Week 5 - How Do We Learn? & How Does Memory Function?

Chapter 5

Habituation: Orienting reflexes allow us to respond to unexpected stimuli. Habituation allows us to stop responding to stimuli that are repeated over and over. Dishabituation allows us to re-respond to a stimulus to which we were previously habituated.

Classical Conditioning: Occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus that reliably causes an unconditioned response, and because of this association, the neutral stimulus loses its neutrality and becomes a conditioned response that elicts the conditoned response. Is most effective when the neutral stimulus/conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus are separated only by a brief period of time and the pairing must reliably predict the response. Stimulus generalization occurs when we respond to similar stimuli with the same conditioned response. Stimulus discrimination occurs when the conditioned response is only elicited by a particular conditioned response. Extinction is the elimination of a conditioned response.

Operant Conditioning: We learn from the consequences of our actions. E.L. Thorndike developed the law of effect, which emphasized the negative and positive consequences of behavior. B.F. Skinner coined the term "operant conditioning".

Observational learning is learning that occurs by observing others and modeling their behavior.

Chapter 6 Functions of Memory: The brain encodes, stores, and processes information. This can be explicit (consciously) or implicit (unconsciously).

Long term memory is organized into schemas, which allow us to effectively use our memory.

Forgetting: may be due to decay, interference, cue-dependent forgetting, or even repression.

Flashbulb memories are unusually detailed memories for emotionally charged events. We are prone to many memory errors, including the misinformation effect.

This Week I Accomplished: Read Chapter 5 & 6, 4 discussion posts, 2 C&R's, 2 quizzes, 3 tweets, and a blog posting. Also accomplished: Homecoming Week! Plus 2 volleyball games and a tournament. Went line dancing, and got all of my regular homework done too!

Next Week: Chapter 7 - Cognition, Language, and Intelligence: How Do We Think? :)

Reference: What is Psychology? Essentials, Second Edition by Ellen Pastorino and Susann Doyle-Portillo. 2013: Cengage Learning.

Three Stages Model of Memory (and how alcohol affects it!)