Learning and Memory Tips PDF

Learning and Memory Tips - [Psychology is...] the study of observable behavior and mental processes - Goals: to describe, predict, and control mental processes - Subliminal: below Threshold - Psychology is a "Hub Science" - One of the most influential - Has a lot to...

Learning and Memory Tips - [Psychology is...] the study of observable behavior and mental processes - Goals: to describe, predict, and control mental processes - Subliminal: below Threshold - Psychology is a "Hub Science" - One of the most influential - Has a lot to offer other groups of sciences - **HUB SCIENCE**: - Social science - Math - Physics - Earth science - Chem - Medicine - Psychology - The Generation Effect - Study: - Hot- Cold -\> Read - Hot- \_old-\> generate - Test: - Quiz for recognition - Results showed that those who had to generate info had a stronger memory of it - Massed v distributed studying (cramming) - Study - Dinner -- la cena - woman- la dona - Test - Dinner- ? - Jaffe (2008) - Spacing - When a gap between initial learning and test date was a week, optimum review is a day after initial learning - When there is a month gap, ideal review is after a week - With a year ap, one month is idea review time - Morning v. Night - ½ people in this study studied at 9pm slept, then took the exam; other half studied at 9am, went about their day, then took the exam (both 12 hours later) - Results show sleep helps new learning - Sleep after studying helps brain process and absorb info (Consolidation), even subconsciously without interference - Repeated study V testing - (SSSS), (SSST), (STTT) - 5 minutes after, SSSS performed the best; one week later, STTT performed the best - Testing tells you what you don't know **(metacognition)** - Helps you generate info which increases memory **(generation effect)** - Helps you learn in the same way your tested **(transfer appropriate processing)** - Interleaving - Studying 15ish minute increments with constant switching (PCPCPCPC) - Desirable Difficulties - Introducing difficulties in the learning process improves long term retention - Illusion of learning - Makes things easier and makes you think you know better than you do (i.e. highlighting) CHAPTER 1- - Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes such as thought and emotion - Mind includes structural and functional parts of the brain (how its built, how it works) - **Dualism:** Renee Decart proposed the mind and the body were separate entities - **Monism:** The belief that the mind and the body are the same thing; mind is a result of what the NS does - Roots of Psychology - Psychology is like the branches and leaves of a tree and the questions posted by philosophy are the roots as well as the methods borrowed from the physical sciences - - Psamtik 1; 7^th^ century BCE - Theory- Egyptians are the most ancient race - Hypothesis- Children will naturally speak the most ancient language - Operational Def.- kidnaped 2 children, isolated, never heard language - Measure- Herdsman recorded for Psamtik - Evaluate- determined the spoken words were from another language - 3 R's- [revised] his belief, experiment was [reported], [replication] efforts? - Wilhelm Wundt - First documented psychological study - "founder of Psychology" 1879 - Had students, lab space, and journals to document - Studied reaction time **(mental chronometry)** - Documented and measuring time associated with a certain task - Edward Tichner and Structuralism - The whole is equal to the sum of the parts - Combining individual sensations (the parts) leads to perception (the whole) - Document all states of consciousness - Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Psychology - Opposed Tichner: the whole is greater than the sum - Perception changes - **2^nd^ Effect: apparent motion, phi phenomenon** - Perceiving motion when there isn't any - Ex: flip book, movie theater - Simple reaction time V. Choice reaction time - Willaim James and Functionalism - Functionalism proposed that the mind is shaped by natural selection; modern evolutionary psych is one descendant of W. James - Charles Darwin - Wrote one of the first textbooks of psych (principles of psych 1 &2) - Principles of psychology is similar to todays works, just significantly more developed - The behaviorist movement - Behaviorists studied observable animal behaibior to try to understand human learning - **Pavlov-** classical conditioning - Behaviorists dominated psych from early 1900s- 1950s - The cognitive Revolution - Ulrie Neisser argued that internal cognitive processes can be studies objectively, as well as behavior - Sigmund Freud and Psychodynamic Theory - Emphasized that many important mental processes happen outside conscious awareness - Emphasized the unconscious mind - Popularized 'talk therapy' - Humanistic psychology - Carl Rodgers - Humanistic approaches- people are inherently good and can improve themselves; seek to do so - **Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs** - Psychological Perspectives - Biological - Investigates connections between mind/behavior/biological processes - Evolutionary- asks how our evolutionary past continues to shape our behavior - Cognitive- Investigates mental processes, including thinking, problem solving, and information processing - Social- - Personality - - Development- normal changes in behavior that occur across the life span - Clinical - Explains, defines, and treats psychological disorders and promotes general well-being CHAPTER 2- - **[Research Methods]** - Correlation and coefficients - Mean, median, mode - Population and sample - Independent, dependent variable - Statistical significance - Informed consent- research ethics - Scientific Method - Theory -\> hypothesis-\> operationalize variables -\> measure -\> evaluate -\> Three R's (revise/ replicate/ report) - **Descriptive Methods- case study** - Phineas Gage (one of the most famous case studies in psych) - Experiment of nature - 1800s- Phineas Gage was a railroad worker laying rail lines, impaled by tamping iron through cheekbone, through eye, and out top of his head - Never lost consciousness during accident - His behavior and mental processes completely changed pre v post accident (experiment of nature) - Unreliable, profane, rageful, impulse control issues, no longer a leader - Frontal lobe was damaged, previously controlled impulses - HM (famous case in cognitive psych) - Henrey Molaison, had epilepsy, frequent seizures, localized his seizures to the origin in his hippocampus - Removed his hippocampus, he couldn't form new memories in result, amnesic - Cryogenically preserved his brain - **Descriptive Methods- Naturalistic Studies** - Observing someone/ something in their natural habitat - Must be unobtrusive- will cause specimen to change their behavior - Accuracy is key - Jane Goodall- studies chimpanzee behavior - **Descriptive Methods- Surveys** - Used to estimate people's characteristics, attitudes, beliefs, etc. - **Descriptive Statistics** - Statistical methods to organize data into meaningful patterns and summaries - Graphs, etc - Bell Curve - Central tendency of one variable (e.g, mean, median, mode) - Variability of one variable (e.g, standard deviation) -how spread out the data is - Correlation coefficient - lies between -1 and 1 - 0 -\> no correlation between two - +1 -\> height and weight- as height increases weight does too - -1 --\> course performance and absences- as absences increase, course performance decreases - Closer the correlation is to -1 or 1, the stronger the relationship between the two distributions is - Correlation does not equal causation - third variable problem - the directionality problem (sleep and stress are negatively correlated) - does amount of sleep cause amount of stress; does amount of stress cause amount of stress - Descriptive vs. Inferential Statistics - Descriptive- mean, median, mode -\> summarize actual study data - Inferential statistics- **probabilistic** -\> extend conclusions to larger population - EX: the effect of blue pills on memory ability in adults: - The [population] (all adults) - The [sample] (some of the adults) - Some of sample is given one blue pill, some of sample is given five blue pills - The independent variable: (controlled) - The dependent variable :the thing we are measuring (measured) - The study of \_\_\_(IV)\_\_\_\_ on \_\_(DV)\_\_\_\_ - Statistical Significance: we can say that groups are statistically different. AND the manipulation (IV) caused the difference - Type 1 Error: In psych there is typically a 5% chance that observed differences area a result of sample characteristics, not manipulation - Improve the study -\> replicate study on different sets of samples, have a **control group**, **placebo group**, pre-testing and post- testing (baseline), dependent variable changes (more questions in the memory test), adding IV (multiple different test times), increased sample size, **cross- section (measuring once) / longitudinal study (bringing same group back a year later),** underlying conditions - Single blind procedure- participants don't know what they're getting - **Double blind procedure**- those that are doing the testing don't know what participants are getting - Validity: are you measuring what you think you're measuring - Reliability: getting consistent results - Ethical Guidelines: Humans - Informed consent (minors, prisoners, intellectually impaired) - Minimize harm - Confidentiality