MCAT Psychology Ch. 3 Learning & Memory

Using an unconditioned stimulus (meat) to turn a neutral stimulus (like a bell tone) into a conditioned stimulus

Recovery of a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus after the behavior had gone extinct

Generalizing a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus to other similar stimuli (white rat generalizes to all white fluffy things)

Being able to discriminate between to similar stimuli (ex: only showing conditioned response at specific pitch of bell tone, & not at other pitches)

Increase likelihood of specific behavior

Performing a behavior to reduce something unpleasant that is happening; associated w/ negative reinforcement

Performing a behavior to avoid something unpleasant in the future; associated w/ negative reinforcement

Knowledge that only becomes clear when a person has an incentive to display it

Animals are most able to perform behaviors that coincide w/ their natural behaviors (ex: rewarding birds for pecking behaviors works well)

Tendency for a learned behavior to trigger innate behaviors (ex: raccoons could not be trained to put coins in a bank & leave them there, they took them out and tried to "wash" them like they would with small food)

Process in encoding where information is gained w/out effort (ex: noticing temperature of environment)

Process in encoding where you must actively work to gain the info. Controlled processing can be come automatic w/ time (ex: when learning new language, words that you had hard time understanding initially become automatic to understand when you hear them)

1. Visual Encoding (a visual, weakest form of encoding)
2. Acoustic (a sound, medium form of encoding)
3. Semantic (put into meaningful context, strongest form of encoding)

Repetition of a piece of info to keep it in working memory or to store in short-term or eventually long-term memory

Our ability to recall information that is put into the context of our own lives better (related to semantics)