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.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt]), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.

Freud's parents were poor, but they ensured his education. Interested in philosophy and law as a student, he moved instead into medicine, undertaking research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy. He went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst.Though psychoanalysis has declined as a therapeutic practice, it has helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach.

Freud postulated the existence of libido (an energy with which mental process and structures are invested), developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so), discovered transference (the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings based on their experience of earlier figures in their lives) and established its central role in the analytic process, and proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awake the dreamer. He was also a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the interpretation and critique of culture. Freud has been called one of the three masters of the "school of suspicion," alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Psychoanalysis remains influential within psychiatry and across the humanities, though some critics see it as pseudo-scientific and sexist, and a study in 2008 suggested it had been marginalized within university psychology departments.One analysis of research literature concluded that experimental data supports some of Freud's theories, including the ideas of oral and anal personality types and the importance of Oedipal factors in some aspects of male personality development, but that others, such as Freud's view of dreams as primarily bearers of unconscious wishes, and several of his views about the psychodynamics of women, were either unsupported or contradicted by research.Regardless of the scientific content of his theories, his work has suffused intellectual thought and popular culture to the extent that in 1939 W. H. Auden wrote in a poem dedicated to him: "to us he is no more a person / now but a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives ..."

Chapter 5: Consciousness

CHAPTER V

CONSCIOUSNESS

You might wonder why people are not aware of the things that they do when they are drunk. Have you experience lack of concentration when you felt asleep when studying? How about, incapable of recalling the details of dreams? You might also heard stories from friends of friends the effects of taking drugs? The common factor among these questions reflects is the chain in the mentality of people. All these behaviour involves consciousness.

The concept of consciousness arises out of the experience of altered states of consciousness. An alteration in consciousness involves qualitative change in perceptual and cognitive aspects. It involves alteration of mediational processes between stimulus and response. Altered states of consciousness can be induced by over stimulation, sensory deprivation or by altering body chemistry.

Consciousness

Consciousness has been defined as awareness of everything.

Function of Consciousness

·   It is the key difference between human and lower animals

·   It limits what we observe and we pay attention to

·   It helps us select and store important stimuli from the flow of all significant environmental contribution

·   It allows us to stop, think and consider alternatives based on past information and to imagine various consequences.

Level of Consciousness

1.       Conscious- according to Freud, the object or thoughts remains in the field of our awareness.

2.       Preconscious- according to Freud, it contains all those elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quietly or with some difficulty (Feist & Feist, 2009)

3.       Unconscious-according to Freud impulses are below threshold of consciousness. It is the reservoir of the unfulfilled motives. It stores repressed unfulfilled infantile sexual desires (Sharma &Chandra, 2003).

States of Consciousness

1.       Waking State/ Waking Consciousness- It is the time where an individual’s time awake is spent. Waking state is a state in which thoughts, feelings and sensation of an individual can be reported accurately and there is a general state of alertness.

2.       Altered State of Consciousness- It is located somewhere between the conscious-unconscious continuum. ASC is a radical deviation from the overall pattern of functioning of the mind during the ordinary waking state of consciousness (Teh & Macapagal, 2007). 

Different Altered State of Consciousness

1.       Altered States: Sleep.  It refers to a state with greatly decreased of awareness and activity. Biologically, psychologists see sleep as an adaptation permitting organism to conserve, replenish and restore energy. Individual can live without sleep for a WHILE, but can’t live without it altogether ( Ciccarelli &  White, 2009).

 Stages of Sleep

Normal sleep comprises of several stages. Evidences on the different stages of sleep have been measured and provided by various electronic recording devices; the brain wave patterns of sleeping person can be augmented and quantified using an electroencephalograph or EEG. Recording of eye movement; and measure of activity in the muscle is called Electro-oculugram (EOG) and Electro-myogram (EMG) respectively.

Central states of sleep are NREM or non-rapid eye movement, which includes stages 1-4 and REM or rapid eye movement sleep, which is associated with dreams.

Stage 1 sleep: During this stage there is marked slowing of pulse and heart rate, muscle relaxation and eyes movement from side to side.  The sleeper is easily awakened and if awakened the person may not be cognizant of having slept at all.

Stage 2 sleep: This stage is characterized by the appearance of bursts of brain waves called sleep spindles. The sleeping person is quite unresponsive to external stimuli, and thus is hard to awaken.

Stage 3 sleep:  This period is characterized by greater muscle relaxation, heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure and body temperature. The sleeper is difficult to awaken and does not respond to noise or light. 

Stage 4 sleep: During this stage the heart and breathing rates, blood pressure and body temperature are at their lowest points of the night. The sleeper has reached deep sleep and is difficult to arouse.

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep: Almost one hour after falling asleep, the sleeper takes back from stage 4 to stage 1. At this stage, heart rate and blood pressure moves fast, incapable of movement but the muscle become more relaxed and the eyes moves rapidly under closed eyelids. This stage is also associated with Dreaming.

Sleep problems

·     Sleep talking: talking while in the state of sleep, the information given by the sleeper is not necessarily accurate or correct.

·         Somnambulism or Sleep walking: person rised from bed, takes place during stage 3 and 4. 

·         Insomia: difficulty or inability to fall asleep or initiating sleep

·         Apnea: is marked by breathing difficulty and even cessation while in the state of sleep.

·         Narcolepsy: characterized by the inability to control sleep.

2.       Altered States: Dreams. It is defined as a succession of images or auditory experiences that occurs during REM sleep. These are content of consciousness during REM sleep.

Several theories have been proposed for dream interpretation. Psychologist like Freud, Erickson, French and Fromm, Perls and Bulatao believe that dreams express personal meaning.

According to Freud, dreams are repressed wishes.  Dreams have two kinds of contents; Manifest content (the surface or the remembered content of the dream) and the Latent (the hidden thought or meaning of the dreams).

Erickson felt that dreams reveals much more than disguised wish fulfilment and that its manifest content was worth taking seriously.

French and Fromm states that dreams are repeated attempts by the dreamer to solve his problems.

Perls believe that dreams are significant message about what is missing in our lives, what we have avert doing or feelings that need to be renowned (Coon, 2008).

Bulatao propose that dreams take their origin from unconscious (Teh & Macapagal, 2009). To understand a dream the dreamer can focus on the unconscious area.

3.       Altered States: Hypnosis and Meditation. According to Bulatao, hypnosis refer to as a state of consciousness which accesses subconscious memories, ability and other states of consciousness, which then express themselves spontaneously in conscious experience and action (Teh & Macapagal, 2009). It seems to be a mechanism to focus attention and involves two stages; induction and suggestion. Meditation refers to any of several methods of concentration, reflection or focusing of conscious processes in a manner unlike that used in everyday circumstances.

4.       Altered States: Psychoactive Drugs. These are chemical substances capable of changing behaviours, thinking, perceptions and moods. The resulting alteration in consciousness depends on the specific biochemical action of the drug on the nervous system and on the tolerance of the person.

Psychoactive drugs are usually classified as follows:

a.       Depressant- it referred to as downers, this are drugs that have sedative effects which slows down behaviour and cognitive processes. Examples are alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazipine and mild tranquilizer

b.      Stimulants or referred to as uppers, this are drugs that increase and arouse functioning of the system which produces feelings of heightened energy. Example, caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, shabu and ecstacy.

c.       Hallucinogens these are drugs that can distort perceptual experiences by acting on the areas of the brain responsible for interpretation of sensations. Example, Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)

d.      Narcotics. It refers plant or drug that induces euphoria-producing and painkilling properties. Example

d.1. Cannabis refers to a plant from which the psychoactive drug marijuana derives. It characterized by general euphoria, a sense of well-being and relaxation. It is also consider as mild hallucinogen.

d.2.Opiates, this drug is known for their painrelieving properties. It can reduce physical sensation and the capacity to respond to stimuli by depressing the central nervous system. Example, morphine and heroin

METHODS OF ALTERING CONSCIOUSNESS

Accroding to Matthew, there is no guaranteed one method that leads to higher states of consciousness. In fact the `doing-achieving' orientation itself is supposed to be a block. It is not what you do actually, but the mental state which counts. The following are some methods identify by Matthew  in 2009 for alteration of consciousness.

1.Physical methods

A.      Relaxation:

The physical methods suppose that the body is almost the same as the unconscious. Free body movement implies free emotional expression. Every repression is a muscular block.

Energy gets locked up in bodily tension. Conflicts are contained in and expressed through the body. People who are mentally tense have physical symptoms like clenched fist, gripping arms, blinking, mannerisms, gestures,propitiatory smiles, strained voice, shallow breath and dead hands. Presence of coldness, inability to express anger, etc. show up through the body. Increasing body awareness is one method of achieving relaxation.

B. Massage:

Massage is used to treat stress-related behavior disorders. It is supposed to have a bearing on consciousness. The theory supposes that personality is reflected in the physical body. Structural blockage goes with emotional blocks. Attitudes influence structure of body. Emotions cause change in length and thickness of muscles, change in connective tissue and immobilization. Massage causes reorganization of muscle function and reintegration of structure.

C: Yogic Postures:

The yogic system of exercises or asanas and kriyas are supposed to stimulate psychic centers. They produce a feeling of fitness and well being.

D. Breathing Exercises:

Breathing is supposed to be a bridge connecting the somatic and autonomic nervous systems as breathing is voluntary, though without deliberate effort it goes on. Deep breathing helps in relaxation, as there is a connection between breathing rhythm and the mind. Breathing pattern changes with the state of consciousness and controlling breath enables a person to control the mind. 

 E. Expressive Techniques:

Permitting a person to express his suppressed anger (anger therapy) and other emotions before others as in encounter groups, helps in tension release and physical and mental relaxation. People pound a pillow, stamp their feet, bite, shout or scream (primal scream therapy), venting their emotions and inhibitions. These have an indirect liberating effect on consciousness. Cathartic methods, however have to be used with caution. If overdone, they may reinforce the negative emotions and accompanying aggressive and other undesirable acts.

2. Social Methods

A.Manipulation of Social Factors:

Getting to know several languages helps a person to get unstuck form one mode of perceiving reality. Religious teachings (eg. love thy neighbor, nishkama karma, etc.) help in altering the mode of social functioning with consequent changes in mental functioning. Changed social functioning as well as total withdrawal from society into solitude may help different types of persons at different levels of personality to achieve changes in mode of functioning.

B. Altering Social Relationships:

There is a potential growth situation whenever people interact. Counseling can have a deeper level effect than is ordinarily recognized by counselors. In consciousness oriented counseling the aim is long-term or deep level change rather than solving a specific problem or removal of symptoms. From this perspective, suffering or maladjustment is desirable, if that would lead to greater integration or growth or maturity in the long run. 

3. Psychological Methods

Freud wrote that the unconscious is omniscient, omni-present and omnipotent. His main technique was integration through insight. Jung extended this concept to individuation process to include integration of the elements of the collective unconscious also. Roberto Assagioli developed techniques of concentration involving vivid visualization of archetypal symbols to achieve Psychosynthesis. Meditation, once a technique of various religious traditions is now being perfected as a psychological technique. Meditation is mind-fasting or the deliberate attempt to still the mind. It is an easy, effortless and restful state of alertness. It leads to both physical and mental relaxation. Though some people speak of concentrative meditation and opening-up mediation, the general policy is to regard concentration (on an object or idea) as a preliminary training and meditation proper as reduction of thoughts or thoughtlessness. Meditation culminates in super consciousness.