PSY Exam 3 Study Guide Attention Attention the process by which the mind chooses among the various external stimuli impinging on the senses allowing only some of these stimuli to be passed along for further processing Selective attention focusing on one source of info while ignoring others 1 Goal directed selection e g cocktail party effect selective listening shadowing Posner task spatial cueing 2 Stimulus driven capture selection Covert orienting no look pass Overt orienting eye movement recordings when looking at pictures Divided attention dividing attention between two tasks e g driving and talking Stroop interference effect an example of perceptual skill that has become automatic to the point of being obligatory with practice reading Cell phones and driving talking on cell phones while driving is as dangerous as driving while intoxicated due to inattention to the driving task Treisman s feature integration theory of attention we automatically identify certain primitive features in the environment feature parallel and conjunction serial visual searches illusory conjunctions Change blindness notion that the representation of world is sparse includes only those things that are attended Physiological basis of attention enhancement of neural processing e g attending to the face stimulus Learning Learning a kind of adaptation to the environment which occurs within the lifetime of an individual a set of processes through which sensory experience at one time affects an individual s behavior at a future time Behaviorism an attempt to understand behavior as the relationship between observable stimuli and observable responses Classical conditioning learning predictable signals Basic terms UCS unconditioned stimulus UCR unconditioned response unconditioned reflex UCS UCR NS neutral stimulus CS conditioned stimulus CR conditioned response conditioned reflex CS CR Paradigm NS UCS UCR CS CR Examples Pavlov s dogs fear conditioning little Albert tolerance response and drug addiction food aversion Temporal contiguity CS must precede UCS by a very short time 1 2 1 sec Contingency i e predictability CS must reliably predict UCS s occurrence Extinction disappearance of a CR to the CS when the UCS is withheld Spontaneous recovery extinguished CS again produces a CR Stimulus generalization occurs when stimuli similar but not identical to the CS produce the CR Stimulus discrimination animals learn to differentiate between two similar stimuli Operant conditioning learning about the consequences of behavior R S change in R Thorndyke puzzle boxes 1900 Gambling Clever Hans Trial and error learning Animals performing ticks Law of Effect the behavior of an organism is controlled by the effects or consequences it produces Shaping successively closer approximations to the desired response are reinforced until the response finally occurs Partial reinforcement schedules reward only some of the responses Ratio reinforcement after certain of responses Interval time reinforcement after certain of seconds Fixed reinforcement after x amount Variable reinforcement after x amount on average Reinforcement response behavior increases Punishment response behavior decreases Positive stimulus presented Negative stimulus removed Cognitive process in learning animals and humans develop an explicit mental model or representation of the relationship between events in the environment vs develops unconscious robot like reflexes Cognitive maps Tolman rats learn an internal representation of a maze Latent learning learning not immediately demonstrated in behavior Observational learning monkey see monkey do Evolutionary selection for specialized abilities in learning in Behaviorist theory any R can be connected with any S Instinctual drift some rewards lead to a disruption of training Food aversion special learning mechanism to associate taste and smell of food in mammals with illness even when illness occurs hours after food eaten Biological basis of learning learning involves relatively permanent changes in the brain that results from exposure to environmental events Associative learning in Hebbian cells that fire together wire together Positive reinforcement in operant conditioning the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the reward centers of the brain Pleasure centers intracranial self stimulation ICSS Associative learning e g conditioning associate CS with UCS and R with a consequent S Representational cognitive learning e g cognitive maps Observational learning e g Bobo doll experiment Symbolic learning learning the meaning of arbitrary symbols such as words Skill learning learning complex action sequences e g playing piano riding a bike Biologically based specialized learning abilities e g bird song human language and food aversions Memory Information processing model of memory sensory memory STM short term memory LTM long term memory Sensory memory trace of the sensory input is retained for a brief period high capacity and very short duration STM working memory attentive conscious processing small capacity and short duration LTM stored representation of knowledge gained from previous experience unlimited capacity and indefinite duration Control processes manipulate information within or between stores Encoding movement of information from STM to LTM Storage maintaining information over time in LTM Retrieval movement of information from LTM to STM remembering Kinds of memory knowledge Implicit procedural a learned skill of habitual response e g riding a bike conditioning accessible through performance Explicit declarative can be made explicit or declared in words or with a picture Semantic general knowledge of world e g bird meaning Episodic knowledge of specific past experience events place and time Iconic memory visual sensory memory how much we can see in a single glance Sperling partial report procedure used to measure capacity large and duration short 1 sec of visual sensory memory STM encoding into LTM Capacity of STM 7 items or 2 items Duration of STM measured using a distractor task starts to decay after 3 sec and fades by 15 20 sec Primacy effect recall more items from beginning of list Recency effect recall more items at end of list Maintenance rehearsal the length of time an item is rehearsed kept in STM is not related to how well it is remembered Elaborative rehearsal involves thinking deeply and actively about something the more something captures our interest stimulates thought etc the more likely