Chapter 6: Learning and Memory

CHAPTER VI

LEARNING AND MEMORY

Have you ever wondered how famous dog name “saver” become the “wonder dog of the Philippines”? How about little girls having their own likes and dislike as young as 6 or 7 years old?  How about the inability to recall during infancy until 3 or 4 years old? And sometimes spill out the secret of your friend from his crush? All of these example and questions involves learning and memory.

Learning

It is defined as the process of acquiring new information which brings about a change in the individual’s way of responding as a result of practice or experiences.

Perspectives on Learning

1.       Associative Learning/Stimulus Response Theory emphasized the establishment and strengthening of relationships between the stimulus (S) and the response and emphasize the role of reinforcement in the learning process.

Two forms of associative learning:

1.1   Classical conditioning

Russian psychologist Ivan P. Pavlov and American psychologist John B. Watson are closely associated with classical conditioning which also called Pavlovian or respondent conditioning.

Variables of Classical Conditioning

A.      Unconditioned stimulus (US) is any stimulus that has the ability to elicit a response without previous training.

B.      Conditioned Stimulus (CS) refers to the stimulus which initially does not elicit the response under the study but comes to do so by being paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

C.      Unconditioned Response (UR) is the original response to an unconditioned stimulus

D.      Conditioned Response (CR) is a learned response to a conditioned stimulus.

1.2   Operant conditioning

1.2.1    Thorndike’s Connectionism Theory. Edward C. Thorndike spent much of his academic career at Teacher’s College Columbia University in New York.

Thorndike’s Law of Learning

A.      Law of Exercise – states that stimulus response (SR) connectionism are strengthen by practice or repetition.

B.      Law of Effect – states that the SR bonds or connections are strengthened by rewards or satisfaction.

C.      Law of Readiness – states that the SR bonds can be chained together to satisfy some goal which will result in annoyance if blocked.

1.2.2       Instrumental/Operant Conditioning. It is the procedure in which behavior is strengthened through reinforcement. It suggest the fact that the subject is instrumental to obtaining the reinforcer.

Forms of Reinforcer

·         Reinforcement:  Responses that are followed by “favorable” consequences (reinforcing stimuli) are more likely to occur in the future

·         Punishment: Responses that are followed by “unfavorable” consequences (punishing stimuli) are less likely to occur in the future

Kinds of Reinforcer:

A.      Primary Reward Conditioning- where the learned response is instrumental in obtaining a biologically significant reward.

B.      Escape Conditioning – is one where the organism learns a response that is instrumental in getting out of a place one prefers not to be in.

C.      Avoidance Conditioning – is a kind of learning where a response to a cue is instrumental in avoiding a painful experience.

D.      Secondary Reward Conditioning – is where there is instrumental behavior to get a stimulus which has no biological utility itself but has in past been associated with a biological significant stimulus.

2.       Social Learning Theory. Albert Bandura and Richard Walter dispute the role of reinforcement in learning. They view learning as occurring in the absence of reinforcement, which give emphasize on observing others and learning through imitation.

3.       Cognitive Learning Theory. - The cognitive theory offers an alternative. Basically this theory focuses on the cognitive structures rather than on stimulus-response connections as the crucial factors in learning.

1. Insight Learning Theory – It is a type of learning or problem solving which involves a sudden restructuring or organization of the organism’s perceptual world into a new pattern or gestalt that happens all-of-a-sudden through understanding the relationships various parts of a problem rather than through trial and error. 
2. Sign Learning Theory – is defined as an acquired expectation that one stimulus will be followed by another in particular context by pursuing signs to a goal, i.e., learning is acquired through meaningful behavior. 

Conditions affecting effective Learning:

1.       Motivation

2.       Mental set

3.       Emotion

4.       Rehearsal

5.       Meaningfulness of learning

6.       Degree of learning

7.       Distributed and Massed practice

8.       Skills for learning

9.       Drugs and stimulants

10.   Experiential background

Memory and Forgetting

Memories are stored diffusely throughout the structures of the brain. There are five (5) areas of the brain that have been implicated in the storage of man’s memory; (1) Inferotemporal cortext; visual perception of objects, (2) Amygdala; Emotional memories, (3) Prefrontal cortext; Sequence, (4) Cerebellum; sensorimotor skills, and (5) Striatum; Habit formation.  Each part is responsible for different kinds of memory and characterized by memory system aspects.

Memory. It is the process by which we encode, store, and retrieve information (Miranda, 2008).

A functional memory system incorporates three aspects:

•       Encoding – sensory information is encoded into short-term memory.

•       Storage/Consolidation – information may be consolidated into long-term storage.

•       Retrieval – stored information is retrieved.

Kinds of Memory:

1. Sensory memory which refers to the initial, momentary storage of information, lasting only an instant. Information is recorded by the person's sensory system as a raw, non-meaningful stimulus.

Types of Sensory Memory

A.      Iconic memory, which reflects information from our visual system.

B.      Echoic memory, which stores information coming from our ears.

2. Short term memory holds information for 15 to 25 seconds. In this system, the information is stored according to its meaning rather than as mere sensory stimulation.

3. Long-term memory. Information is stored in long-term memory on a relatively permanent basis, although it may be difficult to retrieve.

Types of Long-term memory

A.      Declarative Memory. It contains information on “names, faces, dates, and the like

A.1   Semantic Memory- contains concepts and rules

A.2   Episodic Memory- record of some personal experience

B.      Non-declarative Memory. It contains information that is gathered through psychomotor activities like acquiring a skill or habit.

B.1   Procedural memory- it is the memory that contains facts how to do things. An example is skill of biking, taking bath, eating.

Principles Governing Memory Systems :

• Primacy effect:  appears to be the result of subjects recalling items directly from a semantic memory that enhanced memory performance on items at the beginning of the presentation sequence. It is due to the fact that the earliest items are now in the long term memory. E.g. on TV game shows where people can win everything in a list of items they see, they usually at least remember the first few items.
• Recency effect: refers to the enhanced memory performance on items at the end of the presentation sequence. It is due to the fact that the most recent items are still in the short term memory or working memory. E.g. people tend to remember what did they do in the last hour? What about the last day? Last week? Year?, Last song syndrome
• Maintenance rehearsal: repetition of information. It is only effective in the short-term memory E.g. memorizing repeatedly the cell number of your crush or a piece to be performed.
• Elaborative rehearsal: it involves thinking about the materials in ways that may related to other information you know. E.g. relating the technical term in to your daily habit.
• Retrieval cue: it involves explicit prompt or question to recall a particular piece of information (Teh & Macapagal, 2009).
• Encoding specificity: it involves memory retrieval when the cues during retrieval and encoding are similar information (Teh & Macapagal, 2009).  E.g. when you trying to get knife in the kitchen

 When we have learned something, it was stored in our memory. Now if that memory is needed we tend to recall the learned facts to be applied. Forgetting comes in, if there is failure to recall these facts.

The following are theories/reasons why we forget:

1. Distributed practice: produces far better retrieval than massed practice (cramming).
2. Encoding Failure: nonattended information is not encoded into memory
3. Memory Trace decay: over time, if memory is not used, neuronal connection can decay
4. Interference: other information interferes with accurate retrieval e.g. Tip of the tongue

1. Proactive: previously learned prevents or interfere with retrieval of newer information
2. Retroactive: newly acquired prevents or interferes with retrieval of older information.