stimulus - Extinction: diminishing of conditioned response that occurs when conditioned stimulus is presented without unconditioned stimulus
- After a rest period, presenting conditioned stimulus alone often leads to spontaneous recovery
- After a long time, the strength of response decreases - Generalization: tendency to have conditioned response triggered by related stimuli
- Activates brain’s representation of similar items - Discrimination: learned ability to only respond to specific stimuli
- Latent inhibition: frequent experience with stimulus before being paired with unconditioned stimulus makes it less likely that conditioning will occur after a single episode
- Preparedness: biological predisposition to rapidly learn a response to a particular class of stimuli
- Conditioned taste aversion: acquired dislike of food because paired with illness
- Conditioned drug tolerance: processes involved in metabolizing drug will begin with seeing the drug
- Conditioned emotional responses: emotional responses that develop to particular object or situation due to learning
What is operant conditioning and what principle does it rely on?
- Change behavioural responses due to consequences of actions; occurs due to dopamine-releasing neurons
- Thorndike’s law of effect: feedback from the environment can decrease/increase likelihood of behaviour occurring again
What are the types of reinforcement or punishment?
- Positive reinforcement: increase behaviour by adding something desirable
- Negative reinforcement: increase behaviour by decreasing something unpleasant
- Avoidance learning: removes possibility stimulus will occur
- Escape learning: response removes stimulus that is already resent - Positive punishment: decrease behaviour by adding something unpleasant
- Negative punishment: decrease behaviour by removing something pleasant
What is continuous and partial reinforcement?
- Continuous reinforcement: subject acquires desired behaviour right away after a reward
- Partial reinforcement: behaviour takes longer to be acquired but persists without a reward
- Fixed ratio: reinforcement after a constant number of responses, rapid responding near time for reinforcement (fixed number of cars to sell for money)
- Variable ratio: reinforcement after a different number of responses, very consistent responding (changing number of cars to sell for money each day)
- Fixed interval: reinforcing behaviour after same amount of time passes, high rate of consistent responding (pay-check after 2 weeks)
- Variable interval: reinforcing behaviour after a different amount of time passes, very resistant to extinction (pay-check after a random amount of time, pop quiz)
What is shaping?
Procedure in which specific operant response is created by reinforcing successive approximations of that response
How do you make punishments effective?
- For punishments to be effective, must occur immediately after behaviour consistently, and frequently, provide explanation for punishment, combine with positive reinforcement
- Punishment by itself inhibits behaviour and fails to provide direction
- Physical punishment teaches kids to respond aggressively to frustration
What are the processes of operant conditioning?
- Discriminative stimuli: cue that indicates that a response if made will be reinforced
- Eg. parents are in a good mood
- Discrimination: occurs when operant response is made to one stimulus but not another
- Eg. father will lend car but not mother
- Delayed reinforcement: occurs when reward is delayed, less strong
- Reward devaluation: behaviours change if reinforcer loses appeal
What is cognitive/latent conditioning?
- Learning that involves the individual’s thoughts
- Latent learning: learning that is not directly observable, stored until you need knowledge
- Observational learning: changes in behaviour by watching others, occurs without reinforcement
What is cognition?
- Cognition: mental activities/processes associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information
- Human brains balance the need for speed with quality/accuracy which is suitable for most situations but can lead to incorrect outcomes
- Important to organize information to store knowledge over long term