SAC Revision

• Operant conditioning

  Likelihood of behaviour occurring determined by consequences
• Desireable consequence = behaviour repeating
• Undesirable consequence = behaviour not repeated
• Antecedent - Behaviour - Consequence
• Antecedent

  Initiates, triggers or stimulates behaviour
• Behaviour

  Any action
• Consequence

  Shapes and guides future behaviour
• Positive reinforcement

  Give something desirable to increase likelihood of behaviour occurring
• Positive punishment

  Give something undesirable to decrease the likelihood of behaviour occurring
• Negative punishment

  Take something desirable to decrease the likelihood of behaviour occurring
• Negative reinforcement

  Take something undesirable to inrcrease the likelihood of the behaviour reoccurring
• Observational learning

  A socio-cognitive approach to learning: watching another persons behaviour and use that to guide own future behaviour
• Person being observed = model
• 1. Attention - actively watching or focusing awareness on the model
• 2. Retention - forming a mental representation of what we see
• 3. Reproduction - having the physical and mental capacity to replicate the behaviour
• 4. Motivation - desire to replicate behaviour
• 5. Reinforcement - if positive, increases the likelihood that the observer will repeat the behaviour
• Memory

  A set of psychobiological systems and processes that allow our past experiences to inform how we respond to and interpret our current experiences and to imagine the future
• Encoding

  Converting information into a useable form
• Storage

  Retaining information for future use
• Retrieval

  Accessing previously stored information from LTM
• Sensory memory

  Holds sensory information in a raw form for very short periods of time
• Sensory memory

  Duration: 0.2 - 0.4 seconds

  Capacity: Unlimited
• Short term memory

  Active store that holds all the information you are consciously aware of at any moment
• STM

  Duration: Approximately 15 - 30 seconds

  Capacity: 7 plus or minus 2 - increased by chunking
• STM

  Information can be lost through:

  • Decay - not being used and fading away
  • Displacement - stm is full and new items can only be added by pushing out old ones
• Long term memory

  Relatively permanent, limitless passive storage system
• LTM

  Capacity: Relatively unlimited

  Duration: Lifelong
• Atkinson Shiffron model

  Strengths

  • Its ability to explain how information is transferred to LTM from sensory memory and STM and why forgetting occurs
• Atkinson Shiffron Model

  Weaknesses:

  • Doesn't explain different forms of LTM
  • Model doesn't explain how we encode, store and retrieve information
  • Doesn't tell us what happens if there is damage to certain areas of the brain
• Types of LTM

  Explicit - consciously recalled memories of facts or personally experiences events
• Types of LTM

  Semantic: facts and concepts
• Types of LTM

  Episodic: events from our lives
• Types of LTM

  Implicit - unconscious recall of memories about how to do something
• Types of LTM

  Procedural: Skills and knowing how
• Types of LTM

  Conditioned: Classical and operant, fears
• Autobiographical memory - includes semantic and episodic

  Memories of personally experiences events and self knowledge
• Episodic future thinking

  Allows us to imagine how we will experience an event in the future from a first person perspective
• Alzheimers disease

  A neurodegenerative disease that causes a progressive loss of brain tissue (atrophy) that is eventually fatal