COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY- SEM 1 (PG)

Module-4 – Learning, Memory and forgetting

Learning: Meaning, Nature and theories of learning

Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience or

practice. The “relatively permanent” part of the definition refers to the fact that when
people learn anything, some part of their brain is physically changed to record what they’ve
learned (Farmer et al., 2013; Loftus & Loftus, 1980). This is actually a process of memory, for
without the ability to remember what happens, people cannot learn anything.
It is the acquisition of novel information, behaviors, or abilities after practice, observation,
or other experiences, as evidenced by change in behavior, knowledge, or brain function.
Learning involves consciously or non-consciously attending to relevant aspects of incoming
information, mentally organizing the information into a coherent cognitive representation,
and integrating it with relevant existing knowledge activated from long-term memory.
There are two basic kinds of learning: non-associative learning and associative learning.
Non-associative learning involves learning about a single stimulus,
- habituation: Habituation is a decrease in the strength of response to a repeated stimulus.
Simplest form of learning. Habituation also plays an important role in enabling scientists to
study behavior.
- sensitization: an increase in a behavioral response to an intense stimulus. Sensitization
typically occurs when noxious or fearful stimuli are presented to an organism.
Both habituation and sensitization are typically relatively short-lived, lasting for minutes
to hours.
Although these types of learning are quite simple, they are exceptionally important for
determining what an organism attends to in the world.
Indeed, the fact that non-associative learning can be demonstrated in all animals, ranging
from single celled paramecia to humans, is a testament to the importance of this form of
learning.
Associative learning is much more complicated than non-associative learning, because it
involves learning relationships among events.
It includes classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning.
Classical and instrumental conditioning both involve forming associations – that is, learning
that certain events go together.
Classical conditioning:
A type of learning in which an initially neutral stimulus—the conditioned stimulus (CS)—
when paired with a stimulus that elicits a reflex response—the unconditioned stimulus (US)
—results in a learned, or conditioned, response (CR) when the CS is presented.
For example, the sound of a tone may be used as a CS, and food in a dog’s mouth as a US.
Operant conditioning (Skinner and Thorndike)
The process in which behavioral change (i.e., learning) occurs as a function of the
consequences of behavior. The learning of voluntary behavior through the effects of
pleasant and unpleasant consequences to responses.
Law of effect Thorndike placed a hungry cat inside a “puzzle box” from which the only
escape was to press a lever located on the floor of the box. Thorndike placed a dish of food
outside the box, so the hungry cat was highly motivated to get out. Thorndike observed that
the cat would move around the box, pushing and rubbing up against the walls in an effort to
escape. Eventually, the cat would accidentally push the lever, opening the door. Upon
escaping, the cat was fed from a dish placed just outside the box. The lever is the stimulus,
the pushing of the lever is the response, and the consequence is both escape (good) and
food (even better). The cat did not learn to push the lever and escape right away. After a
number of trials (and many errors) in the puzzle box, the cat took less and less time to push
the lever that would open the door.
Based on this research, Thorndike developed the law of effect: If an action is followed by a
pleasurable consequence, it will tend to be repeated. If an action is followed by an
unpleasant consequence, it will tend not to be repeated (Thorndike, 1911; 1927). This is the
basic principle behind learning voluntary behavior
Skinner’s OC : He even gave the learning of voluntary behavior a special name: operant
conditioning (Skinner, 1938). Voluntary behavior is what people and animals do to operate
in the world.
So voluntary behavior, for Skinner, is operant behavior, and the learning of such behavior is
operant conditioning. The heart of operant conditioning is the Antecedent stimuli, behavior
and effect of consequences on behavior.
Verbal learning (PPT)
the process of learning about verbal stimuli and responses, such as letters, digits, nonsense
syllables, or words.
The methods used include paired-associates learning and serial learning.
Researchers in the verbal learning tradition, influenced by Hermann Ebbinghaus and by
associationism, sought to uncover basic laws of learning by studying simple materials under
controlled conditions. Compare nonverbal learning.
Nonverbal learning : the process of learning about nonverbal materials, such as pictures or
drawings, odors, or nonlanguage sounds. (rest from ppt)

Memory: Sensory, STM, LTM, Working, Metamemory and semantic

knowledge, Theories of forgetting and Mnemonic

SENSORY MEMORY
is the first system in the process of memory, the point at which information enters the
nervous system through the sensory system (eyes, ears, so on). Information is encoded into
sensory memory as neural messages in the nervous system.
There are two kinds of sensory memory that have been studied extensively. They are the
iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) sensory systems

 Iconic Memory: The visual sensory system is often called iconic memory, and it only
lasts for a fraction of a second. Icon is the Greek word for “image.” Iconic memory
was studied in several classic experiments by George Sperling. In real life,
information that has just entered iconic memory will be pushed out very quickly by
new information, a process called masking (Cowan, 1988). Research suggests that
after only a quarter of a second, old information is replaced by new information.
Although it is rare, some people do have what is properly called eidetic imagery, or
the ability to access a visual sensory memory over a long period of time. Although
the popular term photographic memory is often used to describe this rare ability
 Echoic Memory Another type of sensory system is echoic memory, or the brief
memory of something a person has heard. Echoic memory’s capacity is limited to
what can be heard at any one moment and is smaller than the capacity of iconic
memory, although it lasts longer—about 2–4 seconds (Schweickert, 1993). Echoic
memory is very useful when a person wants to have meaningful conversations with
others. It allows the person to remember what someone said just long enough to
recognize the meaning of a phrase.
SHORT TERM MEMORY
Unlike sensory memory, short-term memories may be held for up to 30 seconds and
possibly longer through maintenance rehearsal. Selective attention is the ability to focus on
only one stimulus from among all sensory input (Broadbent, 1958). It is through selective
attention that information enters our STM system.
Only a stimulus that is “important” enough will make it past the bottleneck to be consciously
analysed for meaning in STM. Short-term memory tends to be encoded primarily in auditory
(sound) form. That simply means that people tend to “talk” inside their own heads.
Although some images are certainly stored in STM in a kind of visual “sketchpad” (Baddeley,
1986), auditory storage accounts for much of short-term encoding.

WORKING MEMORY
” Working memory is therefore thought of as an active system that processes the
information present within short-term memory. Working memory is thought to consist of
three interrelated systems:

 central executive (a kind of “CEO” or “Big Boss”) that controls and coordinates the
other two systems,
 visuospatial “sketchpad” of sorts that was mentioned earlier,
 Phonological loop, kind of auditory action “recorder”
 episodic buffer. The episodic buffer is a limited-capacity system that is capable of
binding information from the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop as
well as from long-term memory into a unitary episodic representation. This
component integrates information from different parts of working memory—that is,
visual-spatial and phonological—so that they make sense to us. This incorporation
allows us to solve problems and re-evaluate previous experiences with more recent
knowledge.
The central executive acts as interpreter for both the visual and auditory information, and
the visual and auditory information are themselves contained in short-term memory. For
example, when a person is reading a book, the sketchpad will contain images of the people
and events of the particular passage being read, while the recorder “plays” the dialogue in
the person’s head. The central executive helps interpret the information from both systems
and pulls it all together.

Capacity: The Magical Number Seven, Or Five, Or Four : George Miller (Miller, 1956
reviewed several memory studies, including some using a memory test called the digit-span
test, in which a series of numbers is read to participants in the study who are then asked to
recall the numbers in order. Each series gets longer and longer, until the participants cannot
recall any of the numbers in order.
This led Miller to conclude that the capacity of STM is about seven items or pieces of
information, plus or minus two items, or from five to nine bits of information. Miller called
this the magical number seven, plus or minus two. Now research methods have improved,
as has our knowledge and understanding of memory processes. Current research suggests
that working memory capacity can vary from person to person

LONG TERM MEMORY

The third stage of memory is long-term memory (LTM), the system into which all the
information is placed to be kept more or less permanently. In terms of capacity, LTM seems
to be unlimited for all practical purposes (Bahrick, 1984; Barnyard & Grayson, 1996).
Duration:
There is a relatively permanent physical change in the brain itself when a memory is
formed. That means that many of the memories people have stored away for a long, long
time—even since childhood— may still be there. That does not mean that people can
always retrieve those memories. The memories may be available but not accessible,
meaning that they are still there, but for various reasons (discussed later under the topic of
forgetting) people cannot “get to” them.
Long term” also does not mean that all memories are stored forever; our personal
memories are too numerous to be permanently retained, Information that is rehearsed
long enough may actually find its way into long-term memory.
Elaborative a way of increasing the number of retrieval cues for information by connecting
new information with something that is already well known. Maintenance Rehearsal
practice of saying some information to be remembered over and over in one’s head in order
to maintain it in short-term memory
LTM is encoded in meaningful form, a kind of mental storehouse of the meanings of words,
concepts, and all the events that people want to keep in mind. Even the images, sounds,
smells, and tastes involved in these events have some sort of meaning attached to them
that gives them enough importance to be stored long term. The best way encode
information into LTM in an organized fashion is to make it meaningful through elaborative
rehearsal.
Types Of Long-Term Information: Long-term memories include general facts and
knowledge, personal facts, and even skills that can be performed.

 nondeclarative memory, or implicit memory type of long-term memory including

memory for skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses. These memories
are not conscious but are implied to exist because they affect conscious behavior.
Like knowledge of how to tie their shoes. Nondeclarative memories also include
emotional associations, habits, and simple conditioned reflexes that may or may not
be in conscious awareness, which are often very strong memorie
 Memory for facts is called declarative memory, (explicit) type of long-term memory
containing information that is conscious and known. the facts and information that
make up knowledge. People know things such as the names of the planets in the
solar system, that adding 2 and 2 makes 4, and that a noun is the name of a person,
 place, or thing. These are general facts, but people also know about the things that
have happened to them personally.
 There are two types of declarative long-term memories, semantic and
episodic (Nyberg & Tulving, 1996).
Semantic memory, type of declarative memory containing general
knowledge, such as knowledge of language and information learned in formal
education. The word semantic refers to meaning, so this kind of knowledge is
the awareness of the meanings of words, concepts, and terms as well as
names of objects, math skills, and so on.
Episodic memory, type of declarative memory containing personal
information not readily available to others, such as daily activities and event.
Personal knowledge that each person has of his or her daily life and personal
history, a kind of autobiographical* memory (LePort et al., 2012). Memories
of what has happened to people each day, certain birthdays, anniversaries
that were particularly special, childhood events, and so on are call.
The difference between implicit memories, such as how to balance on a bicycle, and explicit
memories, such as naming all the planets, is that it is impossible or extremely difficult to
bring implicit memories into consciousness. Explicit memories can be forgotten but always
have the potential to be made conscious.

METAMEMORY (notes by ma’am)

MODELS OF SEMANTIC KNOWLEDGE
 FORGETTING: Theories of forgetting

Theories
1. Encoding failure: If the information does not get into the brain via our sensory
receptors as mediated by our attentional system, then there is no information to
remember later (see diagram of memory processes, next page). This is called failure
to encode and refers to the problem of failing to put material into LTM
2. Consolidation theory: Another factor that can contribute to encoding failures is
stress. The Yerkes-Dodson Law (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) posits that very low and
very high levels of arousal impair memory and other cognitive processes. When
arousal is so strong that it leads to forgetting, the memory may be nothing more
than the emotional portion of the experience, lacking in details (Metcalf, 1998).
Consolidation failure is memory loss due to organic disruption while the memory
trace is being formed, resulting in poorly formed memories that are experienced as
forgetting. STM works properly, but the shifting of information into LTM is

hampered.
3. Interference Theory: Interference theory refers to the view that forgetting occurs
because recall of certain words interferes with recall of other words. long-term
memories may be stored more or less permanently in the brain, those memories
may not always be accessible to attempted retrieval because other information
interferes (Anderson & Neely, 1996). At least two kinds of interference figure
prominently in psychological theory and research: Retroactive interference (or
retroactive inhibition) occurs when newly acquired knowledge impedes the recall of
older material. This kind of interference is caused by activity occurring after we learn
something but before we are asked to recall that thing.
Proactive interference (or proactive inhibition) occurs when material that was
learned in the past impedes the learning of new material. In this case, the interfering
material occurs before, rather than after, learning of the to-be-remembered
material.
 4. Decay theory: Decay theory asserts that information is forgotten because of the
gradual disappearance, rather than displacement, of the memory trace. Thus, decay
theory views the original piece of information as gradually disappearing unless
something is done to keep it intact. This view contrasts with interference theory, in
which one or more pieces of information block recall of another. A memory trace is
some physical change in the brain, perhaps in a neuron or in the activity between
neurons, which occurs when a memory is formed (Brown, 1958; Peterson &
Peterson, 1959). Over time, if these traces are not used, they may decay, fading into
nothing.
So even if both decay and interference contribute to forgetting, it can be argued that
interference has the strongest effect (Berman et al., 2009). And this is exactly what
researchers have found: • Decay only had a relatively small effect on forgetting in
short-term memory. • Interference accounted for most of the forgetting. • So even if
both decay and interference contribute to forgetting, it can be argued that
interference has the strongest effect (Berman et al., 2009).
5. Retrieval failure: Retrieval failure is the inability to find the necessary memory cue
for retrieval. This state may be temporary, or at times can be long term. The
encoding specificity principle (Tulving & Thompson, 1973) says that specific encoding
operations determine the type of memory trace stored. The type of memory trace
determines what retrieval cues will be successful at gaining access to the memory
trace. The overlap of operations present at encoding with those present at time of
retrieval determine the success of retrieval and the number of cues possible to lead
to retrieval.
6. Displacement theory: The displacement theory describes how forgetting works in
short-term memory. Short-term memory has a limited capacity and can only hold a
small amount of information—up to about seven items—at one time. Once the
memory is full, new information will replace the old one. There seems to be no one
figurehead of this theory, but many psychologists have contributed to experiments
and studies that support it. Free recall method studies often support the idea of the
displacement theory of forgetting. This theory is pretty solid and has stood the test
of time. shows that while some information reaches long-term memory, other pieces
of information in short-term memory storage are simply forgotten.

MNEMONICS TECHNIQUES

A mnemonic (the m is silent: ne-mahn’-ick) is a technique that enhances the storage and the
recall of information in memory. There are dozens of devices to aid (or in some cases
replace) memory
1. Method of loci: The way the method of loci works is to associate certain objects with
certain places. Visualize walking around an area with distinctive landmarks that you
 know well, and then link the various landmarks to specific items to be remembered.
These locations (loci) can be a room, a familiar path, or even a mansion. There is
empirical support that the method of loci is effective at remembering certain types
of information.
2. Peg Word System: The peg word system, or peg list system, has several forms, but
the basic idea is that one learns a set of words that serve as “pegs” on which items to
be memorized are “hung,” Associate each new word with a word on a previously
memorized list and form an interactive image between the two words. EG. one is a
bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, six is a stick, seven is a heaven. To remember that
you need to buy socks, apples, and a pair of scissors, you might imagine an apple
between two buns, a sock stuffed inside a shoe, and a pair of scissors cutting a tree.
3. Keyword method: Form an interactive image that links the sound and meaning of a
foreign word with the sound and meaning of a familiar word. Useful in learning,
foreign language vocabulary. Example, Suppose that you needed to learn that the
French word for butter is beurre. First, you would note that beurre sounds
something like “bear.” Next, you would associate the keyword bear with butter in an
image or sentence. For instance, you might visualize a bear eating a stick of butter.
Later, bear would provide a retrieval cue for beurre.
4. Verbal Techniques: There are several additional techniques that you have probably
used. One is based on acronyms or words formed on the basis of the first letters in a
phrase or group of words. The acronym serves as a cue for the words, it provides
information on order (if important), provides information on how many items are
necessary to remember, and serves as a reminder for omitted words. Like FACE,
VIBGYOR. Another related system is to form an acrostic, or a phrase or sentence in
which the first letters are associated with the to-be-recalled words. Form a sentence
rather than a single word to help you remember the new words. Every good bird
does fly, for planets.
5. Categorical clustering: Organize a list of items into a set of categories. If you needed
to remember to buy apples, milk, bagels, grapes, yogurt, rolls, Swiss cheese,
grapefruit, and lettuce, you would be better able to do so if you tried to memorize
the items by categories: fruits—apples, grapes, grapefruit; dairy products—milk,
yogurt, Swiss cheese; breads—bagels, rolls; vegetables—lettuce.
6. Interactive images: Create interactive images that link the isolated words in a list.
Suppose you have to remember to buy socks, apples, and a pair of scissors. You
might imagine using scissors to cut a sock that has an apple stuffed in it.