AP Psychology

Unit 6/7: Learning & Cognition

Study Guide
Created by your Table Captains!

Unit 6: Learning (Chapter 6)

Learning: a relatively permanent behavior change due to experience.
Intrinsic motivation: desire to preform a behavior for your own sake
Extrinsic motivation: desire to preform a behavior for rewards.

What is the difference between classical and operant conditioning?

-Classical: An organism associates different stimulus that it does not control and responds automatically; one
learns links to two or more stimulus and anticipates events.
-Operant:An organism associates its behavior (their environment) with their consequences.

Operant vs.Classical Conditioning

BOTH involve acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery
Classical: someone associating a stimuli that doesn't control and respond automatically
Operant: associating behaviors that act on the environment that produces a rewarding or punishment stimuli with
consequences

Scenarios:
Samantha heard the door bell ring and the first few times she answered she got no answer at the door. The next
time the door bell rang she did not get up to open it but this time her mother was at the door.

A baby is crying so the mother gives the baby a bottle.

The little girl misbehaved at school and got all D's in school, so her parents told her that she isn't going to the One
Direction concert anymore.

A person lifting weights to gain muscle.

Pavlov's Classical Conditioning:

NS = Neutral Stimulus
UCR = Unconditioned Response
UCS = Unconditioned Stimulus
CS = Conditioned Stimulus
CR = Conditioned Response

Operant Conditioning
Do you want this behavior to continue?
If yes, then its reinforcement
If no, then its punishment
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Note: Positive reinforcement and negative punishment are desirable (appetitive), for example: positive
reinforcement you are adding something desirable. Negative punishment you are taking away something
desirable, punishing.
Where are negative reinforcement and positive punishment are undesirable (aversive).

Operant Conditioning:
Positive Reinforcement - Adding something to reinforce a certain behavior. (Ex. Allowance for doing chores)
Positive Punishment - Adding something to punish a certain behavior. (Ex. Given detention for ditching class)
Negative Reinforcement - Taking away something to reinforce a certain behavior. (Ex. Losing weight after
exercising)
Negative Punishment - Taking away something to punish a certain behavior. (Ex. Taking away cellphone)

What learning is better to use continuous or partial?

A: Partial/Intermit because there is a greater resistance to extinction.

Reinforcement Schedule:
Fixed Ratio: depends on behavior itself a certain number of behavior are necessary before reinforcement occurs;
ex: punch cards

Variable Ratio: reinforcement after an unpredictable number of response; ex. slot mechine *you don't know when it
will come

Fixed intervals: involves time. Time must pass before reinforcement will occur; ex. expecting a delivery.

Variable intervals: reinforced the first response after varying time intervals; ex. checking e-mail.
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Acquisition - A stage of the conditioning processes and occurs when a certain response has been established
(Ex. When a rat presses a lever and food is dispensed. After several times, the rat pushes the lever to receive food)
Discrimination - The ability to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that have not with
paired with an unconditioned stimulus (Ex. If a phone were to ring in a classroom, you would be able to tell if it is
yours or not)
Extinction - Result of a weakened conditioned response. Over time, the behavior will continue to decrease and
then finally disappear. (Ex. Your mouth used to water when you saw seafood, but one time you ate it and you
received food poisoning. As a result, your mouth no longer waters at the sight of seafood)
Extrinsic motivation - Behavior that is drive by external rewards (Ex. Doing you chores because you know you
will get allowance)
Generalization - Tendency to evoke similar responses after a response has been conditioned. (Ex. A child sees a
car parked and says, 'beep beep'. The child sees an airplane parked and says 'beep beep.")
Intrinsic motivation - Behavior that is driven by internal rewards. (Ex. Helping someone because it makes you
feel good about yourself or learning because you are curious about something)
Spontaneous recovery - A sudden reappearance of an previously extinguished response (Ex. Addicts that have
gotten clean turn into addicts once more when they do drugs again)

Observational learning - Learning from watching others. (Ex. When a child sees someone say a curse word,
they are likely to repeat it)

Modeling- the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior

Mirror Neurons- frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing
so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy.

Important People to Know!

Ivan Pavlov- Classical Conditioning
John Watson- Classical Conditioning
B.F. Skinner- Operant Conditioning
Albert Bandura-Observational Learning
Unit 7: Cognition (Chapter 7A & 7B)

The stages of processing memory:

External events=====>Sensory Memory=====>Short Term Memory======>Long Term Memory.
Note: From the sensory to Short Term Memory you begin to encode, from Short Term to Long Term you continue
to encode those memories, and when you want to retrieve your memories it jumps from both Short Term and
Long Term (Page: 257)

Ways to encode memory:

-serial positioning effect.
-effortful process: requires attention and conscious effort, best way
-rehearsal
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-flashbulb memory
-spacing effect
-visual, acoustic, and semantic; semantic encoding is the best way. (Page 262)
-imagery
-mnemonic
-Chunking-organizing items into familiar manageable units

What are the 7 sins of memory? (Page 279)

Absent-mindedness- inattention to details leads to encoding failure (our mind is elsewhere as we lay down the
car keys

Transience- storage decay over time (after we part ways with former classmates, unused information fades)

Blocking- inaccessibility of stored information (seeing an actor in an old movie, we feel the name on the tip of our
tongue but experience retrieval failure-we cannot get it out).

Misattribution-confusing the source of information (putting words in someone else's mouth or remembering a
dream as an actual happening).

Suggestibility-the lingering effect of misinformation

Bias-belief-colored recollections (current feelings toward a friend may color our recalled initial feelings)

Persistence- unwanted memories

Also know: What is amnesia? How does it effect memories?

*Storage Decay: after encoding something well, we sometimes forget it later, although we begin to forget it, we still
retain a bit of what we know, this study was done by Ebbinghaus, the forgetting curve.

Proactive interference and Retroactive interference: Remember PORN

P:PROACTIVE O:OLD INFORMATION INTERFERES WITH NEW
R: RETROACTIVE N: NEW INTERFERES WITH OLD

COGNITION refers to all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

To process/understand everything in the world, we simplify them by forming CONCEPTS--mental groupings of

things with similar characteristics (i.e. objects, people, events, ideas)
e.x. If the concept is "chair," items in that concept include a baby's high chair, a reclining chair, a wheelchair, etc.
The chairs vary, but their common features/functions make them all chairs.

Some concepts are formed by DEFINITION. For example, if you're told that a triangle has three sides, you will then
classify all three-sided geometric forms as triangles.
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More often, we form our concepts by developing a PROTOTYPE--a mental image that best exemplifies and
incorporates all the features we associate with a category. The more something matches our prototype, the more
readily we recognize it as an example of a concept. (e.x. a robin and a penguin are both birds. a bird is a two-
footed animal with wings and feathers that hatches from and egg. A robin fits this prototype better than a penguin
does, even though a penguin is still a bird)

Problem-solving:
INSIGHT is a sudden realization of the solution to a problem. When this occurs, there is a burst of neural activity
in our frontal lobes and right temporal lobe.

For some problems, we use ALGORITHMS--step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution. (e.x.
mathematical formulas)

The simpler problem-solving method we use is called HEURISTICS--a problem-solving method based on
judgement that makes a solution more likely, but doesn't guarantee it. REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTICS is
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represents or match particular prototypes.
AVAILABILITY HEURISTICS is estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory (if
instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common). Our use of intuitive heuristics when
forming judgments creates OVERCONFIDENCE--a tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and
judgments.

CREATIVITY is the ability to produce ideas that are novel and valuable. There are five components of creativity:
1. Expertise--a well-developed based of knowledge. It furnishes the ideas, images, and phrases we use as mental
building blocks. The more blocks we have, the more chances we have to combine them in novel ways.
2. Imaginative thinking skills--provides the ability to see things in novel ways, to recognize patters, and to make
connections.
3. A venturesome personality--makes you seek new experiences, tolerate ambiguity and risk, and perseveres in
overcoming obstacles.
4. Intrinsic motivation--being driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than by external pressures.
Creative people focus less on extrinsic motivators (meeting deadlines, impressing people, making money) than on
the pleasure and stimulation of the work itself.
5. A creative environment--it sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas.

What hinders our problem-solving?

CONFIRMATION BIAS--seeking only evidence that verifies our ideas, as opposed to finding evidence that refutes
them.

FIXATION--the inability to see a problem from a new perspective. There are two examples of fixation. The first is a
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MENTAL SET--the tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful
in the past. The second is FUNCTIONAL FIXEDNESS--the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual
functions.

BELIEF PERSEVERANCE--clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has
been discredited.

INTUITION is an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious
reasoning.

FRAMING--the way an issue or information is posed.

Intuition's Dozen Deadly Sins:

1. Hindsight bias--looking back on events, we falsely surmise that we knew it all along.
2. Illusory correlation--intuitively perceiving s relationship where none exists.
3. Memory construction--influenced by our present moods and by misinformation, we may form false memories.
4. Representativeness and availability heuristics--fast and frugal heuristics become quick and dirty when leading
us into illogical and incorrect judgments.
5. Overconfidence--our intuitive assessments of our own knowledge are often more confident than correct.
6. Belief perseverance and confirmation bias--thanks partly to our preference for confirming information, beliefs are
often resilient, even after their foundation is discredited.
7. Framing--judgments flip-flop, depending on how the same issue or information is posed.
8. Interviewer illusion--inflated confidence in one's discernment based on interview alone.
9. Mispredicting our own feelings--we often misinterpret the intensity and duration of our emotions.
10. Self-serving bias-in various ways, we exhibit inflated self-assessments.
11. Fundamental attribution error--overly attributing others' behavior to their dispositions by discounting unnoticed
situational forces.
12. Mispredicting our own behavior--our intuitive self-predictions often go astray.