Learning and Memory

• Learning is the process that allows us to adapt to the changing conditions of the world around us.
• Learning is relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience or practice.
• Anterograde amnesia is the loss of the ability to store new long term memories.
• Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memory of events that occurred prior to the trauma.
• Learning refers to the fact that when people learn anything, some part of their brain is physically changed to record what they’ve learned.
• Learning is a process of memory.
• Not all change is accomplished through learning.
• Any kind of change in the way an individual behaves is learning.
• Changes like an increase in height or the size of the brain are controlled by a genetic blueprint and are not learned.
• This kind of change is called Maturation.
• Classical Conditioning is the simplest form of learning that requires the association of two stimuli, with one gradually acquiring a significance it did not possess before.
• Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was the first to conduct the systematic studies on conditioned responses and his dogs began salivating when they weren’t supposed to make a reflex response to a stimulus other than the original, natural stimulus that normally produces it.
• Unconditioned Stimuli are naturally occurring stimuli that lead to an involuntary (reflex) response.
• Unconditioned Response is an involuntarily (reflex) response to a naturally occurring or unconditioned stimulus.
• Neutral Stimuli are stimuli that have no effect on the desired outcome.
• Conditioned Stimuli are stimuli that become able to produce a learned reflex response by being paired with the original unconditioned stimulus.
• Learning in Pavlov’s studies is referred to as Habituation, Dishabituation, Stimulus Generalization, Stimulus Discrimination, and Extinction.
• Garcia and Koelling challenged Pavlov’s ideas concerning one trial learning equipotentiality.
• Edward Thorndik’s Puzzle Box involved placing a hungry cat inside a puzzle box from which the only escape was to press a lever located on the floor of the box where a dish of food is placed outside the box for motivation to get out.
• Instrumental Conditioning: responses are strengthened when they are instrumental in producing a reward.
• Law of Effect: If an action is followed by a pleasurable consequence, it will be repeated, and if followed by an unpleasant consequence, it will not be repeated.
• B.F. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning involves the study of voluntary behavior and the learning of such behavior is operant conditioning.
• Bandura’s famous Bobo doll experiment demonstrated that young children will imitate the aggressive actions of a model even when there is no reinforcement for doing so.
• Retrieval is the process of getting the information out of memory storage.
• Secondary Reinforcer is any reinforcer that becomes reinforcing after being paired with a primary reinforcer, such as praise, tokens, or gold stars.
• Shaping is the reinforcement of successive approximations to some final goal, allowing behavior to be molded from simple behavior already present in this organism.
• The Memory Processes: Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval.
• Storage is the retention of encoded material over time.
• Observational Learning involves learning through watching others perform or model, certain actions.
• Memory is the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information an active system that receives information from the senses, puts that information into a usable form, organizes it as it stores it away, then retrieves the information from storage.
• Primary Reinforcement is any reinforcer that is naturally reinforcing by meeting a basic biological need, such as hunger, thirst, or touch.
• Bandura determined four (4) elements needed to be present for observational learning to occur: Attention, Memory, Imitation, and Motivation.
• Operant Conditioning focuses on the effect of consequences on voluntary (operant) behavior.
• Punishment is any event or stimulus that, when following a response, makes that response less likely to happen again.
• Edward Tolman’s Maze Study is about learning the thru mental maps or cognitive map.
• Kohler’s Insight Learning (Perceptual Learning) is about chimpanzees being capable of acquiring a new response in one burst of insight , wherein the solution of a problem suddenly becomes clear insight: a sudden “coming together” of all elements of a problem.
• Albert Bandura and Observational Learning is about learning new behavior by watching a model perform that behavior.
• Reinforcement is the word itself means to strengthen anything that, when following a response, causes that response to be more likely to happen again.
• Punishment by Application is a response is followed by the application or experiencing of an unpleasant stimulus, such as spanking.
• Encoding is the processing of information into the memory system.