Classical Conditioning
This is what the bell became in Pavlov's experiments after being repeatedly paired with food.
What is a conditioned stimulus (CS)?
Thorndike's principle stating that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to be repeated.
What is the Law of Effect?
According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, information flows through memory in this three-stage order.
What is sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory?
In this first stage (birth to 2 years), infants learn through sensory experiences and motor actions.
What is the sensorimotor stage?
This process involves axons becoming coated with fatty myelin, which speeds up neural transmission during development.
What is myelination?
This phenomenon occurs when a dog conditioned to salivate to a bell also salivates to a chime or buzzer.
What is stimulus generalization?
This type of reinforcement involves removing something unpleasant to increase a behavior, like taking aspirin to remove a headache.
What is negative reinforcement?
Sperling's research showed that this type of sensory memory for visual information lasts only a fraction of a second.
What is iconic memory?
This is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched.
What is object permanence?
Substances like alcohol and certain medications that can harm a developing fetus are called this.
What are teratogens?
Watson used a loud noise to condition Little Albert to fear this small, furry animal.
What is a white rat?
A slot machine uses this schedule of reinforcement, which produces high, steady rates of responding and is resistant to extinction.
What is a variable ratio schedule?
This occurs when old information interferes with learning new information, like your old phone number interfering with remembering your new one.
What is proactive interference?
During the preoperational stage, children exhibit this limitation, believing everyone sees the world exactly as they do.
What is egocentrism?
This is the rapid formation of new synaptic connections that occurs during infancy and early childhood.
What is synaptogenesis?
This is the adaptive response when cancer patients develop nausea to foods eaten before chemotherapy.
What is taste aversion (or conditioned taste aversion)?
This brain structure, along with dopamine release, is primarily responsible for why we seek reinforcement and experience reward.
What is the nucleus accumbens?
These are vivid, detailed memories of emotionally significant events, though research shows they can be inaccurate despite high confidence.
What are flashbulb memories?
This is the understanding that quantity remains the same despite changes in shape or appearance, typically mastered in the concrete operational stage.
What is conservation?
According to Vygotsky, this is the difference between what a child can do alone and what they can do with guidance.
What is the zone of proximal development (ZPD)?
After extinction, this is when a previously extinguished conditioned response reappears after a rest period without any new conditioning trials.
What is spontaneous recovery?
This technique involves reinforcing successive approximations of a desired behavior to teach complex actions.
What is shaping?
This component of working memory is responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating verbal and auditory information.
What is the phonological loop?
This process occurs when a child modifies existing schemas to incorporate new information that doesn't fit.
What is accommodation?
This Vygotskian concept refers to temporary support structures provided to help children accomplish tasks, gradually removed as competence increases.
What is scaffolding?