Psychology Of Learning - Chapter 1

Front 1

acquisition phase

Back 1

the period in the learning process when an individual is learning a new behavior

Front 2

associationist

Back 2

philosophers who developed early theories about how people learn to associate separate thoughts or ideas as a result of their experiences.

Front 3

contiguity

Back 3

one of Aristotle's principles of association, which states that two ideas will be associated if they tend to occur together in space or time.

Front 4

similarity

Back 4

one of Aristotle's principles of association, which states that the thought of one concept often leads to the thought of similar concepts

Front 5

contrast

Back 5

one of Aristotle's principles of association, which states that the thought of one concept often leads to the thought of the opposite concept.

Front 6

British Associationists

Back 6

British philosophers who proposed early theories about how the ideas in memory are formed from a person's experience.

Front 7

nativism

Back 7

the hypothesis that some ideas are innate (inborn) and do not depend on the individual's past experience

Front 8

complex idea

Back 8

a term used by James Mill, a British Associationist, to describe what happens when two or more simple ideas are combined.

Front 9

duplex idea

Back 9

a term developed by James Mill, a British Associationist, to describe what happens when complex ideas are combined.

Front 10

nonsense syllable

Back 10

a meaningless syllable consisting of two consonants separated by a vowel, first used in memory experiments by Hermann Ebbinghaus

Front 11

independent variable

Back 11

in scientific research, a variable that the experimenter manipulates to determine how this affects the dependent variable.

Front 12

dependent variable

Back 12

in psychological research, the behavior of a subject that is measured by the experimenter to see how it is affected by changes in the independent variable.

Front 13

savings

Back 13

Ebbinghaus's measure of the strength of memory, which showed how much less time was required to relearn a previously learned list of nonsense syllables.

Front 14

overlearning

Back 14

continuing to practice a response after performance is apparently perfect, which often results in stronger or more accurate performance in a delayed test.

Front 15

forgetting curve

Back 15

a graph showing how performance on a memory task declines with the passage of time since learning.

Front 16

behaviorism

Back 16

an approach to psychology and the field of learning that emphasizes the study of external events (observable stimuli and responses) and avoids speculation about processes inside the organism.

Front 17

cognitive psychology

Back 17

an approach to psychology which, unlike behaviorism, makes use of theories about processes that take place inside the head (memory, attention, rehearsal, etc.) that cannot be observed directly.

Front 18

subject effect

Back 18

the finding that when people know they are participating in an experiment, their behaviors may change or improve, even if they are in a control group and receive no special treatment.

Front 19

intervening variable

Back 19

a theoretical concept that cannot be observed directly, but is used in science to predict the relationship between independent and dependent variables

Front 20

cell body

Back 20

the part of a neuron that contains the nucleus, which regulates the basic metabolic functions of the cell

Front 21

dendrite

Back 21

a branch-like structure on the receptive side of a neuron that is sensitive to transmitters released by the axon terminals of other neurons

Front 22

axon

Back 22

a small branch-like part of a neutron that transmits electrical pulses, or action potentials, when the neuron is stimulated

Front 23

transmitter

Back 23

a chemical released into the synapse by the axon terminals of a neuron, to which cell bodies and dendrites of other neurons are sensitive.

Front 24

synapse

Back 24

a small gap between the axon terminal of one neuron and the dendrite of another neuron into which transmitters are released

Front 25

receptor

Back 25

a specialized neuron that responds to sensory stimulation, either from the traditional "five senses" or from internal bodily sensations such as muscle tension and balance.

Front 26

feature detector

Back 26

a neuron that responds to a specific type of visual stimulus

Front 27

visual cortex

Back 27

an area of the cerebral cortex, located in the back of the head, just beneath the skull, which processes information.

Front 28

simple cell

Back 28

a type of neuron in the visual cortex, discovered by Hubel and Wiesel, which fires most rapidly when a line is presented at a specific angle in a specific part of the visual field.

Front 29

single neuron doctrine of perception

Back 29

the theory that there are individual neurons in the brain that respond to specific, complex stimuli in the individual's environment.

Front 30

long-term potentiation

Back 30

an increase in the strengths of connections between neurons caused by electrical stimulation, which can last for weeks or months.

Front 31

arborization

Back 31

the branching of the dendrites of neurons, a process that occurs especially rapidly before birth and during the first year of a child's life.

Front 32

neurogenesis

Back 32

the growth of new neurons

Front 33

axon terminals

Back 33

enlarged structures at the ends of the axons that release chemical transmitters that stimulate dendrites of other neurons.

Front 34

spaced practiced learning

Back 34

studying & learning something over a period of time

Front 35

massed practice learning

Back 35

cramming (much more temporary than spaced practiced learning)

Front 36

temporary forgetting

Back 36

not being able to access a stored memory (retrieval failure)

Front 37

context-dependent learning

Back 37

environment you learn in is easier to recall in the same or similar environment

Front 38

determinism

Back 38

-all events are determined by physical, environmental causes
-these can be observed and analyzed

Front 39

chaos theory

Back 39

-provides mathematical techniques for dealing with complex physical systems
-complex physical systems may be inherently unpredictable
-extreme sensitivity to initial conditions (the Butterfly Effect)
-free will is consistent with this because it allows for random chance