Learning and Memory – Discrimination Learning

Organisms learn to make a response in the presence of one stimulus and to make a different response to other similar stimuli

A measure of the degree of stimulus generalization

Steep gradients reflect very little generalization and shallow ingredients reflect strong generalization

Procedures that determine the extent to which an organism has generalized across stimuli; the procedure usually involves non-reinforcement of presentations of stimuli that differ along the same dimensions

A gradient that is based on the total number of responses

A gradient based on the total number of responses made to all stimuli

When an organism learns some new response to a particular stimulus, it tends to make the same response in the presence of similar stimuli

A condition in which an organism that has learned to discriminate between two stimuli that lie along the same dimension, will in a generalization test, respond more to a stimulus further away from both S+ and S- than the original S+ (in the direction away from S- past the S+); unpredictable

Stimuli are presented one at a time; random alternating trials of S+ and S-; not able to compare, organism has to remember

Subject is presented S+ and S- at the same time and the animal is allowed to choose

The effect in which organisms trained on a relational discrimination (dark grey v light grey) will, when presented with another relational problem (dark grey v darker grey) choose the darker stimulus over the original S+ in a test situation

A distinct category of objects or events that are all related on the basis of certain features or characteristics

Concepts are the link between animals and humans; formation requires discrimination between classes and generalization within classes; need 2 stimuli to evaluate; represents higher level of discrimination of abstracts

The contention that in a discrimination problem organisms learn about the specific properties of a stimulus (black v white) and not about relationships between them (darker v lighter)

Spence's theoretical account of discrimination learning that contends that excitatory gradients and inhibitory gradients summate to produce behavior

An internal record or representation of some prior event or experience

Memory store that holds a large amount of sensory information for a very brief time period of time

The after effect of stimulation; residual, lasts up to 5 seconds but doesn't change; can hold lots of info; role is to give more time to respond before the information disappears; chance to ignore other events; fragmented

A hypothetical system in the brain that stores a limited amount of information for a relatively brief period of time

Up to 30 minutes; place where info is processed, changed, refined, added to; 20-30 seconds to get in to long-term memory; 5 to 9 items at a time; chunk to organize

A system or set of systems that stores an unlimited amount of information for up to the lifetime of the individual

Most information stored in short term memory is verbal; more than visual; but taking the time to pronounce and name things limits capacity; more mistakes in sound A - A v A - a; coding based on sound - phonemic (Posner study)

No direct access; meaning moves information from short term to long term memory

people actively engage in learning information because they know they will be tested

people encode information into long-term memory not by actively trying to remember the information, but rather as a by-product of perceiving and understanding the world

a process by which we keep a memory in conscious awareness for a period of time

involves the encoding of a memory so that it can be recalled even after long retention intervals

Craik & Lockhart contended that instead of 3 separate memory areas there are just different levels of processing and that it is all a part of long term memory. The manner in which the information is first encountered and rehearsed leads to different depth of processing.

occurs when subjects are allowed more than on study trial, separated in time

greater differences in environmental and mental conditions occur when there is greater spacing between two study trials; different associations and cues to encode the target item

study of particular items all at once, and study spaced out over a number of hours, days, or weeks

a gradual transition from massed to distributed practice

grouping to-be-learned information into conceptual categories

Method of Loci, Pegword Technique, Keyword Technique

people learn to associate new to-be-learned items with a series of previously well-learned physical locations, paired.

a mnemonic technique used to help remember lists, in which each to-be-remembered item is associated with a number-word association - one, two, three, sometimes rhyming each with its own image.

People identify a salient aspect of the to-be-learned word, make a visual image to that word, and then associate the visual image with the word's meaning. Endormi, lying dormant, sleep

short-term memory subsystem that maintains speech-based information for short periods of time

handles visual and spatial information, consists of a brief store, that keeps information refreshed

Integrates information from the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad, controls attention, planning and controlling cognition

his model views short-term memory as a set of interacting systems that work together but are functioning separately. Phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and central executive

when newly formed memories block the retention of memories previously formed

when retention of a currently forming memory is disrupted by memories that were formed earlier - page 254

Assumes that memory representations do not change in strength simply as a function of time, but forgetting is due to the presence of other representations we form

long term memories stored as meanings not just features

even visual information is transformed into sounds or acoustic codes once the information has entered short-term storage

the human memory is a series of memory systems through which information must pass, where information is processed differently in each system

characterized as the set of operations people perform on incoming stimuli to convert them into a usable format or code

refers to the operation of placing information into the memory system and maintaining it there for later use

the operations necessary for locating and calling up specific information from a memory store

People abstract the common elements of a particular concept and then store an abstracted prototypical representation in memory