Chapter 1: Psychology of Learning & Memory

process in which changes in behaviour arise as a result of experiences thru interacting with the world

record of our past experiences acquired via learning

o cognitions (thoughts, perceptions, and feelings) o info processing o changes in the nervous system

facts and figures in which conclusions can be inferred

set of statements devised to explain a group of facts

Says memory depends on formation of linkages ("associations") btwn pairs of events, sensations and ideas where recalling one member of the pair elicits a memory or anticipation of the other ? 3 Principles: 1) contiguity - nearness 2) frequency - the more often we experience events that are contiguous, the more strongly we associate them 3) similarity - if two things are similar, the thought of one will tend to trigger the thought of the other

temporal contiguity (AKA nearness in time) OR spatial contiguity (AKA nearness in space contiguity)

holds that all the ideas we have/behaviours we possess= are the result of experience (nurture) rather than heredity (nature) - Aristotle supports this - Watson - Locke

holds that the bulk of our knowledge is inborn (or native) - Plato supports this

term coined by Descartes - means "the ability to think"

principle that the mind and body exist as seperate entities

sensory event from the outside world - a trigger ? ie; visual stimulus

behavioural consequence from perceiving a stimulus

said children arrived in the world as a tabula rasa (blank slate) waiting to be written on

Darwin argued that behavioural traits could evolve through the same process of natural selection as do physical traits -> TODAY: study of how behaviour evolves thru natural selection = evolutionary psych

? studies how behaviour evolves thru natural selection - is imp because learning has enormous value for survival b/c it allows organisms to adapt to a changing and variable world - the more capacity an organism has for learning = the more fit/better able to survive/pass inherited capacities on to offspring the organism will be

an acquired trait which cannot be inherited

- was an associationist: believed the effects of experiences can be understood as associations formed between senses and ideas --> associationism has 3 key principles: - contiguity, similarity and frequency

John Locke, Aristotle and James

we are born as blank slates shaped by our experiences

Descartes

Descartes - argued we are shaped primarily by our inherited nature - viewed body as a machine that works via hydraulic principles - believed mind/body were separate entities

accept both nature (genes) and nurture (experiences)

test made to examine the validity of a hypothesis by manipulating the IV to get result in the DV

testing psychological theories via experimentation rather than merely observation

loss or deterioration of memory over time

measures how much info is retained at each point in time following learning of info - initial learning of info - delay - relearning of info - record time savings

participant having prior knowledge or expectations about experiment and the influence on the outcome

degree to which an experimenters prior knowledge or expectations can influence the outcome of an experiment

when particips dont know the hypothesis being tested or whether they are in the experimental or control group

revolutionized the study of human memory - conducted first rigorous experimental study of human memory - studied lists of short nonsense words and collected data on how info is retained and forgotten

- learning where the organism learns to respond with a conditioned response (CS) to a previously neutral stimulus (CS) that has been repeatedly presented with an unconditioned stimulus (US) ? CR (learned response) = salivation ? CS = doorbell ? US = food

yes

reducing the learned response to a stimulus by ceasing to pair the stimulus (doorbell) with a reward (food) or punishment (absence of food)

- transfer of past learning (80 beats metronome) - novel events (90-100 beats metronome) ? animal will transfer what is learned about one stimulus to a similar stimulus

- process where organisms learn to make responses in order to obtain or avoid an important consequence ? called it instrumental conditioning b/c the organisms behaviour was instrumental in determining whether the consequence would occur or not

operant conditioning

cats learn to escape from complex locked puzzle boxes

that the probability of a particular behaviour response increases or decreases depending on the consequence that follows

observation made by Thorndike - probability of a particular behavioural response INCREASES or DECREASES depending on the consequences that have followed that response in the past

- argues psychology should be restricted to the study of observable behaviours (like salivation or lever presses and other measurable physical actions) and avoid referencing unobservable mental events (like intent or thought) ? popular in the 1920's

the prediction and control of behaviour

john watson

conducted research on how rats learn - put rat at maze entrance and rewarded it with food if it found its way thru to the exit - described rat learning as the formation of connections between stimuli and responses

- advocated by B.F. Skinner ? holds that consciousness and free will are illusions and that so called "higher cognitive functions" (ie; language) sre just stimulus response associations

mental representation of a spatial layout of external surroundings (found in rats says Tolman)

learning that is undetected (ie; rat freely exploring maze) until explicitly demonstrated (their knowledge of obtaining a cognitive map of the maze) at a later stage - even if no reward was involved - would still create cognitive maze map

the idea that all learning reflects stimulus-response associations

focus on human abilities like thinking, reasoning

study of high mental functionings like thought, reasoning

said that a stimulus (yellow light) is made up of different elements in which some of the elements link to the learned response (getting food), rather than the stimulus as a whole

Estes and Gordon Bower

- that cognition is best understood as being networks of connections in the brain of nodes (simple processing units) ? states that objects (ie; golden retriever) are represented as patterns of nodes (orange) vs cocker spaniel (blue) - each object in world has diff pattern of nodes in the brain

how info in brain is coded as a pattern distributed across many diff patterns for many diff objects

- Hull - Estes - Gordon Bower - George Miller - David Rumelhart

Aristotle said thru contiguity, frequency and similarity