Federal Urdu University ofArts, Science & Technology

Orasoft Training Institute

PsychologyLearning & Memory

ASSIGNMENT

By:

Shoaib Anwer (BBA6-07)

To:

Sir Owais

Learning

We learn from the things that happen to us ­ our experiences. For example, we learned thatlightning is followed by thunder, we learned not to tell lies because it can cause us to lose ourcredibility and to lose our friends, or that we learned how to dance by watching othersdemonstrate dance steps to us.

Orienting Response

Inborn tendency to notice and repsond to stimuli or surprising events collection of responses thatassist in “blocking out” the event. For example with a loudsound the pupils constrict and heartrate increases. It turns out that novelty is a tricky term to define. The sound of a certain person’svoice (your mother’s) may be routine at home, but may well elicit an Orienting Response at aparty this Friday night.

Classical Conditioning

In classical conditioning, an organism learns to associate one stimulus with another. The organism learns that the first stimulus is a cue for the second stimulus. In Pavlov’s experiment, the tuning fork cued the dogs that food might be coming.

Pavlo Discovery

To experiment on classical conditioning, Pavlov utilized a tuning fork and meat powder. He hit the tuning fork and followed the sound with the meat powder. Pavlov presented the sound (tuning fork) with the meat powder at the exact same time increments. In the beginning, the dog salivated only to the meat powder, but after this was repeated, salivated at the sound of the tuning fork. Even when Pavlov took away the meat powder, the dog continued to salivate at the sound of the tuning fork.

Unconditional Stimuli

A stimulus that elicits a response without conditioning such as tuning fork and no salivation in the mouth of dog.

Unconditional Response

Automatic response elicited by the unconditioned stimulus, after tuning fork the dog reacts no salivation before meat powder and when the dog sees meat powder it starts salivation in his mouth.

Conditional Stimuli

A neutral stimulus that when paired with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) elicits a similar response. As conditioned stimulus the dog automatically responds the salivating as tuning fork rings,

Conditional Response

A response that is learned by pairing the originally neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), if the meat powder is not put in the mouth of dog the dog will still salivate because its conditioned.

Basic Principles of Classical Conditioning

Acquisition

The acquisition phase is the consistent pairings of the CS (bell) and the UCS (food) that produces a CR (salivation). In the example above, this phase occurs when the dog begins to salivate at the sound of the bell. Conditioning occurs more rapidly when the food follows the bell by a half a second.

Extension

The extinction phase is when the conditioned response no longer occurs after repeated pairings without the unconditioned stimulus. The dog’s response to the bell can be extinguished by repeatedly presenting the bell (CS) without the food (UCS). The dog has not completely forgotten the association between the bell and the food. If the experimenter waits a day, the dog may have a spontaneous recovery of the conditioned response and salivate again to the bell.

Spontaneous recovery

Spontaneous recovery is a phenomenon of learning and memory which was first seen in classical (Pavlovian) conditioning and refers to the re­emergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a delay.

Generalization

Occurs when there is a small difference in the presented stimulus and the original conditioned stimulus. If Pavlov’s dog heard a bell of a similar tone, the dog would still salivate.

Discrimination

The opposite of generalization, discrimination happens when a conditioned response does not occur when there is a difference between the presented stimulus and the original conditioned stimulus. If Pavlov’s dog heard a bell with a different tone and was not awarded the unconditioned stimulus (food), the dog would learn not to salivate to the second tone.

Phobia

A phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. In most cases, the phobia involves a sense of endangerment or a fear of harm. For example, those suffering from agoraphobia fear being trapped in an inescapable place or situation.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning forms an association between a behavior and a consequence, For example, you might tell a friend that you'll buy dinner for them since they helped you move, or a parent might explain that the child can't go to summer camp because of her bad grades.

Law of Effect

The law of effect basically states that “responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation.

Operant Chamber

An operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used in the experimental analysis of behavior to study animal behavior.

The three­term contingency

Sometimes a response will have certain consequences; sometimes it will not. Our daily behaviour is guided by many different kinds of discriminative stimuli, For example, consider answering the telephone. The phone rings, you pick it up and say ‘hello’ into the receiver. Most of the time, someone on the other end of the line begins to speak.

Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement refers to an increase in the frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by an appetitive stimulus. Your enjoyment of the food (the appetitive stimulus) reinforces your going to the restaurant and ordering dinner (the response).

Positive Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement refers to an increase in the frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by the termination of an aversive stimulus. An aversive stimulus is unpleasant or painful.

Punishment

Punishment refers to a decrease in the frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by an aversive stimulus.

Other operant procedures and phenomena

Shaping

Shaping involves reinforcing any behaviour that successively approximates the desired

response. Imagine that we want to train a rat to press a lever when a red light is lit The lever on the wall of the chamber is attached to an electrical switch that is wired to electronic control equipment or a computer.

Intermittent reinforcement

The term intermittent reinforcement refers to situations in which not every occurrence of a response is reinforced. The relation between responding and reinforcement usually follows one of two patterns: each response has a certain probability of being reinforced, or responses are reinforced after particular intervals of time have elapsed.

Fixed Ratio Schedule

A fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement involves offering reinforcement only after a specified number of responses. Collecting Tokens in a Video Game: In many video games, you have to collection so many tokens, object, or points in order to receive some type of reward.

Variable ratio schedule

The variable­ratio schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses.Call centers often offer random bonuses to employees. Workers never know how many calls they need to make in order to receive the bonus, but they know that they increase their chances the more calls or sales they make.

Fixed interval schedule

A fixed­interval schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where the first response is rewarded only after a specified amount of time has elapsed.A weekly paycheck is a good example of a fixed­interval schedule. The employee receives reinforcement every seven days, which may result in a higher response rate as payday approaches.

Variable interval schedule

A variable­interval schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where a response is rewarded after an unpredictable amount of time has passed.Checking Your Email: Typically, you check your email at random times throughout the day instead of checking every time a single message is delivered.

Generalization and Discrimination

Generalization

Discrimination results when different situations occasion different responses based on the contingencies of reinforcement. Inappropriate stimulus generalization occurs when those different situations fail to produce discriminative operant responding. Generalization is not always inappropriate and occurs when you respond the same to two stimuli that are not identical.For example, a child may learn to say "apple" when it sees the drawing of an apple in a book. If the

child later says "apple" when it sees an orange on the street, it has generalized between the two distinct stimuli.

Discrimination

In operant conditioning responding only when a specific discriminative stimulus is present but not when similar stimuli are present.

Primary reinforcer

a biologically significance appetitive stimuli such as food or water.

Primary Punisher

biologically significance aversive stimuli such as pain.

Condition reinforcer

Association with a primary reinforcer some time referred to as secondary reinforcer.

Memory

Memory is the process of encoding, storing and retrieving information. Encoding refers to the active process of putting stimulus information into a form that can be used by our memory system.

Encoding

The process by which sending information is converted into a form that can be used by the brain memory system.

Storage

The process of maintaining information in memory.

Retrieval

The active process of locating & using storage information.

Types of Memory

Sensory Memory

Sensory memory is memory in which representations of the physical features of a stimulus are stored for a very brief time, perhaps for a second or less.For example, sensory memory contains a brief image of a sight we have just seen or a fleeting echo of a sound we have just heard.

Short Term Memory

immediate memory for stimuli that have just been perceived. Its capacity is limited in terms of the number of items that it can store and of its duration. For example, most people who look at the set of numbers 1 4 9 2 3 0 7 close their eyes and recite them back, will have no trouble remembering them. If they are asked to do the same with the following set they might have a little more trouble: 7 2 5 2 3 9 1 6 5 8 4 Very few people can repeat 11 numbers. Even with practice, it is difficult to recite more than 7–9 independent pieces of information that you have seen only once.

Long Term Memory

information that is represented on a permanent or near permanent basis. Unlike short­term memory, long­term memory has no known limits and, as its name suggests, is relatively durable.

Sensory Memory

Sensory memory refers to the initial, momentary recording of information in our sensory systems. When sensations strike our eyes, they linger briefly in the visual system. The person’s

sensory system records information as a raw and non­meaningful stimulus: e.g., a fly that sat on your nose in the park this morning, the sound of the car that passed by you, or the feel of the dry leaf that landed on your head when you were waiting for the bus.

Iconic Memory

The information gathered by our visual sense is reflected by the iconic memory; memory in the visual domain .

Echoic Memory

The information coming from our auditory sense is dealt with by the echoic memory; i.e., Memory for sounds.

Short Term / Working Memory

short­term memory to refer to the ability to hold information in mind over a brief period of time. As conceptions of short­term memory expanded to include more than just the brief storage of information. The term working memory is now commonly used to refer to a broader system that both stores information briefly and allows manipulation and use of the stored information.This system is higher in functioning than sensory memory, as it stores information in terms of meaning and not just simple sensory stimulation. Short­term memory retains information for 15 to 25 seconds, unless it is moved into the long­ term memory.

Primacy Effect

The tendency to remember the words at the beginning of the list is called the primacy effect.

Recency Effect

The tendency to remember words at the end of the list is called the recency effect.

Limits of working Memory

The experimenters presented participants with a stimulus composed of three consonants, such as JRG. With rehearsal, the participants easily recalled it 30 seconds later. They prevented participants from rehearsing. After they presented the participants with JRG, they asked them to count backwards by three from a three­digit number they gave them immediately after they had presented the set of consonants.

Chunking

The information stored in short­term memory is in the form of a single unit, comprising several chunks. A chunk is an understandable or meaningful set or grouping of stimuli e.g., “001023” can be learnt as “0 0 1 0 2 3” OR “00 10 23”.

Learning & Encoding in Long Term Memory

Memory involves both active and passive processes. Sometimes, we use deliberate strategies to remember something (encode the information into long term memory), for example, rehearsing the lines of a poem or memorising famous dates for a history exam.

Consolidation Hypothesis

This transfer of information from short­term memory into long­term memory has been called consolidation Through rehearsal for example, by means of the articulatory loop, the neural activity responding to sensory stimulation can be sustained; and if enough time passes, the activity causes structural changes in the brain. These structural changes are more or less permanent and solid hence, the term consolidation, and are responsible for long­term memory.

Levels of processing Hypothesis1. Shelo Processing

The analyses of the superficial characteristics of a stimuli such as it size or shape. for example the a very big mobile phone.

2. Deep Processing

The analyses of the complex characteristics such as its meaning or its relationship. such as talking styles of people or smell of that fragrance.

Improving Long Term Memory through Mnemonics

When we can imagine information vividly and concretely, and when it fits into the context of what we already know, it is easy to remember later, Mnemonic systems do not simplify information but make it more elaborate. More information is stored, not less. However, the additional information makes the material easier to recall. Mnemonic systems organise new information into a cohesive whole so that retrieval of part of the information ensures retrieval of the rest of it.

Method of Loci

A mnemonic system in which items to be remembered are mentally associated with specific physical locations. For example, if a person wanted to remember a short shopping list without writing it down and the list consists of five items: cheese, milk, eggs, soy sauce and lettuce, the person might first think of a familiar place, perhaps their house. Next, they would mentally walk through the house, visually placing different items from the list at locations.

Peg­word method

A similar technique, the peg­word method, involves the association of items to be remembered with a set of mental pegs that are already stored in memory.

The Organisation of long term memory

Episodic memory

Episodic memory provides us with a record of our life experiences. Events stored there are autobiographical and there appears to be cross­cultural agreement on when such memories are acquired

Semantic Memory

Semantic memory consists of conceptual information such as general knowledge; it is a long­term store of data, facts and information. Our knowledge of what psychology is, the names of the authors of this book.

Explicit Memory

Memory can be discovered verbally and of which a person is therefore aware.

Implicit Memory

Memory that cannot be described verbally and which a person is not aware.

Remembering

Tip of the tongue phenomena

An occasional problem with retrieval of occasional problem that we sure we know but can not immediately remember.

Retrieval Cues

Contextual variables includes physical objects recall information from memory.