Introduction to

Psychology
Lecture 9 and 10

Warda Qazi
What is Memory?

Memory is the process by which the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information. It allows us to
learn from experiences and form our sense of self. Unit of memory is bit.

Key Functions:
•Encoding: The process of taking in information.
•Storage: Holding onto the information over time.
•Retrieval: Accessing the stored information when needed.

Types: Divided into short-term, long-term, and sensory memory.

1. Sensory Memory
Sensory memory is the brief storage of sensory information (sights, sounds, smells) from the
environment, lasting only for a few seconds.

Types of Sensory Memory:

Iconic Memory: Visual memory that lasts for less than a second.
Echoic Memory: Auditory memory lasting up to 3-4 seconds.
Haptic memory: Stores tactile or touch-based sensory information.
Gustatory Memory: Stores olfactory stimulus of taste and smell

2. Short Term Memory

Short-term memory holds a small amount of information for a short period of time (typically 20-30
seconds). It’s also called working memory.

Capacity: 7 ± 2 items (e.g., phone numbers).

Role: Important for problem-solving and decision-making in the moment.
Example: Remembering a phone number long enough to dial it.
 Focuses on the active processing of
information in short-term memory.

Components:

Central Executive: Controls attention

and coordinates activities.
Phonological Loop: Deals with auditory
Episodi information.
c
Buffer Visuospatial Sketchpad: Handles visual
and spatial information.
Episodic Buffer: Integrates information
from different sources into a single
episode.

Inner Voice
The depth of processing affects
memory retention.

Shallow Processing: Focus on

surface features (e.g.,
recognizing words based on
appearance or sound).
Deep Processing: Focus on
meaning, leading to better
memory retention (e.g.,
connecting new information to
existing knowledge).
Example: Remembering a word
by associating it with a real-life
example is more effective than
simply repeating it.
Visuals: Diagram showing
shallow vs. deep processing.
3. Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory stores information indefinitely and has a vast capacity. It includes everything from past
experiences to learned knowledge. Two Main Types
1. Declarative Memory

Declarative memory is the type of memory where information is consciously recalled, such as facts and events.
Subtypes:
Semantic Memory: Memory of facts and general knowledge (e.g., the capital of France).
Episodic Memory: Memory of personal experiences (e.g., your last birthday).
Autobiographical: Stores memories of one's own life.

2. Non-Declarative Memory

Non-declarative memory refers to unconscious memory processes, such as learning skills or habits that
you don't have to think about to perform.

Subtypes:
Procedural Memory: Memory of how to perform tasks (e.g., riding a bike).
Priming: When prior exposure to a stimulus influences how you respond to it later.
Semantic Memory
Definition: Semantic memory is a type of declarative memory that involves the
recollection of facts, concepts, and general knowledge about the world.
Characteristics:
• Not linked to personal experiences.
• Important for language, problem-solving, and general knowledge.
Example: Knowing that Paris is the capital of France or understanding the
meaning of a word.
The Limbic System’s Role in Memory

Key Brain Structures:

Hippocampus: Essential for forming new declarative memories (semantic and episodic).
Amygdala: Involved in emotional memories, particularly those related to fear and pleasure.

Memory Formation:
The hippocampus converts short-term memories into long-term ones, while the amygdala
processes the emotional intensity of memories.

Example: Emotional events, such as a traumatic experience, are often vividly remembered due to
the amygdala’s involvement.
2. Episodic Memory
Episodic memory is a type of declarative memory that involves the recall of personal experiences and
specific events in one’s life.

Characteristics:
Linked to personal experiences and emotions.
Involves the hippocampus for memory formation.

Example: Recalling your first day at university or a vacation you took.

3. Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory refers to memories of one's own life, combining both semantic (facts about
yourself) and episodic (personal experiences) memories.

Types:
Personal Facts: (e.g., your birthday).
Personal Experiences: (e.g., your first day at school).

Emotional Significance: Often involves memories tied to strong emotions and life-defining moments.
Example: Remembering your wedding day or the house you grew up in.
Title: What is Learning?
Definition: Learning is the process through which individuals acquire new knowledge, skills, behaviors,
or attitudes based on experiences.

Core Idea: Learning results in relatively permanent changes in behavior.

Relevance in Psychology:
Learning involves adaptation to the environment.
It is a foundational concept in behavioral psychology.

Behavioral Impact: Learning is observable in behaviors, such as acquiring a skill (e.g., riding a bike) or
changing a habit (e.g., quitting smoking).

Example: A child learning to avoid touching a hot stove after one painful experience.
Types of Learning:
1. Implicit Learning: Unconscious Learning
Definition: Implicit learning is a type of learning that happens without conscious awareness.
It occurs when you pick up information or skills through experience without realizing you are learning.

Key Characteristics:
•Happens automatically.
•Often involves motor skills and routines.
•Does not require focused attention.

Examples:
•Learning to ride a bike or type on a keyboard without thinking about each movement.
•Learning the grammar of your native language without being taught formal rules.
How Implicit Learning Occurs

Mechanism:
Repetition: You learn through repeated exposure to the task or environment.
Experience-based: Your brain picks up patterns or habits without requiring active learning.
Non-verbal: Implicit learning typically does not rely on language or formal instruction.

Key Brain Regions:

Basal Ganglia: Involved in motor control and learning automatic actions.
Cerebellum: Coordinates muscle movements and helps in motor learning.

Significance:
Implicit learning helps us master everyday tasks and skills efficiently.
Crucial for motor skills, social interaction, and forming habits.
Real-life Applications of Implicit Learning

Driving a car: After practicing, you don’t think about every movement, like pressing the brake or turning
the wheel.

Social Skills: We unconsciously learn social cues, such as knowing when to speak in conversations,
without explicit instruction.

Sports: Athletes improve their performance through practice without needing to analyze every move.

Musician: A musician learning to play a song fluently through repeated practice without needing to
consciously think about each note.
Types of Learning:
2. Explicit Learning: Conscious Learning

Definition: Explicit learning is a type of learning that requires conscious effort. It involves actively trying to
learn and understand information or skills through focused attention and study.

Key Characteristics:
Requires awareness and deliberate practice.
Involves intentional memorization or studying.
Typically involves facts, knowledge, or steps that can be verbalized.

Examples:
Learning a new language by studying vocabulary.
Involves intentional memorization or studying.
Memorizing facts for a history exam.
How Explicit Learning Occurs

Mechanism:
Focused Attention: You actively focus on the information you want to learn.
Deliberate Practice: Learning through studying, practice, and rehearsal.
Use of Language: Explicit learning often involves verbal instructions or written material.

Key Brain Regions:

Hippocampus: Important for forming new memories.
Prefrontal Cortex: Involved in planning and decision-making during learning.

Significance:
Explicit learning is essential for academic learning, skill development, and acquiring new knowledge.
Involves effort but leads to a deep understanding of complex information.
Real-life Applications of Explicit Learning

Examples:

Learning to play an instrument: You consciously learn musical notes and practice reading music.

Preparing for exams: Memorizing important dates, facts, or formulas by reading and writing them
down repeatedly.

Learning to cook: Following a recipe step by step, consciously understanding each instruction.

Learning Math: Studying a math problem step by step to understand the solution and then
practicing it until mastered.
1. Associative Learning

Definition: Associative learning is the process of learning through forming

associations between stimuli and responses.
Two Main Types:
Classical Conditioning: Learning by associating two stimuli (e.g., a bell and food).
Operant Conditioning: Learning by associating a behavior with its consequences (e.g.,
reinforcement or punishment).

Key Characteristics:
• Focuses on how organisms learn from the environment.
• Helps in understanding how habits and emotional responses develop.
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Experiment

Pavlov’s experiment with dogs demonstrated that neutral stimuli (like a bell) can become conditioned
stimuli that elicit a conditioned response (salivation) when paired with an unconditioned stimulus
(food).

Key Components:
•Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Food.
•Unconditioned Response (UR): Salivation to food.
•Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Bell after being paired with food.
•Conditioned Response (CR): Salivation to the bell.
Real-life Examples of Classical Conditioning

Phobias: People develop phobias through association (e.g., fear of dogs after a dog bite).
Advertising: Products are paired with positive stimuli (like happy images) to create a conditioned positive
response.
Addiction: Environmental cues (e.g., locations where people use drugs) can trigger cravings in addicts.
Operant Conditioning
Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior.

Reinforcement and Punishment in Operant

Conditioning
Reinforcement and Punishment in Operant
Conditioning

Positive Reinforcement: Adding a pleasant stimulus to increase behavior (e.g., giving a dog a treat for
sitting).
Negative Reinforcement: Removing an unpleasant stimulus to increase behavior (e.g., turning off a
loud alarm when getting out of bed).
Punishment: Decreasing behavior by adding a negative consequence (e.g., scolding a child for
misbehaving) or removing a positive consequence (e.g., taking away video game privileges).
Schedules of Reinforcement: Fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval.
2. Non-Associative Learning
Non-associative learning is a type of learning that involves a change in the strength of a response to a
single stimulus, without associating it with another stimulus or consequence.

Two Main Types:

Habituation: Decreased response to a repeated stimulus.
Sensitization: Increased response to a repeated stimulus.

Key Characteristics:
No association between stimuli or consequences.
Based solely on exposure to the same stimulus over time.
What is Habituation?
Habituation is the process by which an organism decreases its response to a stimulus after repeated
exposure. It is a form of learning where the response to a stimulus becomes weaker over time.

Example:
If you move to a noisy city, at first, the traffic noise might be distracting, but over time, you stop
noticing it as much.

Key Features:
Decreased responsiveness.
Happens with non-threatening, repetitive stimuli.
Helps conserve energy and focus attention on important stimuli.
How Habituation Works
Mechanism of Habituation
Process:
• The organism's sensory and neural systems stop responding to non-harmful, repetitive
stimuli.
• This process is stimulus-specific: If a new stimulus is introduced, the response may
return.
Key Brain Regions:
• Sensory Neurons: Initially respond strongly to a stimulus.
• Neural Pathways: Over time, the neural pathways become less active with repeated,
harmless stimuli.
Example: A person who lives near a train track may initially wake up every time
a train passes, but eventually they sleep through it without being disturbed.
The spike in excitement is how we respond to
novelty. Soon, though, we get used to the new
event – habituation occurs. Trying to instill a fresh
dose of enthusiasm in our days. We turn to things
that offer us quick wins. Most commonly,
interacting online on social media or by adding bad
habits like smoking and/or drinking.
What happens in the nervous system to produce
habituation? Experiments performed in Aplysia
californica, the sea slug, were designed to address this
problem. Their results are shown schematically in Fig. 18-
4. If the siphon of the animal is stimulated mechanically
the animal withdraws the gill, presumably for protection.
That action is known to occur because the stimulus
activates receptors in the siphon, which activates, directly
or indirectly through an interneuron, the motoneuron that
withdraws the gill. This is a simple reflex circuit. All of
this is shown on the left side of the figure. With repeated
activation, the stimulus leads to a decrease in the number
of dopamine-containing vesicles that release their contents
onto the motoneuron. There appears to be no change in the
sensitivity of postsynaptic NMDA or non-NMDA
receptors. As yet, we don’t know why the dopamine
release decreases. It is presumed that habituation in
vertebrates, including man, occurs by a similar process.
What is Sensatization?
Sensitization is the process by which an organism's response to a stimulus increases after
repeated exposure, especially when the stimulus is intense or emotionally arousing.

Example:
After experiencing a painful bee sting, a person might become more sensitive to the buzzing
sound of bees, reacting more strongly to it than before.

Key Features:
Increased responsiveness.
Often occurs with intense or threatening stimuli.
Prepares the organism to respond more quickly to potential threats.
Mechanism of Sensitization

When a stimulus is perceived as intense, threatening, or harmful, the nervous system amplifies
the response to ensure readiness for future encounters.
Sensitization is not stimulus-specific: Once sensitized, a person may respond more strongly
to other, similar stimuli as well. it means that exposure to a stimulus in one sensory or neural pathway
can lead to an increased response (or reflex) in a different, seemingly unrelated pathway.
For example, if you receive a painful stimulus, like a loud sound or an electric shock, your body
might become more responsive or sensitive to a lighter, non-painful stimulus (like a gentle touch) in a
different pathway or part of your body. This cross-pathway effect happens because the nervous system
becomes generally more excitable after the strong stimulus, affecting other circuits that weren't directly
involved.

Key Brain Regions:

Amygdala: Involved in emotional reactions, especially fear or threat-related responses.
Sensory Neurons: Become hyper-responsive after exposure to a strong or noxious stimulus.
In sensitization, a stimulus to one pathway enhances reflex
strength in another. An example, again taken from experiments
in Aplysia, is shown in Fig. 18-5. Again, stimulation of the
siphon leads the animal to withdraw the gill by activating
sensory neuron 1, which in turn activates a motoneuron. If the
tail of the animal is stimulated just before the siphon is, then the
withdrawal of the gill is quicker and more forceful. The
mechanism of this appears to involve serotoninergic, axo-
axonic synapses. As shown in the figure, activation of the
sensory receptors in the tail activates, through sensory neuron 2,
a facilitating interneuron that excites sensory neuron 1 in the
pathway leading the gill withdrawal. It does this either at the
cell body or at the terminals of the sensory neuron on the
motoneuron or the interneuron. The consequence of the
sensitization process is to increase the size of the EPSP in the
motoneuron without increasing the response of sensory neuron
1. This will cause a greater response in the motoneuron and
therefore a greater withdrawal of the gill.
Neural Mechanism
Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5HT) is released by the
presynaptic axon onto the postsynaptic axon where it binds to
receptors and activates a G protein that, in turn, activates
adenylyl cyclase to produce cAMP.

This cAMP activates a cAMP-dependent protein kinase, PKA.

Along with another kinase, PKC, PKA phosphorylates and
closes K channels (hypopolarizing the cell), mobilizes vesicles
(containing neurotransmitters) for exocytosis and opens Ca
channels, more vesicles coming in. The end result is that • How all this occurs is illustrated in Fig. 18-6, which shows an
activation of this 5HT pathway by tail stimulation causes more axo-axonic synapse as might occur between the facilitating
interneuron and sensory neuron 1. Serotonin (5-
hydroxytryptamine or 5HT) is released by the presynaptic axon
transmitter substance to be released by siphon stimulation, the onto the postsynaptic axon where it binds to receptors and
activates a G protein that, in turn, activates adenylyl cyclase to
resulting larger EPSP leads to a larger response by the gill. produce cAMP. This cAMP activates a cAMP-dependent
protein kinase, PKA. Along with another kinase, PKC, PKA
phosphorylates and closes K channels (hypopolarizing the cell),
mobilizes vesicles for exocytosis and opens Ca channels. The
end result is that activation of this 5HT pathway by tail
stimulation causes more transmitter substance to be released
by siphon stimulation, the resulting larger EPSP leads to a
larger response by the gill.