weeks 1-6 Flashcards
(41 cards)
How to fight procrastination?
written plans ahead of time, written schedules.
Prioritize.
Isolated location/device devoted only for work as to not be associated with distracting things.
classical conditioning
associating something with an automatic response
unconditioned stimulus
stimulus that produces an automatic response
Conditioned stimulus
stimulus that does not produce an automatic response
Operant conditioning
changing behavior via reward/punishment
self handcaping
constructing impediments to performance to protect or enhance one’s perceived competence
proper way to praise a child
reward hard work and effort. not talent and natural skill.
the high utility study techniques
Practice testing:
distributed practice: space out studying
medium utility study techniques
elaborate interrogation
self explanation
interleaved practice
poor study techniques
summarizing highlighting underlining imagery rereading
variable ratio schedule of reinforcement
pigeons generally peck the key more frequently, and are much less likely to give up pecking, if they are reinforced on infrequent random pecks, rather than every peck
The moral: bad behaviours that are only rewarded occasionally are harder to eradicate than those that are rewarded all the time.
discriminative stimuli (“triggers”)
Environmental cues , indicate to the animal when a given behaviour is likely to be rewarded or punished.
Augmenting
: Increasing our assessment of one cause of a behaviour when another cause appears to be working against it (e.g. “I got an A on the exam even though I was hung over. I must be really smart!”)
Discounting:
decreasing our assessment of one cause of a behaviour because another cause appears to be working in the same direction (e.g. “I feel kind of stupid about flunking that exam, but I didn’t study very hard, so maybe I’m not that stupid.”)
Research methedology
Must have a large group of test subjects and a control group. Control as many factors as possible. (diet, sleep, etc)
Correlational studies:
Multiple variables are measured, and none are manipulated.
Experiments:
Independent variables are manipulated to observe their effects on dependent variables.
Primary sources
People report data they gathered themselves.
Secondary sources (a.k.a. review articles)
People summarize data gathered by other people, and try to find some patterns in this data.
Opinion pieces
People write these mainly to voice opinions, and data plays a secondary role.
Practice testing
Can be low-stakes testing or self-directed, can include short essays, one-sentence answers, flash cards, etc.
More effective than restudying
Appears to be widely applicable (even to open book exams)
Free recall test better than recognition
Implementation issues
Reasonable time demands
Minimal training
Practice testing with feedback outperforms testing alone
Feedback should be immediate (i.e. should know instantly if answer right or wrong)
Overall assessment: HIGH UTILITY
Distributed practice
Greater intersession forgetting (i.e. longer intervals between sessions) associated with greater long-term retention
Very robust across different conditions
Distributed practice testing better than distributed reviewing
Benefit even occurs for lags of weeks or months
Bigger effect for intentional than incidental processing (this may be why practice testing is so good)
Issues for implementation
Study materials (e.g. textbooks) tend to promote massed practice; this is bad
The way students actually study: procrastination scallop
Elaborative interrogation
Generating explanation for why fact is true
Focus on similarities and differences between right and wrong answers
Works better when explanations are precise, self-generated
Works best for domains with much prior knowledge
Implementation issues
Requires little training
Reasonable time commitment
May be easier to use for discrete facts than complex systems
Overall assessment: MODERATE UTILITY
Self-explanation
Explaining relation of new with known info, or explaining steps in problem-solving
Related to elaborative interrogation, but much more variable prompts
Explain own processing during (not after) learning or problem solving
Can be done with minimal instruction
Potentially very time-consuming (few studies control for this)
Overall assessment: MODERATE EFFICACY